Anchor Text?

optimising anchor text to another website

[AhmedF]

I have a question regarding anchor text.

Our domain name is 'blueWidgetOnline.com', and we are aiming for 'blue widget' in search engines. When having other sites link to us, would it 'hurt' us to have the link titled 'blue widget online' instead of just 'blue widget'?

I have 7 independant Pr6 websites linking to this site, and I have complete control over their anchor text, and definately want to come out near the top for 'blue widget' :-)

[Beachboy]

In short, no it won't hurt to have those three words in your anchor text. Of course, you could have all three words in the link sentence and link only the two keywords, too. I've never seen anything authoritative about dilution of the keywords in anchor text but I suspect there is such a phenomenon.

[rfgdxm1]

If keyword dilution in anchor text is a factor at Google, I suspect it would only kick in when the number of words in the anchor text exceeded some number that it was felt greater than that had a good probability of being done for spammy reasons. 3 word anchor text links are so common that it clearly would be below this threshold.

[stevenha]

rfgdxm1, I'm not sure about that. I've seen numerous examples of sites that rank well, for single keywords and two word keywords, often because they put those short keyword phrases in their lefthand margins, for navigation from every page in their site.

In my own case, I used to use lots of variable wordy anchor texts, and when I shortened them to a 3-keyword phrase, my ranks improved for that. I then did the same for some 2-keyword phrases, and saw improvement again, and now I've started the process on an important single keyword, and I saw an improvement last month.

So, I'm starting to think that keyword dilution in anchor text, is something to be careful of.

[Beachboy]

Ah. Good to know! Thanks for the test info.

[AhmedF]

How about this then:

<a href="http://www.domain.com">Blue Widget</a><a href="http://www.domain.com"> Online</a>

Would that work?

[Dante_Maure]

How about this then:

<a href="http://www.domain.com">Blue Widget</a><a href="http://www.domain.com"> Online</a>

Would that work?

This would dilute domain.com's relevancy for the key phrase "Blue Widget".

Unless you're in a very competitive niche linking all three words won't pose a problem provided you get enough inbounds.

If you absolutely have to get get maximum benefit from the anchor text, and you're willing to sacrifice the benefits that come with "natural" linking, Beachboy's suggestion above is a good solution:

<a href="http://www.domain.com">Blue Widget</a> Online.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I'd go for "blue widget" or the above one by Dante_Maure

Don't be greedy now ;)