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anchor text optimisation
Anchor Text Optimisation
'Anchor text' is the text used in the clickable part of a web hyperlink. The anchor text used when adding a link to another web site on the World Wide Web plays a significant part in the search engine ranking of the recipient page. Optimising links is known as anchor text optimisation and must be done with great care.
Anchor text plays an important role in improving search engine ranking in many of the other leading search engines including Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The number of inbound links a particular site acquires from other websites is an indication of its popularity. The more links a site acquires the greater its "link popularity" and the higher its search engine ranking potential, particularly where those links are from trusted websites.
Example
Website A acquires a number of links from other web sites with "Maidenhead estate agent" in the clickable part of each link (the anchor text). This will help improve the Google ranking of the Website A for that term - assuming that the link is of sufficient quality.
The overall Google ranking Website A achieves is influenced by the quality and quantity of the inbound links it receives from the other sites on the Worldwide Web. If Website A acquires many links from trusted, established and well ranked websites consistent with its theme and these links are not reciprocated by Website A, then a higher ranking will be achieved than if the links were reciprocated, reducing their value in Google.
Backlinks
The term "backlink" refers to any link a website acquires from another web domain.
Google has recently become very analytical in its examination of backlinks and is very good at spotting link irregularities and unnatural trends in backlink anchor text usage. For example if a website has a large percentage of its backlinks showing the same anchor text, this may indicate poor SEO and an attempt to raise search engine ranking for a particular term. Anchor text over-optimisation is proving very risky, with Google's latest alrorithm.
Where many of the backlinks showing an unnatural trend are found to be reciprocal links, Google is much more likely to impose a "backlink over optimisation penalty" on the offending site for attempted manipulation of the search engine results. In theory, non-reciprocated links (referred to as one way links) should not trigger a Google backlink over optimisation penalty. There's a good reason for this - if building many backlinks with the same anchor text automatically triggered a Google penalty then businesses could adversely affect the ranking of their competitors just by adding hundreds or thousands of backlinks all with the same anchor text phrase. Whilst the jury is still out as to whether such practice applied in extreme fashion would cause a Google penalty, there would probably be insufficient evidence that the domain owner was responsible for the backlink irregularities for Google to apply a backlink over optimisation penalty.
The situation is somewhat different if many of these "same anchor text links" were found by Google to be reciprocal links. This then implies that the website owner is involved in dodgy SEO practice rather than a third party. Similarly, if Google notices that the originating domains are registered and owned by the same company as the site on the receiving end of the links, then that too might be grounds to confirm SEO malpractice. Where proof of webmaster (rather than third party) SEO malpractice is identified, statistical backlink irregularities are very likely to lead to a Google penalty for backlink over optimisation. When backlinks are naturally acquired, the anchor text used will show a diverse trend - many different phrases and formats will be used. This makes it easier for Google to spot poor SEO practice.
Over the few years, Google has hired several prominent statisticians and mathematicians into its team in the USA. It is highly likely that Google has utilised these resources to create normalised trends and graphs for link acquisition based on the natural variance of backlink anchor text for non SEO'd sites. Sites which significantly deviate from the statistical norm and particularly those which show high levels of reciprocal links and few quality one way links will suffer lower trust and a possible Google penalty.
For more expert SEO advice on backlinks and anchor text usage, contact KSL Consulting for help.
