Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [183]
As search engines continually refine the algorithm for relevance, the emphasis is on determining the quality of links and eliminating low-quality or “spammy” links. The on-page ranking factors rarely change in the algorithm, but the off-page link factors are the ones that are actively refined in algorithm updates.
Links Get You Found
Links perform a number of functions in assisting you in the marketing of your website. For starters, a link is the primary method that search engines use to find new websites. In the past, webmasters would submit a website to the search engine. Now, however, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines instructs site owners to gain incoming links to their websites rather than submit the domain to the search engines, because the natural activity of spidering the Internet will result in the search engines finding your website.
Even though this is found in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, the principle is the same with every search engine. To find new content online, all search engines utilize a form of information retrieval—finding new and updated pages, downloading them, and evaluating them for relevance to show to searchers.
Links Provide Relevance
In gauging relevance, search engines rely upon the link text, also called anchor text, in order to find context. The term anchor text refers to the words used in the link, rather than simply linking with a URL. By using words in the URL, the person creating the link provides a contextual anchor to the reader.
Find Your Link Text
You can find the link text used by other websites that link to you with link management programs that will search online for website links to your domain. These programs will also capture the anchor text of any links that are pointing to your website.
Link Diagnosis is a Firefox plug-in and is free: www.linkdiagnosis.com.
Advanced Link Manager is a tool I use in my agency: www.advancedlinkmanager.com.
LinkDex is a newer program that is very user friendly and quickly becoming a favorite: www.linkdex.com.
Majestic SEO allows searches on any domain but also offers a subscription access for additional reporting: www.majesticseo.com.
Find Your Link Text (Continued)
SEOMoz offers two tools for measuring and evaluating links; Open Site Explorer (free) and Linkscape (subscription-based for more advanced Users): www.opensiteexplorer.org, www.seomoz.org/linkscape.
Raven SEO a subscription-based link building management tool: raven-seo-tools.com/features/link-manager/.
Simply by reading a website’s link text, you may be able to figure out the subject matter of the linked-to website without even seeing the website. In Figure 16-1, the report shows many different descriptions used in the linking anchor text to Netflix.com. Just by viewing the anchor text, you can see keyword phrases (rent from Netflix, rent this movie, rent the DVD) in the links that indicate the brand and the business of the website.
Figure 16-1: A few of the anchor text links to Netflix.com
You can designate the anchor text in the code (see Figure 16-2). Otherwise, the link will simply be shown as the URL to that web page. Linking with words provides context, which is valuable to visitors and search engines, because they both need to know why you are linking to that page.
When you link from your site to another site and you use keywords in the anchor text, you are designating the context for that page by the words you use in the link. This provides a clear context for your visitors, who will then know why the link is there. The anchor text lets the visitor know what information they will find on the linked page and how it can help them.
This also helps the search engines determine relevance, because link text plays a large role in rankings. The more keyword-based text links that direct to a website, the more relevant that site