Organic Link Building Revealed

Issue #2: Link Anchors And Descriptions — Things You Must Know About Them To Get On The Right Side Of Google

Hi, how are you today? Today's the day we're gonna discuss how to make those links you are developing look totally organic and natural to the search engines. Since this is mighty important, let's cut right to the chase.

In Today's Issue:

***Link Anchor Texts — What It's All About***
***Always Do It The Natural Way***
***Link Descriptions — Always Provide Natural Context For Your Links***

Link Anchor Texts — What It's All About

First things first. Link anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink that you click to visit another Website or page. In HTML terms, link anchor text is the text placed between the anchor tags (<a> and </a>), hence the name. Here goes an HTML code snippet of an anchor text:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Anchor Text</a>

And on your page this code will look like this:

Anchor Text

Since the Google "Florida" update (rolled out November 2003) link anchor texts have become hugely important from the SEO perspective. Here's why.

The Hilltop Algorithm (patented Google's algo effective since the "Florida" update) states that Google will associate your Website with the anchor text of incoming links. What this means is that if you use "blue widget accessories" in the anchor text of your incomings links, Google will assign a higher relevancy score to your site for "blue widgets" as well as "blue widget accessories", and rank it accordingly in its search results.

Currently, this is one of the fundamental aspects behind the way Google works and ranks its search results.

Always Do It The Natural Way

Now, one of the commonest mistakes Webmasters make is take their keyword phrases, stuff them into link anchors and then email people with link exchange offers asking everyone to use the exact same anchor text by all means.

This is not the way to go. Allow me to repeat that: This is NOT the way to go! This is the way Google seriously frowns upon. Why? You guessed it — it doesn't look natural, it doesn't feel natural, so it's not natural, and you are asking for trouble if you do that because Google will think you are trying to manipulate its search results.

Think about it. If people linked naturally to your site, would they use all the same anchor texts? 'Course not! The anchor texts would be all different.

So the answer to the "How do I make my anchor texts natural?" question is "Vary them!" Yes, vary them, and you'll be well on your way to making Google love the links pointing to your site and rank your site higher for the keywords you target.

For example, you could use a slightly different anchor text every once in a while to achieve that. So instead of putting "blue widgets" into each and every anchor text, try to get your incoming links look like this:

Blue widgets company
Comprehensive info on blue widgets
Blue widgets discounts available!
How to choose blue widgets wisely
Cost-effective blue widget services

...and so on, you get the idea.

Link Descriptions — Always Provide Natural Context For Your Links

If you want to benefit from your incoming links, you want to make sure your links appear on a page that has other (relevant) text. If a page consists of links and nothing but links, chances are it will look like a link farm to the search engines, which, of course, is a bad thing.

So make sure your link appears in the right context — surrounded by relevant text that includes your keywords. When you email other Webmasters asking to place a link to your site, give them a link description to use.

And yes, you guessed what I'm about to say: The right way of doing things is to avoid recognizable patterns and vary your link descriptions every so often so it looks perfectly organic to Google. Again, instead of using a description stuffed with your keywords such as "Blue widget company selling blue widgets!", make it look natural by varying the description and making it sound natural:

"XYZ company is a recognized leader in the widget technology. The company's primary specialization is blue widgets. Follow the link above to find out more."

"XYZ offers value-added blue widgets to hundreds of happy customers from around the world. Find out more about our widgets by using the link above."

Put some effort into writing at least several proper link descriptions, and not only will you provide more value to the human visitors, you will also make search engines rank your site higher in their SERPs, because your linking strategy will look more natural.

At the risk of sounding boring, let me emphasize this one more time. Don't think varied link anchor texts and descriptions are not that important and don't underestimate the power of Google. Use the same anchor text for a thousand of links and the new Google will simply devalue or even disregards your incoming links at all. You have been warned.

So when emailing your potential link exchange partners asking them to put a link to your site, come prepared. Create several link anchor texts and descriptions (the more the better, actually), and use different ones every once in a while. If this seems like a tall order for you, here's some good news to cheer you up.

LinkAssistant will let you automatically vary your link anchor texts and descriptions, making the task of developing natural backlinks a whole lot easier.


That's it for today. I hope you found this issue useful. If you have any questions, you can contact me directly at .

And if you missed the previous issue of Organic Link Building Revealed, you can grab it here. And, stay tuned for the upcoming issue entitled "Grow Your Links At The Right Pace And Google Will Naturally Fall In Love With Your Site".

Best of luck optimizing your sites,
Dan Richmond
SEO Consultant
Link-Assistant.Com