 So What The Hell is Anchor Text??Published Date: 2008-02-11 14:55:28 WorkOnInternet.com
Now there are 2 reasons that these are important! Firstly, links help visitors or customers understand why they are being directed to different pages and what relevance the page should have to their search, and it can also help site navigation. Secondly and more importantly the main objective of search engines is to provide their customers with information that is relevant to the search results. So how do the search engines do this? Quite simply the major search engines use algorithms to add huge weight to the relevancy of "anchor text" in hyperlinks. They want to make sure that when a customer clicks through a link they end up on a landing page that is totally relevant to their initial enquiry. So if we want to make some serious money with our Internet Business we must ensure that we use anchor text effectively! In terms of how this is useful to us it's obvious! As long as we use anchor texts correctly for our keywords this enables to gain a lot better rankings with the search engines for the terms we want to get onto the first page for. The key here is relevancy! A very common mistake made by a lot of webmasters is inserting "Click Here", or "Go Here" in their hyperlinks as anchor text. Evidently this is of no use to the search engines or the potential customers. What use would it be if our keyword was "designer shoes" and you had "Click Here" inserted in your hyperlink. Whoever was searching for "designer shoes" would not find your site in the search engines and neither would the the search engines know your site has any relevancy to the term "designer shoes"! If you searched for click here and sifted through all the results you might get lucky! Do a search on Google for "Click Here" and there are over 2.2 billion results. Good luck getting found in that crowd! Anchor Text if used correctly can massively enhance your chances of getting ranked highly with the search engines for your chosen keywords. By using relevant anchor text you are making sure that the search engines see how important your site is for that particular search term and therefore increasing your PR Obviously you can use links within you site to help with this, but the most powerful way of using effective placement of anchor text is to do so whilst creating backlinks in Articles, Directories, Social Bookmarking and Blogging. In a nutshell the more quality backlinks you have containing your anchor text the more important the search engines will see your site for that search phrase and as a result the better PR you will achieve! In fact the correct placement of anchor text is so powerful, some people took it to the next level and developed what became known as "Google Bombing". This was where some webmasters would create links with humorous anchor text in order to generate funny search results. As a result, in 2007 Google had to change their algorithms slightly to try and reduce the effect of what became known as a "Google Bomb " This is surely testament to the fact that correctly placed anchor text significantly helps your search engine optimisation. It is for this reason and this reason alone why all webmasters should focus heavily on relevant anchor text and ensure that the text they use has relevancy to the page the link is sending the visitor to! If done correctly the end result is quite simple, you get great PR and some quality search engine optimization, the visitors get sent to relevant pages for their search requirements and finally the search engines are kept happy as their customers are getting targeted relevant search results. It's a win win situation for all parties concerned! In order to create a hyperlink you can quite simply use the 'insert hyperlink' button in word, or alternatively do it the old fashioned way which is how I have always generated them and still do, call me old fashioned if you like! The syntax for creating search relevant hyperlink could be as follows Anchor Text Obviously once you have created your hyperlink all you need to do is change 'YourSite.com' to your URL swop the Anchor Text to what ever Keyword you are focusing on, and just remove all spaces except the one between a & href. For example one I might do in an article would be Earn Money From Home Once uploaded to a website software package such as Frontpage, Dreamwaver or even a Blog this would be turned into a clickable link that would read a lot nicer and look something like this Internet Business or another one might be something along the lines of Earn Extra Income It's literally that simple! So make sure you add relevant anchor text links to all of your articles and blogs etc to increase your PR and more importantly