If you use the same anchor text in a large number of directory submissions, article submissions, website linkbacks, you could actually hurt your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attempts.
What is anchor text? The best way to explain anchor text is to give you an example of it.
This is anchor text. Behind the anchor text, there is a link to a website or article. The user doesn’t see the link details, he only sees the anchor text. The anchor text is what the user/reader clicks on to get more information.
Search engines often look at anchor text to determine what the link is about and thus infer the subject of the site to which the link points. It is widely believed that placing keywords in anchor text helps search engine ranking. (Keywords are the words people commonly use to search for information. For example, “Google Ranking Tips” are three keywords that work as a keyword phrase and are searched for frequently.)
If you submit an article to twenty different article sites, for example, with the same anchor text it may look like you are trying to manipulate the search engines. Additionally, if you trade links with several another sites, and your anchor text on every other site is the same, then Google will pick this up, and may penalize your site for trying to manipulate the results.
A popular blogger trying to optimize his site for the keywords, “Internet Marketing Tips” made an offer to his bloggers. If they would link to his blog with a link that used “Internet Marketing Tips”, he would link back to them. Because this blogger got lots of linkbacks, and they all were with the anchor text, “Internet Marketing Tips”, there was a problem.
At first, his site was quickly ranked highly for his keywords “Internet Marketing Tips”. After a while, however, his ranking fell significantly. He just couldn’t determine what had happened. He got some advice from an SEO expert who explained the mechanics of what had happened. He asked some of the people to make corrections to the linkbacks. In a short time, his site climbed back up in the rankings.
Rather than making this mistake, make sure that some of the sites that link back to you have unique anchor text phrases. Here are some examples of changing the anchor text:
- “Search Engine Tricks to Use”,
- “Don’t try to trick Google”,
- “SEO Tricks to improve your rankings”
These examples of anchor text could all point to the same site, but they just use different keywords.
In summary, when you write anchor text, make sure that you vary it. Don’t use the same anchor text in multiple submissions. It just looks fishy to the search engines.
