The importance of inbound anchor text

I had never noticed this before.

[rfgdxm1]

I just looked at the SERP for a critical single keyword that I am trying to do well on. On this SERP I am #6. The #3 listed page on this SERP has NO indexable content at all. This is a keyword which appears on 42,200 pages. This keyword appears only in the title and meta description of this page, and also the domain name. The cache states "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page:". It so happens that this keyword is part of the company name, and thus frequently appears in the anchor text of sites linking to it. This page has a PR of 5, the same as mine. That they are able to do so well with zero indexable content on a reasonably competitive search term shows how important incoming anchor text links can be.

[AthlonInside]

1. DOMAIN NAME is not important in ranking
2. digitalghost is placing money in your pockets. But it is up to you if you want to use the money.

[johnraphone]

Simple question..

I have links to me coming like "Widgets2003". Do you think it will bring me up for the search term "widgets"?

[AthlonInside]

johnraphone

Never :(

You should make it Widgets 2003.

[KakenBetaal]

I'm with you, digitalghost, you're singing to the choir here. I make it a policy to ask for specific anchor text when I make link requests, and I quite often get them.

Normally needs a bit of to-ing and fro-ing before the webmaster understands what I want, but most are willing to help. It's amazing how few of them understand the need for anchor text (or even what it is), and how many out there want to link me with graphics/banners.

[BikeMan]

I've observed a particular site rank in the top 10 for a search phrase for the last one year with absolutely no content. The word is a single word domain and forms a part of the search term.

It amazes me that the site continues to rank so highly update after update all thanks to outdated backward links.

[fathom]

I've optimized many sites that don't have keywords in the domain and I have never run into any problems getting them to rank well. I much prefer brandable domain names to hyphenated keyword domains.

Just this update had a new client that was unlikely to get indexed if enhancing the site first... therefore opted to link exchange increasing the chance of at least some direct influence to SERP's.

Ending up exchanging links with 14 (four of which got indexed).

The domain name was the same as the company - say widgetsRUS.com, the reciprocal link and short description went something like this...

WidgetsRUS.com is a provider of quality <a href="WidgetsRUS.com" title="widget rings">widget rings</a>.

Resulting affect -- Went from nowhere to Ranked #1 on the term.

Assuming website owners/webmasters will not provide precisely what you request as the link anchor & possibly a short description doesn't make it so.

When asked "why" this way (and most do) - I tell them precisely why, and offer the exact same thing... also mentioning the value of the tip has many residuals for their company.

They'd be fools not to.

[coconutz]

if by some miracle you can get other sites that link to you use whatever anchor text that you want them to. That doesn't describe the real world for most webmasters.

My domain name consists of the initials of our company name and the state that we're located in, for example www.abcdtexas.com

Almost every one of the unsolicited links pointing to this site uses the page title for the anchor text instead of the domain name. When I link to a site that I feel is of interest to my visitors I view the source code and get the title and description if it is available. If not I use the page title and write a description relevant to the content found on the site.

For any of the links that I've requested, I've never had a site not use the anchor text and description that I suggested.

We rank ahead of the sites with the keywords in the domain name for our relevant search terms. I realize that these terms may not be the most competitive, ranging from 100k to 3.6m results, so I removed the blinders and looked at the results for other sites besides my own. And I'm seeing what most others have also stated, keywords in the domain name don't help much.

Google gives more weight to off page factors as you have less control over them and it's supposed to be more difficult to manipulate.

[daamsie]

It's amazing how few of them understand the need for anchor text (or even what it is), and how many out there want to link me with graphics/banners.

I have always assumed (quite possibly incorrectly), that alt tags in graphics would have almost the same effect as anchor text. In this scenario, if you are getting links from people as graphics - it would LOOK much better to have a brandable domain and then simply get your keywords off the alt tags.. Particularly if you the code to the webmaster for linking, it would be a far better scenario than one of those ugly keyword-keyword domains..

In my personal preference, I actually am LESS likely to visit a site with a keyword-keyword.com domain, because I struggle giving them credibility as a business - I am certainly MUCH less likely to buy anything from their site! It's not worth it to me, even though I do see the benefits for SEO purposes. I think you are more likely to build a return visitor base with a catchy name any day!

I don't think I would have found my way back here as often if there was a slash in webmasterworld.com - that's why I keep forgetting how to get to graphic-forums.com, and end up going here instead :)

[Bernie]

most of the issues have been discussed before. one thing though: after the whole story of google bombing I strongly thought that it would be at least necessary to have the keyword ALSO somewhere in the visible text most preferibly between <hx> </hx>. well obviously this is not completely true. but same issue with guestbooks: they were supposed to be filtered as inbound-links. this update some poeple raised legitimate complaints about sites ranking well thanks to guestbook entries.

[nyehouse]

What about secondary domains. I cannot change my primary domain (at least not easily) and somewhat beleive that domain name is not a huge factor, but to be safe, I could start using a domain such as

keyword1.mysite.com

and start building that as my home page, or significant landing page. I could do this with all my target keywords and then as long as I have unique content on these pages, and inbound links, should do well.

Any experience with secondary domain names and whether they work well.

[Craig_F]

I've been wondering about this from the other side -- do the links that companies with names that have no keyword relevance at all (or have relevance for *something else*) hurt them?

I do think that a keyword relevant company name can help with rankings due to natural linking containing the company name, but does a name like Adobe's hurt their ranking because Google thinks they are more about housing than software?

I'd bet that these companies are hurt by the unrelated anchor text. A made up name might be ok since you are not related to something else, but when the name relates to something else it could have a negative effect across the board. What do you think?

[Fergus]

Want a rather extreme example of this, try searching for free shares in google. Look at the site that appears top - why on Earth should it be there?

