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Google/Yahoo bombing is the
practice of placing terms you want a given page to rank for
in anchor text that links to that page. Huh? Ok, here's an
example: if you wanted Buy
Text Link Ads page to rank highly for the term "President
of the Internet" We'd create a link like this: President
of the Internet and have all my friends and friendly readers
post that link and text on their sites. |
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Discuss anchor
text optimization in Buy
Text Link Ads. |
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Google bombing is also effective on pages that
don't want to rank for certain terms - Miserable
Failure is one example. |
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The ability to manipulate search results this
way indicates the weight that the two most searched engines
give to the text |
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webpages use to link to other web pages. |
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Matt Bailey of The
Karcher Group believes search engines attribute this value
to the anchor text because it, "is very |
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important to the user; it should describe the
content of the target page and the subject matter." |
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Joe Griffin of SubmitAWebSite
described the way text link works this way: "by identifying
your pages through relevant |
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keyword links you are "telling" the
search engine which keywords the linked pages represent. The
rule applies for both internal and external anchor text." |
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"Proper use of anchor text," said Joe,
"can help you show the relevancy of your web pages to key
search engines to help |
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rank for desired keywords." |
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"Anchor text is extremely important to rankings,
especially in Google. I've seen some evidence in Yahoo, but
not to the |
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extent that Google rankings can be influenced,"
said Matt. Jim Hedger of Stepforth
said, "I believe in the value of anchor text." |
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Anchor Text Best Practices |
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Matt's anchor text best practices include excellent
general guidelines for you to follow: |
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Do what's best for the user. |
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Make it easily understood by the user. |
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Don't try to hide your intentions. |
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Be honest about the anchor text. What it says
is what you should get. |
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Jim's anchor text best practices offer
some specific advice that will help you make anchor text decisions
on your site: |
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Use Judiciously |
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Navigation
maps (the text-links at the bottom of each page) |
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Nav Maps are a great place to put keyword enriched anchor
text. These text-links tend to be found at the bottom of each
page in a site. An important note is that these links WILL
be used by site visitors and MUST be created and phrased with
live-visitors and SE Spiders in mind.
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Links on the INDEX page |
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The INDEX page of a site is the most powerful real estate
found that URL. Again, all work on the INDEX page MUST consider
live-visitors before SE Spiders. When keyword-enriching text
on the INDEX page, there are often ways to link into internal
pages. This is a good thing as it pushes spider traffic while
associating the keyword (anchor text) with the specific page
linked to. An important consideration is that the INDEX page
often has a higher page rank than internal pages.
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Links on Internal Pages |
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Links on internal pages are not as important to search engine
rankings as on the INDEX page. Nevertheless, each internal
page is terribly important to the clients and can add to a
good internal linking strategy.
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External Links |
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Links coming from other URLs should use effective anchor text.
With larger campaigns we can mix and match the keyword phrases
targeted through anchor links in order to associate keyword
phrases with specific internal pages.
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Buy
Text Link Ads offered six suggestions to
those who want their anchor text to work well for them: |
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Important link positioning top
left to bottom right. (throwing tons of links at bottom helps
little). |
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| 2. |
Exact anchors that best support
the content on the link to page. It's great to use
tons of links where the anchor text suggest importance to "web
design" however if the page is specific to "web development"
then the use of "web design" link anchors will be
less effective.
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| 3. |
The use of "broad"
has the benefit of aiding "broadly" e.g.
using links to a website about "college degrees" where
the link indicates "degrees" has the benefit of gaining
associate degrees, bachelor degrees, masters degrees, as well
as the specific subject matter for the degree itself link computer
science degrees. |
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A link anchor however about "masters degrees"
dilutes the value to other degrees e.g. bachelor degrees - so
it is a game of tradeoffs. |
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| 4. |
If attempting to do item #3 for "web"
to capture "web design", "website design",
"web development", "website development",
a text link anchor looks quite inappropriate. Thus the value
of image links e.g. <a title="web" href=""><img
alt="Web" src="web.gif"></a> where
the broad term is less apparent and the image actually reads
"web design". |
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| 5. |
Avoid "stop words"
such as and, with, by, from etc. |
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| 6. |
Internal site linking structure
has a significant impact of supporting and propagating
weight, relevancy, and PageRank to similar topical pages...
e.g. Google's indented secondary results for a specific query
helps show this. If you are listed (ranked) with only a single
results listing - your internal linking structure is likely
the cause, and fixing this can help improve overall results. |
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Joe of SubmitaWebSite contradicted some of what
Fathom said, however. "In terms of anchor text being found
on relevant vs. irrelevant sites I have yet to see any substantial
proof supporting the claim that relevant websites will yield
a better return in the natural rankings." From a purely
pragmatic perspective though, if you've got links on a page
that's more relevant to your site you're more likely to get
foot traffic in that way rather than if you've got your text
links up on unrelated/irrelevant sites. |
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Well, we imagine you're ready to start optimizing
your text links. Remember to focus on those within your site
as well as those your link partners use to mention you. Anchor
text is an important way of showing the search engines, as well
as your visitors, just what they're getting when they land on
the page. And, for now, it's a powerful way to raise your ranking
for particular terms. |
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