Anchor text of incoming links

out of 100 incoming links, how many kw should you go for?

[teeceo]

"Anchor text (make sure you get the primary Keyword you need in link text)"

I keep seeing this in the google news treads and would like to know, if you have 100 incoming links and your site is selling shoe's, what would be the best way to get the the links(25 links shoe's/25 links running shoe's/10 link's basketball shoe's/10 links track shoe's/10 link's football sheo's/10 link's tennis sheo's/10 link's soccer shoe's) or would it be better to just get "sporting shoe's" as your anchor link in "ALL" the links to your page?

It seem to me that alot of folks here are pushing for "Keyword anchor text" but what would be the best % of "main keywork" "2 keyword" "3 keyword" and so on........

thanks all for any input.

teeceo.

[ciml]

This, I think, is one of our unanswered questions.

Does each use of a word bump you in Google, or do you get a boost only for the most common word linking to your page?

Personally I aim for one relevant phrase per page. That way, the incoming links can match the title.

[Beachboy]

I agree with Ciml. Generally speaking, optimize each page for a specific phrase, anchor text of inbound links to that page to more or less match that phrase.

[Marcia]

This gets even more interesting in deciding whether the overall theme of the site is shoes / sports shoes - or to complicate it further, narrowing it down to mens shoes, sports shoes and mens sports shoes.

Assuming most of the inbound links will be to the main page and that the sub-categories like soccer or running shoes will be prominent in the internal linking because of ease of navigation and might do fine if they're not too competitive, that could hypothetically, just to simplify it, leave us with how to do the links for the 100 inbounds for the three main keyword phrases that pertain to the index page.

Having all inbound links for just one could mean, other on-page factors considered, counting for just the one phrase, to the exclusion of the others. The issue would be whether it would be better to do that or divide them up among the three. What proportion does it take to count toward and rank for all three? Does adding links with any given anchor text benefit only up to a certain point and then taper off when it reaches a certain number?

Also entering into this is word order and proximity. Changing the sequencing of how the words are used in phrases also makes a difference. Like mens sports shoes vs. shoes for mens sports. This applies in 3 areas - link anchor text, body text, and page titles.

I've been fooling with this very thing for several months on two sites, and if everything else stays pretty much equal, you can cause a page to go up and down with the most minor of corresponding changes made in inbound link text and the use of phrasing variations in the on-page text and page title.

The $64K question: will it be possible to rank very well for all three, or will distributing the use of the words among the 3 rather than emphasizing just one cause enough dilution to have only mediocre rankings for the 3?

[ciml]

Marcia:
> Changing the sequencing of how the words are used in phrases also makes a difference.

I couldn't agree more. Where I have customers in competition with each other, I try to make the pages about different word combinations. eg. "hotel mycountry", "hotel in mycountry", "mycountry hotel", etc.

> $64K question

Currently, I think that you can do better if you pick three pages for three phrases. Then you can try to help Google understand that each is 100% about that phrase. In these days where SEO tends to be synonimous with spam, I like to think that there remains a place for optimisation.

[wingslevel]

in my case i have a clear 2 word phrase that i want as the anchor text, but my problem is that 50% of my inbound links have no text at all. e.g. the linking page might have a section called "sporting shoes" and my url would be amongst a few others underneath it. many webmasters are too busy to spend much time on an outbound links page.

[savvy1]

Wow, I'd love to be friends with the people who link to you guys where you can pick the exact anchor that you want, and change it at will... :) must be nice.. :) I usually feel lucky to get an anchor of http*//www.widgetco.com :)

[Beachboy]

Heck, just pitch the other webmaster on the idea of doing some SEO work for him if he lets you have some control over how he links to you. ;)

[gopi]

This is exactly where crapy " keyword-keyword " domains help :)

You can thus infuence the incoming links to have good rich creamy keywordy anchor text :)

[Marcia]

>>>" keyword-keyword " domains <<<

gopi, I do very low key pages and sites, but I got my first of those crappy keyword-keyword domains. It's been up and sitting there doing nothing because I'm so hesitant to ask for links. I wouldn't be if it were a "normal" domain name, and I'd already have some.

[ikbenhet1]

I let webmasters obey me and link to one of my crappy keyword sites as you guys name it(keyw-keyw-keyw.nl)by pointing out my site has lotta times more traffic than they do and then the webmaster usally goes like.....o, okay

ps. can't you just link to it from existing sites you have?

[julinho]

Is the wording in anchors that much important?

