When a bot/spider is running about, does it matter how a hyperlink looks? For example: Hey, this is a link. DigitalPoint Forums Is #2 more effective? If so, how much does this matter?
It is very, very important. The link anchor text is one of the few things that the search engine spiders can look at to see what the link is about. If you want to rank well for any competitive search terms, it is crucial that you get incoming links with that term in your anchor text. If you're linking to a website with say 'ice cream' as the anchor text, you are essentially telling the search engines that the website is a good ice cream resource. An example that I always read about regarding this is how adobe.com ranks #1 for the phrase 'click here'. They have this ranking because of many links with 'click here' as the link anchor text. If you can use keywords in your link anchor text, you definitely should. It's a easy way to improve your rankings for that specific search term.
The second type is more Important, That is what we called as anchor text. Since that discribes the nature of the site that is directed in that link.
#2 is much better than #1. Think about it. #2 describes the linked page; #1 does not. Which would the search engines be likely to appreciate more? Clearly the descriptive hyperlink.
Mate here's your short answer: IT DOES! I mean historically speaking, at first it didn't. Google used a method stolen from librarians to rank your pages.. But after a while they realized: That's not enough! I mean if you have 10000000000 links to your sites (you are right, I made that up): you would rank for everything.. A little bit later, my favorite SEO guru figured it out: Leslie Rohde said "Anchor Text Does Matter!". Then funny spammers decided to get George Bush ranked for Miserable Failure, just because of the anchor text. That's called "Google Bombing". So Google made some safety measures and made sure that won't happen again. So if you have a strange anchor texts pointing at you: You will get slapped..
The reason I'm asking is because, when posting on blogs and entering your homepage/website URL, the anchor text it uses is what is in the 'name' field. I don't want to seem like a major spammer and substitute my name for my actual website title.
No, you won't. If that were true, you would be wide open to sabotage by your competitors submitting all kinds of links to your website with "strange anchor text". The search engines are not that stupid to allow an open door for your competition to sabotage you with links.
anchor text is how the bots know the importance of your keyword if theres a lot of anchor text links with your keyword you will rank higher
What I do, is I am also self conscous of spamming, is use a related term when needed. Like if I see prior comments with total site names "SEO MARKETING" well then I'll go ahead and be blatant. If not, I'll use something that kinda could be a name, or reasonable screename. State name works - California say doesn't seem too spammy, even "regular" ppl commenting without SEO purposes do that. Thing like that, if you think of your niche, can squeeze some regular sounding names that are still decent anchors.
To make it simple If you want your site to rank high for "Hey, this is a link", use method 1 and if you want it to rank high for Hey, " DigitalPoint Forums" use method 2 It's very... very important
Thanks for the tips, guys. So... if I was advertising a golf website... let's just say it's called "GolfWorld", but I wanted more results on the keyword "golf balls," it's smarter to anchor the link as "golf balls?"
You've got it, but you mentioned commenting on Blogs, so be aware of their TOS or Terms Of Service. Many blogs, especially do-follow blogs do not allow blatant anchor text, but prefer your name or handle. So just be aware that different Blogs have different rules.
Yes. The Anchor text is very important... it'll help the bots to know more information about your site.... the more links you get with a particular anchor text, the better you rank in SERP's for that keyword.
Try some Keyword research tool around to see which keywords related to your site are most searched by users, here's one: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This is Very important Part of SEO. You Have Add hyperlink on Your Keyword This is More Benefits of Keyword Ranking.
Go and check traffic stats you will see most of organic traffic comes because of this not because of title of our post . Google mainly concentrate on keywords and if you have some good keywords hyper linked than it is good for you .