Anchor text query

link exchange anchor text organic listings

[travelboy]

First off i would lie to say hello as this is my first post on the forum and I am relatively new to this line of work.

I work for a travel/city guide site and recently one of our competitors has overtaken us on google organic listings for the term "(cityx) hotels". I am aware that backlink anchor text plays an important part in the organic listings but I am not sure how it is calculated. Is it the number of links containing this anchor text or the value of the sites they are coming from that is more important for organic listings?

For example is I were to place lots of links with "(cityx) hotels" as the anchor text on as many subject related places I could (regardless of PR) would this be beneficial? I'm not chasing PR here just wanting to give my site a boost for this search term.

I hope I have explained this well, any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[glengara]

"I am not sure how it is calculated."

Always been a bit of a mystery, for example AFAIK it's never been shown whether the PR of the page a link is on "weights" the anchor text, so in theory the anchor text from a PR2 page is as valuable as a PR6 one.

And welcome to the forum :-)

[travelboy]

Hi Glengara

Thanks for the reply. Am I right to believe that anchor text is relevant to search results, ie, if I have many backlinks to my site with the anchor text "(cityx) hotels" will this improve the placing of my site on oragnic searches for this term?

And if PR does't matter on anchor text links does this mean it will be beneficial to my site if I were to go visiting relevant forums, blogs and wikis and leaving backlinks with theanchor text I need for the search terms?

I wish I could write my questions more precisely :)

[buckworks]

leaving backlinks with theanchor text I need

That would have very little benefit, because Google tries to give less weight to links that you've placed yourself.

It's also a good way to get your site branded as a spammer if you're not careful.

[worlddom]

Quality rather than quantity is the key regarding backlinks and a quantity of quality is what you're ultimately aiming for. You really want backlinks to be coming from sites within the same or a complementary industry and authority sites, highly regarded by the search engines are the cream of the crop.

Forum posting is definitely an option, not only from a SERPs perspective but also as a traffic source. However, forum spamming is not an option, you need to be providing a useful resource to the community.

[glengara]

IMO anchor text is probably the no.1 ranking "ingredient", which is why, as BW suggests, it needs to be handled carefully.

The travel/city guide sector is notorious for all kinds of shenanigans and I'm sort of surprised a "novice" got the gig, you be careful out there :-)

[martinibuster]

...does this mean it will be beneficial to my site if I were to go visiting relevant forums, blogs and wikis...

Don't do it. It can become a reputation management nightmare. That's a method for pills, pron, and casinos. Not for a reputable company.