I´ve seen a few cases (far from being statically meaningful) like this: 1) someone builds a site to a good PR (e.g. 6); the cases I saw were non commercial sites with inbound links from Yahoo, dmoz and other good directories; anchors contained keywords related to the theme of this original site; 2) another (or the same) person takes over the site and changes it to a completely unrelated theme; he/she can´t change the anchors, but he changes the text of his pages - and he keeps the high PR; 3) by searching google using the original keyword themes, the site ranks poorly; searching using the new keywords, the site ranks very well (that´s how I came across them, BTW).
Conclusion: WHO links to you (the PR which is passed to you) seems to be much more important than HOW you are linked to; if anchor words were important, the site should rank well for the original keywords, even after the changes.

Again: I´ve seen only two or three cases like that (not many people let a high PR site slip away).

Also: I wonder how far Google would go to factor in those anchor texts in the algo. Any step to refine the algo puts extra load on the servers.
It seems reasonable (IMO) if Google just considers the anchor like part of the page being linked to (only that some adjustments would be required; for example, the keyword density of some terms would become much higher than in the original page alone); it wouldn´t cost much processing capacity, and would probably make some difference in the relevance of SERPs.
However, if the algo tries to do more than that (analyse frequency of words in anchors, comparison against theme of the site, etc), the load on servers would be much higher, and the increase in relevance would be relatively small.
Any comments?

[ikbenhet1]

say you want to be found with: proffesional webmaster company

which one is better?

<a href="yoursite">proffesional webmaster company</a> on 3 sites

or

<a href="yoursite">proffesional</a> ->on site 1
<a href="yoursite">webmaster</a> ->on site 2
<a href="yoursite">company</a> ->on site 3

i'm confused.
thanks.

[ikbenhet1]

Yes, i have a comment about 'overloading' their servers. Google is planning to update daily in the future.

So i'm pretty sure lot's an lot's of 'low cost servers' will be added to their network. Their basicly saying we have 'slow' and 'cheap' servers, but since we store the data in the dram, speed does not matter that much it's 'almost' the same speed as a superfast server loading from a harddisk each time request.

[nell]

I give inbound links 3 categories.
(1) Links without anchor text
(2) Links with general anchor text
(3) Links with specific keyword anchor text.

For links (1) and (2) I ask for them to be pointed to the home page. Type (3) to a specific related product page. The most valuable are the (3) links.

Without (3) links you will never get an internal page ranked even if all the (1) and (2) links point to that page. Only a (3) link with anchor text that matches the title and content of that internal page will get the internal page ranked. Instead, your home page will show up in the results.

There is a problem when only your home page is coming up in specific product searches. If you are selling sporting shoes, for example, people will be searching for Rebok, Nike, Adidas, etc. If they're taken to your home page they must relocate the product again from your site navigation. Navigation they're not familiar with. The result, more times than not, is a click off.

We work hard to get links from PR4 sites and greater. We don't even want links from sites with lower than a PR4. We try to get them to link to a specific product page using the appropriate anchor text. When we discuss link exchanges with other sites we explain the value of doing this and offer to reciprocate in a likewise manner.

Finally, and I feel quite strong about this, the link we give them back in exchange is not one from the same site they give us a link to. We give them a link back from another client site. We don't want to appear to be exchanging links with anyone. We want Google to believe that our site has all these great, high PR, inbound links because our site has good quality content. Not because of some reciprocal handshake or buddy-buddy agreement.

Equally, we found it doesn't matter a rat's what the referring site theme is when the anchor text is specific. There could be a site on truck tires with only a single sentence on the entire site saying "most Firestone tire people wear <a href="YOURSITE.com/Nike-shoes.htm">Nike shoes</a>" and, as long as the page that the link is on has a high PR, your internal page will be ranked. If Nike is a competitive search category perhaps you'll need 2 or even 3 of those type (3) links to your Nike page.
Only when the anchor text is not specific does the theme of the referring site become important.

.

[ikbenhet1]

Final question:

Does anybody have any experience in linking to one and the same page 2 or 3 times on diffrent places on a page with diffrent descriptions?

[paynt]

Hi ikbenhet1, and yes. I usually select 3-5 variations of a keyword phrase that suits the page in question and then rotate the use of those keywords in my anchor text.

I agree with the comments about needing this especially when I want internal pages to turn up in the results.

It’s important to note that these are variations of the same phrase so I would not use

Men’s shoes
And
Sport shoes

I would use something like

Men’s shoes
Shoes for men
Mens shoes

Then for the men’s sports shoes page itself I would use perhaps

Men’s sports shoes
Sport shoes for men
Sport shoes men

I have found this works extremely well whether this is within my own internal linking or linking coming in from the outside. I like keyword domains for this reason especially for the value of the keyword then in the title of a Yahoo or ODP link, which use the business or domain name for their listings.