I’m not obsolete yet!

I’ve talked before about link exchanges and how having links to your website will help your search engine placement.. Links can be an important part of your overall SE strategy.. But just how do you use the links to their maximum??

When you have a link it comes in three parts.. Part one is the URL that the link points to, part two is the description of the link / site, and part three is the anchor text..

Part one is easy, it is simply your website’s web address..

Part two is a little more of a challenge.. You need to write an inspiring description of your website and your services in 200 to 250 characters or less.. I use 200 characters as a standard because that is what the vast majority of link directories limit you to.. I also keep longer and shorter versions handy for sites with different requirement..

Part three is actually the most important part of your link strategy.. The anchor text.. In many cases you will see the anchor text as the name of the site, or store, or even just the URL.. While these do drive traffic to your site, and do help somewhat in the SERPs (search engine results pages), a keyword targeted anchor text is by far the preferred method.. It may not have your store name in it at all..

Suppose you sell custom jewelry and want to rank well for the phrase ‘custom jewelry’.. Your link strategy should have that as your anchor text.. You link would look like this:

custom jewelry : Feydakin, of S.G. Design Studio designs and creates heirloom quality custom jewelry in platinum, gold, and silver.

The words custom jewelry would be the clickable part of the link.. The more people that link to you using that anchor text, the more it helps you rank well for that phrase..

Finding how you rank for keywords is important.. Finding how you rank for anchor text is another part of learning how your site ranks amongst your competition.. A good way to check your allinanchor ranking is to go to Google and simply type

allinanchor:my keyword and see where you place.. In many cases you won’t see your site at all.. But there are tools out there that can help you.. Head over to McDar’s and use his keyword analysis tool.. Type in your site URL and your keyword phrase.. McDar will then find your current Google ranking plus a few other useful bits of information.. One of those is your allinanchor rank along with your competition.. In the *A* column you will see your allinanchor rank.. You will also see who ranks where for that same anchor text..

The number one in allinanchor is not always the number one for overall ranking, but it does help.. And a well planned link strategy will help your placement.. Finally, mix up your anchor text.. Don’t use “widgets” all the time.. Use “Blue Widgets”, “Red Widgets”, “Taco Widgets”, etc.. This will help diversify your link strategy and allow you to chase several key phrases at the same time.

Fey

Mel over at Webworkshop’s SEO forum had this to add to the AllInAnchor discussion:
“IMO once the pages are added to the ranking pool they are then ranked by the normal ranking algo. This can be confirmed by comparing the rankings of pages in the allinanchor: searches with normal searches for the same words, with the regular searches often turning up pages that are not included in the allinanchor rankings, but otherwise seem to be more or less ordered in the same way.”

It makes sense and should also be considered when testing allinanchor..

Fey