Anchor text is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization but it is also one of the least talked about.

This one element of SEO is important to understand because it can help your page get ranked for a target keyword and also help you evaluate your competition more precisely.

The latter is critical and, in fact, if you don't take anchor text backlinks into proper consideration when looking at the competition for a keyword you could be missing out on some hidden gems that are easy to rank for.


What Is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the hyperlinked text you see on a webpage. It is the visible words that you can click to take you to another page. Anchor text html code looks like this:

<xmp><a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Your Anchor Text</a></xmp>

On most websites, you typically see this as blue text that is underlined and when you click on it with your mouse, you are taken to the corresponding url.

How Bloggers Use Anchor Text

Bloggers and website owners use anchor text naturally to point to other pages on their website as well as pages on other sites that they find relevant to what they are blogging about. You've probably even done this yourself when writing a post where you referenced another post on your site, an affiliate product or even a post on another site.

Usually a blogger will use a phrase that indicates what the page is about in the anchor text, as opposed to a url, so that the sentence reads correctly.

The anchor text in these links helps both the visitor and the search engine spiders figure out what the 'linked to' page is about.

How Search Engines Use Anchor Text

Search engines use anchor text to help them figure out what the hyperlinked page is about. So, as you can see, getting anchor text backlinks with relevant phrases in the anchor text is pretty important if you want the search engines to rank you for a particular keyword phrase.


In fact, anchor text is such an important factor in ranking a page that pages can rank for a keyword phrase even when that phrase does not appear in the url on the page!

There are several cases where this has happened, but perhaps the most famous is where the Adobe Reader download page ranked number 1 for the search term 'click here' for many years even though those words were nowhere on the page. So many people had linked to that page using the anchor text 'click here' that it got to the number 1 spot without any on page SEO for the term.

Search engines place a large importance on external anchor text (links coming in from other sites) and some importance on internal anchor text (links from within your own site) when ranking a page so it stands to reason that you should make getting anchor text backlinks with your target keyword phrases a priority.

One important thing to note is that it is widely thought that if two links on the same page target the same url, that only the first link is counted by Google so you want to be sure that you use your desired anchor text in that first link.

How Anchor Text is Important When Judging Competition for a Keyword

If you think about how important anchor text is to the search engines when determining ranking for a keyword, then it's easy to see why it is a critical component of analyzing the competition for a particular keyword phrase.

Google even provides you with a search operator to do this - the allinanchor operator. You can use it by typing the following into the Google search bar:

Allinanchor:"your keyword phrase"

This will return the pages which have anchor text pointing to it that contain the quoted keyword phrase.

I hope you can see how powerful this is - first of all, Google must think it is an important element of a page because it provides the allinanchor operator. Just the existence of the operator would seem to indicate that it uses the anchor text when deciding what a page is about and ranking it.

Secondly, using this operator will show you which pages are optimizing for your chosen keyword phrase!

It makes sense that only the pages that have anchor text backlinks with your phrase are the ones optimizing for it so you can forget about searching for your phrase in quotes or any of that nonsense.

Not only that but, you can take a look at the actual backlinks for each of your competitors and see how many of them have that anchor text and what the strength of those links are to make a more educated guess as to how difficult they will be to beat out for that top spot.

Anchor Text "Best Practices" For Your Website

Now that you know how important anchor text is to your rankings, I'm sure you will want to pay more attention to it in your SEO efforts but you don't want to go hog wild and create tons of anchor text backlinks all with the same keyword phrase or you might find that your efforts don't yield the results you want.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Vary Your Anchor Text - We all know that Google prefers it when people link to you naturally and when that is the case, they don't all use the same anchor text. So, when you are linking to your site from your articles or web2.0 properties you want to make sure you don't always use the same phrase as well. Using your target phrase in about 50% - 60% of the links is probably a good idea.


About The Author
Anchor text backlinks play a key role in SEO. Get a free copy of Lee's "Website Promotion Blueprint Guide" to get more website traffic: http://hypertracker.com/go/leedobbins/PhantomWriters/.

Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

Blogging Trackbacks, Pingbacks & SEO

There seems to be a lot of confusion amongst newbie bloggers over the definition and use of trackbacks, pingbacks and how they can be used for SEO. If you have done any blogging before and have comments enabled, you probably realized very quickly that the amount of spam that comes from the comments of your post can be quite overwhelming.

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like and because there is no verification process available to ensure that the person is in fact who they claim to be.

Trackbacks and Pingbacks were implemented in an effort to provide some level of verification to blog commenting. Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).

Trackbacks

A Trackback shows an excerpt from an originating blog post and is editable by the trackback recipient. Trackbacks are an automated process of notifying a blog when you make a post that references it. By sending a trackback, you create a link back to your blog from the blog you are referencing. The trackback was designed to provide a method of notification between websites and a method of sharing comments on a person’s blog but having them show on your own blog as an excerpt for your readers to view.

