Forum Moderators: open
I am pretty new to this SEO science - but from reading these forums I have learned that inbound links are good for ranking well - and even better if those inbound links contain your keywords in the link html.
So this is my question ....
All of my internal pages contain a link to my home page, described simply as 'Home'
Now lets assume my home page was optimised for the keywords 'blue widgets' - would it be better for all of my home page links on my internal pages to read 'Back to blue widgets home page', getting my 2 keywords in the link?
Would this help to boost the ranking of my home page?
If there was a benefit to doing this, I assume the effect wouldn't be as great as making sure all your inbound links on external sites contained your keywords - but if there is only a small boost, it is worth doing.
Steve
In theory, I think it should boost relevance.
Google does not treat internal pages any different than external pages. Rather it depends on the theme of the linking page (your internal pages are probably better in this regard) and its PageRank.
Google considers each hit to be one of several different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font, ...), each of which has its own type-weight. The type-weights make up a vector indexed by type. Google counts the number of hits of each type in the hit list. Then every count is converted into a count-weight. Count-weights increase linearly with counts at first but quickly taper off so that more than a certain count will not help.
It's no doubt good to do that within a site, particularly if keywords in the link text aren't likely to be used in links from external sources. We don't know if it has different weight internally or externally, but it seems there are limits to the usefulness of any one thing.
The reason, imho, that passage is almost worth meditating on, is that with warnings we've been given about "over-optimization" we don't know at what point "will not help" could evolve into a negative with anything that's liable to be overdone.
There's a definite boost with link text used that way, but it's probably best to stay balanced and not over-emphasize one thing to the neglect of others.
In this case, the "home" link text is all-or-nothing, in that you either have a key word in every home link or you don't (I guess you could change the link text on different pages but that would be unusual and not very user friendly). So I'm *guessing* that this approach isn't over the top.
One thing I've also been doing recently is contacting sites that link to me and politely asking if they'll make sure my main keyword goes in the link text. Most have been very co-operative, and this should make a slight difference.
I think it is best to be cautious here - can't afford to risk upsetting the mighty google - I will keep my standard 'Home' link, but I will find a way of placing a couple of keyword rich links to the home page on 1-2 pages - not in place of the standard link, but as an extra link down at the bottom of the page.
Just as an additional thought though - many sites will have a home page link in the top navigation bar - and also have a link at the bottom of the page - is there any risk that putting too many links to the home page (just standard, NOT keyword rich) could be considered spamming?
>>more than a certain count will not help.
That kind of keeps things natural instead of artificially overdone. And sure takes some of the stress away. I just did get a nice boost from link text in incoming links. It was supposed to be one page, they ran it across the whole site instead. In this case I think if there were any more done it would be out of balance and overdone, I'm not even comfortable with that much.
Just my personal opinion, but I think paying attention to all the details and staying balanced with moderation is the safest way to go long term.
I think this may be a coincidence, Jay. Yahoo don't spider sites.
Yes, Yahoo doesn't SPIDER sites, but Google does and they pass on some of this information. I don't care what anyone else says, I have seen undeniable proof of this on the Yahoo "web sites" results pages and have used it to my benefit. After months of careful analysis and the tweaking of nearly a dozen web sites I am in connection with, I am absolutely positive (and those who know where my sites stand in Yahoo will take my word for it).
In my case with using a keyword to link back to my index page from all of the others, it probably just threw off my keyword density (or whatever formula Yahoo is using with their Google info) and as a result my site sank in the rankings. On the other hand, I was mistaken when I said it had no effect in Google, as I now remember that my site did in fact move up one spot...
