Anchor Text for Inbound Links

Back to Part 1: Inbound Links

What is the best text for inbound links?
Certainly the best text is something to do with the actual page. Never, ever use the generic text 'Click Here' for links. This is why:

If there is a web page with the words 'Click Here' attached to a link, the search engines aren't quite sure what to do with it. They will count it as an inbound link to your site, but it won't mean much because it has no relevance. However, if the inbound link is on a page about pets, and the link has as anchor text 'Pet Food', the search engine will understand that this web site regards your page as a good source for information on Pet Food. Naturally it is necessary for the landing page from that inbound link to actually be about pet food (or whatever the anchor text refers to) to receive the maximum amount of credit for that link. Once the link and your page have been crawled and indexed, your page will move up higher in the SERPs for the search term 'Pet Food'. If you get enough inbound links with the anchor text 'Pet Food', and they have been there for some time (a year or two), and your page has quality and relevant content about pet food, you will be number one for that search term. Neat, huh?

What are the best sites to get linked from?
As mentioned earlier, you need inbound links from quality sites. A quality site has great content and ranks well in search engines for terms related (but not identical) to the subject matter of your site. Do not buy text links from any site. Google says they now know the difference between a bought link and a natural link. Although this is unlikely, in most cases it is best to play it safe as Google will penalize your site if they find you have bought links. Far better to approach quality sites and ask in a personal letter or phone call to exchange links. Emails don't often work when asking for reciprocal links but if you feel you can write a warm and personal email you can try it.

Avoid links from link farms, inbound links from guestbooks or comments sections on blogs and the like as search engines will usually ignore these as a measure of your site. These sorts of links are usually associated with spammers and will be of not much value to you.

The best way to get quality inbound links is to have unique and quality content on your site so that people will naturally link to you (see linkbait), even without you asking! This can take months or years but your patience will pay off when you receive many quality, long lasting inbound links (and you do have a long term view for your website, right?)

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