Howdy Folks... newbie here but I learn fast so I'll only ask once I've been running my website for about 3 years now and am just now getting into SEO (I know... I'm stupid ). I run a forum site that gets about 80,000 uniques a month and about 600,000 pageviews. It's a PR4 but used to be a PR6 about a year ago before Google dropped me for some reason. I have about 400 backlinks in Google however most of these are from other sites I own or other forum sites that I have exchanged links with. Only a handful of actual content websites linking to me. So, now I'm on a mission. I purchased a listing in Yahoo Directory and I've built a "link to me" page on my site and have started to exchange links with other relevant sites. So, on to the question: I'm having trouble figuring out how to word my backlink and description. So, my questions are... Does the description (straight text with no link) beside the backlink matter for the search engines or is that just for human traffic? Does the amount of words I use in the backlink effect the quality of the backlink? (example 2 word link verses 6 word link). Do people usually use their websites' name as the link or use key words that they are hoping to rank for? If so do you have any push back from webmasters wanting to link by title only? Last, how do you word your description and once again does it matter to the search engines? Length, keywords, etc.. For example... Lets say I ran a site called hondasite.com and I already ranked #1 in every engine for "honda site" but not for accord site or forum. Would you create a link that said Honda Site, Honda Site Forum, Honda Site Accord Forum, Honda Site Accord and Civic Forum, etc...? Thanks for your help! Any pointers you can give me would be great!
Hmmm... maybe I need to make my request shorter. Any pointers for how to write backlinks and descriptions?
The best thing for you do is write your anchor with the main keyword that you want to target, keep it short and simple though. For your description do not use a bunch of keywords it looks tacky. Here is an example of a good backlink to your site. Honda Accord Forum: Discuss the lastest news about Honda's on our forum. Something like that would work great. Again keep it simple and do not spam your anchors or description and you should be fine.