your bottom line. As we all know the best type of traffic is FREE. Although there a lot of seasoned pro's making very good money from this method alone, it can be a mine field and has bankrupted many uneducated people. The primary reason being people's ignorance and lack of proper research, along with 'Greedy Google'. Although Google are a household name doesn't necessarily mean they are the best value! They are widely renowned for having the best volume and quality of traffic but unfortunately for the uneducated marketer at the worst price! Once you have mastered the art of profitable PPC campaigns it is essential for business survival to find other more cost effective alternatives. Although Google Adwords has a very user friendly interface, who cares if it's raping your bottom line. If we are going to be honest with ourselves that's the only reason we are all in this game! In my search for reducing advertising cost whilst still maintaining effectiveness I have taken it upon myself to devise a list of what I would consider to be the top ten PPC programs. They are all ranked in terms of cost effectiveness, traffic quality and usability. 1) Yahoo Search marketing The biggest Search Engine! Enough Said. Although 'search' has changed hands several times they still provide very high quality volumes with some deals still to be had. • Cost Effectiveness 8/10 • Traffic Quality 9/10 • Usability 8/10 • Total 25/30 • Overall 8.3/10 2) Google Adwords Widely referred to as the top dog! However as it stands not with Alexa Yahoo still rank higher! As Alexa monitor and rank sites on traffic volumes this says it all. Sorry 'Greedy Google' close but yet so far. • Cost Effectiveness 5/10 • Traffic Quality 9/10 • Usability 9/10 • Total 23/30 • Overall 7.6/10 3) MSN Adcentre One of the biggest Search Engines. A rapidly emerging big player with lots of leverage. Arguably the best quality traffic. Be sure to look out for the fantastic keyword research tool as part of the package. • Cost Effectiveness 7/10 • Traffic Quality 9/10 • Usability 6.5/10 • Total 22.5/30 • Overall 7.5/10 4) Enhance This one is a little gem! It gets straight into Yahoo Search engine due to it's partners. Fantastically Cheap Quality Traffic at minimal prices. Enhance is quickly breaking through as one of the up and coming PPC providers. A must have in anyone's arsenal • Cost Effectiveness 10/10 • Traffic Quality 9/10 • Usability 3/10 • Total 22/30 • Overall 7.3/10 5) Miva Probably one of the best but vastly underrated PPC provider • Cost effectiveness 7/10 • Traffic Quality 7/10 • Usability 7/10 • Total 21/30 • Overall 7/10 6) GoClick Reasonably cheap traffic with a growing following of users • Cost Effectiveness 7/10 • Traffic Quality 7/10 • Usability 6/10 • Total 20/30 • Overall 6.6/10 7) Search123 One of the originals! Excellent customer support and ok traffic • Cost effectiveness 7/10 • Traffic Quality 6/10 • Usability 6/10 • Total 19/30 • Overall 6.3/10 8) 7Search A very small Search Engine with limited traffic. Although what traffic they do get is ok quality • Cost Effective 5.5/10 • Traffic Quality 7/10 • Usability 6/10 • Total 18.5/30 • Overall 6.1/10 9) Searchfeed Good value for money with regards to ROI, some good features such as limited geo-targeting but not masses of volume • Cost Effective 7/10 • Traffic Quality 6/10 • Usability 5/10 • Total 18/30 • Overall 6/10 10) ABC Search Decent traffic sources with some good customer service • Cost Effectiveness 6/10 • Traffic Quality 5/10 • Usability 6/10 • Total 17/30 • Overall 5.6/10 In summary, I guess the point I am trying to make here is that there are other good quality options available to us. So, yes the big guns do send high quality targeted traffic! But at what price? Would you not be better to target some smaller niches with less competition and drastically improve your ROI. An important factor to try and remember here is that most of our traffic will be coming via our optimisation and the PPC campaigns are purely as a top up and to ad some initial and ongoing credibility. Lets face it in order for our web business to survive in this tough industry we are going to need to build credibility and fast! My preferred alternative to Greedy Google is Enhance. Although the user interface isn't the best I put up with it for the level of quality, highly targeted traffic it delivers via it's partners and mainly Yahoo. Enhance effectively acts as a cheeky little back door into Yahoo for under a third of the cost!! Christopher David Young enjoys writing about various topics including Internet Marketing. One his favorite sites is http://www.arpanetinternational.com
Home | Submit Article| Article Topics | Article Archives | Newsletter | Business Directory | Contact US |