Person A’s blog receives the trackback and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s original post. The excerpt then acts as a teaser and encourages the reader of person A’s blog to go to the originating source of the post to read more.

Person B’s trackback to Person A’s blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of “authenticity” isn’t really solved. Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B’s site that sent the trackback.

When you want to use the trackback feature, you will need to use a special link provided on the blog you want to reference. Most trackback links appear just after the blog post content and before the comments and will sometimes appear as a plain text link.

Pingbacks

Pingbacks were introduced as a method to alleviate some of the issues that people found with trackbacks lacking authenticity. Pingbacks allow you to notify a blog of your entry just by posting its permalink directly in the content of your blog entry.

This leaves all editorial control over the posts exclusively with the author. This automatic verification process grants a level of authenticity which ultimately makes it more difficult to fake a pingback. No special Trackback link is necessary and the Pingbacks do not send any content. In order for Pingbacks to work, you must enable them within WordPress.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because the readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say before deciding if they want to read more and follow the link to the orginal blog source. Others feel that pingbacks are superior as they create a verifiable connection between posts. Pingbacks are akin to having remote comments.

SEO

Many blogging platforms treat the links from trackbacks, pingbacks and comment as "nofollow" so that you do not lose any link-juice or other SEO "value" in using them. Other than the rare “diamond in the rough” link you might acquire from using these features, there is not much SEO value to Trackbacks or Pingbacks. However, it is possible that you may get some value from these tactics after linking to an authoritative site such as the Google Blog which may bring in a lot of traffic to your site.

It is good to link to others in your posts, but it does not mean you have to allow pingbacks or trackbacks. If you do decide to use these features, you should beware of sending both a trackback and a pingback. This creates two separate links on the blog you are referencing and could be considered spam. Of course you should only trackback or pingback if you actually reference the site you are sending the trackback to.

For further information, please refer to the online documentation from WordPress in their Introduction to Blogging.

SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 12:26 pm

Google has worked the most-requested features from its older interface into its new one, including creating scheduled reports and viewing channels on the Home tab. Now, it’s getting ready to sunset the old interface, as of mid-November.

So, Google is urging AdSense publishers to take the time now to familiarize themselves with the new interface, though they’ll still be able to toggle back and forth for the next few weeks.

Image provided by Google

The new AdSense view includes multi-dimension reporting, reporting by country and platform, and the addition of search functionality in the Ad Review center. Users can also edit and schedule reports.

Google originally released the new AdSense interface in November of last year, after beta-testing it for a year. Since then, it has been tweaking features in response to user feedback.

You Can Also Read This Below:

• Google Releasing Beta AdSense Interface To All Publishers
• Google Tweaks New AdSense Interface
• Google AdSense Updates Ad Layouts

The search industry is getting a little more mainstream recognition every day, as tonight’s episode of The Colbert Report picked on Google’s handling of the Spreading Santorum situation.

This time the target was software engineer Matt Cutts, long known to search industry insiders as head of Google’s Web Spam and search quality team, he doesn’t often get the same national media spotlight as Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin or Larry Page.

But as the man responsible for weeding out poor quality content from Google results, Cutts made the late night news desk.

First notified of his Comedy Central debut on Twitter by@LornaHarris (Danny Sullivan’s better half, btw), Cuttsapparently didn’t have any prior indication that Colbert’s team of writers would go so far into investigating the history of Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem”.

In his usual brand of snarky political commentary in “the Word” segment, Stephen Colbert mentioned Matt Cutts (at in the video below) as he cut into Google over this week’s anti-trust Senate hearings and raised potential free speech issues around changing search results.

Cutts is mentioned at 2:45 in the clip below:

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word – I Think, Therefore I Brand
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Colbert cited a blog comment made by Cutts back in December 2010, on John Battelle’s blog:

The quote reads:

“our web search results are protected speech in the First Amendment sense”

Of course, Colbert mocked the statement with a jab about how the founding fathers surely thought ahead to protect Web documents as free speech:

We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hacked Scarlett Johansson nude pics.

Congratulations Mr. Cutts, you’ve made the big time now! (Maybe next time you’re in New York, you’ll have an easier time getting those tickets you wanted to the Colbert show.)

Happy Birthday Google! Today, Google turned 13 years old, the day a boy becomes a man, at least in Judaism. To celebrate the important birthday, Google has a special logo with a cake, birthday hats, and looking like an old fashion child’s birthday party setting.