[netguy]

Good example Fergus... not sure what they are doing with no 'free shares' even listed on their home page. 19,000 inbound links (from Google) might have something to do with it............

[Craig_F]

if you look at the web quotes for they were giving away 'free shares' of their site.

[adsoft13]

As for keyword in domain name, I think the reason to use them is simple.

Most of sites, which links to me without my "influence" just place the link <a href="domainname.com">domainname.com</a> ... they just don't use the anchor text. So to avoid this "problem" I use domainname = keyword, where possible ;)

[rogue]

I have a site, (less than 100 pages) which covers a broad range of topics which are all theme related but are all different subjects. Therefore individual pages get far better results than the home page. Most pages are in the top five with many #1 & #2, except for one page. I finally figured out it was the inbound anchor text. I went and got twenty-five inbound links using keyword phrase which is also the title, description, etc., etc. and boom; went from #35 to #3. The URL is not the same though, so near as I can tell its the anchor text

[toddb]

I had several 6 pages that I was using to place high on specifics keywords. 3 had the keywords in URL and 3 did not. The links were all "keywords". I kept them all very specifically focused for those words. The only reason the 3 URLs did not have the keyword is that I was not part of this site yet. Now these were 6 different keywords sets but the ones without it in the URL repeatedly got moved off the first page when any competition showed up where as the other 3 are doing well today. Reading this whole thread I might just be wrong in my conclusion but I thought this was proof positive that keyword in the URL was VERY important. The URL's were like www.gibberish.com/keywords/. So it was not a the domain name.

[Learning Curve]

fathom, regarding your post, do you have any feel for the effectiveness of 'title="widget rings"'?

Is it a "It can't hurt" addition or something you've measured?

Thanks.

[fathom]

title="" is just a "tool tip" that act much the same as alt="" does for images, by providing the message in "quotes" on rollover.

Is it measureable, well yes... when used in a link it add weight towards the linking page. Remembering that the anchor itself determines the topic on linking pages (relevancy) but weight of the link is also determined by surrounding information in close proximity to the anchor -- you can't get much closer than the tool tip.

Use is also recommended by W3C, and should be used on all elements not just links: tables, row & cells (with defined dimensions --height, width), objects, image maps, etc. So by using it in "on-page content" you are adding weight evenly throughout the page.

Effectively this allows you develop highly effective text copy without needing to keyword, keyword, keyword it all over the page - so you develop text for the user not for the spider.

Also key to note: attributes parameters inside an element need to be quoted - I've noticed that many pages just use <a href=something.html title=link anchor text>link anchor text</a>

Without quotes is not proper code and also means that only the first word in the title attribute is parsed.

[glengara]

A while back in another forum we tried to determine if there was a Googlebombing filter in place, or if the importance of link text had diminished.
While nothing was determined about a filter, the present importance of optimized link text became pretty obvious.
On the keyword domain question, I also suspect any boost is coming from the advantageous link text rather than the domain name per se.

[annej]

I've decided to give it a try. I changed my page title to 'Widgeting History' from 'America's Widgeting History' to see if that will help me move up in the serps on the key word 'widgeting'. Some people here have mentioned that the first word in the title is the most important and you want it to be your keyword. I hope that proves true.

Does anyone know if anchor text needs to have the exact same words in it or is it enough if just the search word is in both the title and the backlink anchor text? Pretty much everyone has linked me as 'America's Widgeting History'. So what I a saying is will I be hurting myself taking out 'America's'.

Anne

[AthlonInside]

Anne, IMHO, I don't think changing your title helps in SERP. And since you cut our some words, it might not be able to attract visitor attention to your title! I also don't agree with discussion on importants of the keyword as the 1st word.

[fathom]

I also don't agree with discussion on importants of the keyword as the 1st word.

What fact-finding mission, experimentation, and extentive research developed this hypothesis? Or are you just taking a guess at it hoping your're right?

The most important anything, word in meta title, word in page title, anchor text on page, title attribute and image image alt always drives "on-page" relevancy.

Research and observation proves this! :)

[AthlonInside]

Available of keyword in title, meta, alt ... do increase your ranking but placing of it in 1st place or 2nd place doesn't even play a role. As long as it is in the TITLE, and is not out of range in the results, they have the same weight. My personal experience. And my advice - don't mess up your title just because you want to make some word the 1st word until you have a funny title. It is not worth it.

[paynt]

Nyehouse – run a site search for canonicals, subdomains and sub-domains for discussions on your question about “…secondary domain names…”

[annej]

Luckily DMOZ has provided me with a good description so I think I'll just brave it and see what happens with the shortened title putting my key word first.

I'm still wondering if Google wants exact wording in the anchor titles.

Anne

[fathom]

annej - if competition is tight -- yes

If there is fair move between competing pages - not necessary is move up.

[nativenewyorker]

For an example of rfgdxm1's theory, check the search term for "home". The returned results are basically a who's who of the largest sites on the web with thousands of internal pages each linking with the anchor "home" pointing to the index page. The term "home" on each of the pages has almost no relevance to the content of the pages, but the anchor text supports the ranking of the index page.

Ted

[glengara]

Annej, came across an example where the link text keyword appeared only as part of a DMOZ description.

[Interent Yogi]

Key word link text is so important. Eg I was looking at a page finally one behind my site in the SERP and the page (index.htm )had almost no key words and was only a 12 page website with 3 incoming links it is a PR 6. My site my site is 150 Plus of soild content with 50 odd in coming links. (pr5)
I looked at their links and hello a link from DOMZ from a pr 7 page with the search phrase the link ... I am sure it was unintentional but it goes to show ..