29% of businesses still don’t have a professional website, and even fewer have a professional Search engine expert helping them.. They are losing out! Internet users are not doing a lot of searching around and most of them never get past the first 10 results before finding an answer to their question.
So you need your website at least in the top 10 to be sure to not be missing out on traffic. One thing you need to be paying attention to get there is anchor text optimization.
Besides getting good links on good websites (with traffic). Anchor text optimization should probably be the #2 most important thing you should pay attention to when it comes to off-site SEO. If you have the right anchor text and continually get links from good sites, you are sure to at least start moving up the rankings (And eventually hit the top).
On the other hand, if you do it wrong, Google Penguin comes along. If you are not familiar with Penguin, let me break it down for you.
Google (News - Alert) Penguin is just a code name for the algorithm used to find spammy websites. It can penalize websites that do not comply with the Google Webmaster guidelines. If the below tips are a little confusing for you then be sure to get a good SEO agency to help you out.
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The following are some tricks that can help you build your website backlink profile and not end up with a Penguin penalty.
1. Select the right anchor texts.
Choosing the right anchor text requires analysis and practice.
First, check your site with a tool like Majestic SEO, to see what sort of anchor text you have already. Once you have this you need to then make it more “natural looking” going forward.
So what you don’t need going to your site is 1,000 links that have an anchor text exactly like what you want to rank for.
In fact you should aim for about 25-40% “brand” key phrases then the rest other and most of these others should not be the phrase you are trying to rank for.
So let’s break down exactly what these phrases are. They include:-
Like I said, this type should make up 25-40% of your total profile. A branded anchor text will rely on the name of the brand to mark its authority. This is a great anchor to use since Google will start to recognize you as a true brand if you do this right. If you check say coca cola companies majestic profile they have 50% at least that is brand related.
While you do not need to compete with them you still want to follow their lead. Because if you get a similar type profile Google will automatically start giving you “brand” cred and you will find it easier to rank for keywords without even trying.
Generic anchor texts can help with your SEO strategy; they are best at utilizing flow in your content.
You can use this anchor text to draw your target audience attention to your website. However, be careful it can get pretty boring, and Google might not end up getting what the anchor text is linking.
Some examples of generic terms are “Click here”, “visit this site”, and “go now”. Google “list of generic anchors” and you will find thousands and thousands, if you ever run out.
Image anchors help your audience navigate within your website and to your website from other sites. This option is more like an advertisement, and it should have a clickable action (Like text in the image “click here”).
Be aware that the “alt text” is the anchor text that Google sees for this type of link, so this needs to follow the same percentages as the others. You could hire a website design company to help you create the right images if you need help on this.
Naked anchor text is basically the website's full address like “https://example.com/”. and all it’s varities like “http://www.example.com” or “http://example.com/page.html”. This doesn’t have to be a huge part of your link profile, like 2-3% should be fine. But it is found in all websites, so helps it to stay natural.
An exact match anchor uses the exact keywords as your targeted keyword in your website. So say you are targeting wooden chairs this would mean getting some anchors with exactly that phrase “wooden chairs” coming to your site. This used to be all you needed to get to rank for a phrase.
However, those days are long gone as Google started to penalize websites for overusing this type of anchor text. Only get 1% or max 3% and only from the best websites that you get links from.
Partial match is a great anchor text that helps you include other words in your keyword without coming off as too spammy. Going back to our wood chair example this would be getting links that said “chair” “wooden”, “wood”, “chairs”, etc.
2. The best SEO linking starts on your site.
It is crucial to know that you do not always have control of the links that will lead you to your site. Thus it is best to use the best anchor text ratios within your own website as well. The same ratios that I mentioned before apply here as well.
3. Do not use the same anchor text more than once
Anchor text selection should be as natural as possible. Before the dawn of Penguin people would always link their search to only one anchor text. However, nowadays things have changed completely.
The chances of websites having the same anchor text to link to other sites are small. For your business to stand out, it is best not to repeat anchor texts except in one exception. This is the exception of your brand name. I have tried to over do this but never really found an upper limit that caused a penalty. So when in doubt get a brand anchor.
4. Be focused and stay on topic
Here is a bonus linking tip. When it comes to SEO practices, relevance is key for good anchor text. Therefore the article and website your links are on should match the keywords that are embedded in your link.
If the content is not related to your link, then Google will view it as a manipulative site, and you may end up getting penalized.
I.e. you are a wooden chair site and you go out and get links in articles and websites all about computers, dogs and economics.
Not that you can’t get one or two links there but the majority of your links? They aren’t relevant to you. Aim more for sites about furniture or general sites that mention you in articles that naturally would mention your website.