Historically, there was some confusion as to when Google was born. Was it September 14th of the 27th? For years now, Google has settled on it being the 27th. Here is a look back at some of Google’s birthday logos:

Google’s 12th birthday logo:

Google’s 11th birthday logo:

Google’s 10th birthday logo:

Google’s 9th birthday logo:

Google’s 8th birthday logo:

Google’s 7th Birthday logo:

Google’s 6th Birthday logo:

Google’s 5th Birthday logo:

Google’s 4th Birthday logo:

Google Updates - Google’s New Video Search Ads

Among the latest developments that are occurring at Google, a new ‘Media Ads’ format for video ads on Google.com is also being planned. Google is soon to launch new video search ads in a hope to increase the user experience of its search engine. Through this new feature, the ads on Google search will be shown as small thumbnails with a play button. Upon clicking the thumbnail, the video ad will expand into a larger player to cover the entire Google search page.

Video is cool!

While this may not be something entirely new, for it is just an extension to Google’s existing ad products, however, this is certainly something different when it comes to media searching on Google. This new extension will certainly help Google to approach media companies promoting new movies, TV shows, ads, and other media content on the internet and earn huge revenues from them.

An Amazing Feature

With this, users can see a search ad below the search box whenever they type in a related keyword. When this ad is clicked, a player window pops up and shows the clip instead of taking the users to a new site. As a common practice on Google, AdWords ads will be attached to the video player.

As per Google, advertisers won’t need to select keywords to promote an ad, instead whenever a search term is entered Google will automatically detect what is related to the advertisements. The media ads will be displayed below the search box and on top of the search results. The clicks on Media ads will be charged at a flat rate.

One of the most interesting parts of the new Media Ad format is the sleek Lightbox media player.

Whenever an ad is clicked on, the player will expand into a wide screen and dim the remaining aspects of the page. This has been done to make the entire viewing experience of the users more appealing, wherein users’ attention can be directed towards the video.

In its initial phase, the new video search ads feature on Google will show results for the movies. As research indicates that movie title searching is usually meant for viewing movie trailers, therefore, this feature is primarily targeted for the movies. However, Google has plans to add other video-centric segments over time too.

Goggle unveiled the new video search ads feature at the Search Engine Strategies Conference last month. According to Google, 10% of all its current ads feature the new ads format.

SEO | SEM | SMO | SMM | Techniques in India - Dot Technologies

SEO- Search engine optimization utilizes numerous practices to increase traffic to a particular website or page.  However, the best approaches to this are holistic in that they not only increase website traffic; they also increase the quality of that traffic.  Quality website traffic is traffic that converts- meaning customers that actually make a purchase, engage a service, sign up for a newsletter, provide their email address, or otherwise become a lead or an actual sale.

SEO seeks to gain this increase in quantity and quality of website traffic by strategically creating and placing keyword optimized content in locations that will generate publicity through organic search results.  Organic search results consist of the information returned after a consumer has entered a search term in a search engine such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google.  These results are driven by the SEO web content that you post on the internet.  Search engine "bots" or "spiders" will index the information on your pages and use that to determine where you will show up when a customer searches for terms related to your business.

SEM- Search engine marketing is online marketing for businesses and individuals.  The principal goal of this type of internet marketing is to improve a website's visibility on the search results pages of various search engines.  This is accomplished using a combination of SEO strategies and paid advertising.  SEM efforts can be found on the first page of listings returned after a search.  The results bars across the top and sides of a search engine result page are usually paid advertising or paid inclusion in the listing.  Utilizing SEO in addition to paid advertising allows a business to dominate both the organic and paid results sections of a search engine results page or SERP.

SMO- Social media optimization is a relative newcomer to internet marketing, rising in use in direct correlation to this rise in popularity of social media sites.  SMO consists of creating and managing profiles on social media sites and networks in order to create awareness of a brand or service.  This is done by attracting others to associate with the profile by creating updates, using social bookmarking, and video and picture sharing.

SMM- Social media marketing is similar to SMO, but goes deeper in the level of social interactions by blogging, taking part in online forums or chat rooms, and through paid social advertising and search.  Essentially, SMM takes SMO viral.

It's obvious that SEO and SEM are a related pair, and SMO and SMM are another related pair.  However, utilizing all four of these practices individually actually serves to better your internet marketing strategies overall.  For instance, when an SMM business blog creates links, it helps with an SEO campaign.  Additionally, posting articles as part of an SEO campaign can boost SMO results if social bookmarking is used.  But while all of these marketing techniques might be unique, there is one central difference between the two that can best summarize the goal of all of these acronyms:

SEO and SEM work to attract the attention of the search engines.

SMO and SMM work to attract the attention of people.

When looked at in this manner, it's easy to see that these are two very distinct approaches that must be managed jointly in order to achieve the most success possible with an internet marketing plan that includes SEO, SEM, SMO and SMM.