These days, blogs can be compared to human communities as connections and communications have become the order of the day. A successful blog or blogger needs to connect well with readers, fellow bloggers, and other blogs. The same goes for authors, who need to build communities around themselves and their work.
You can accomplish these things in many different ways, like blog commenting and social media sharing. It’s also possible to create a connected community by focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) startegies, like using anchor text.
Linking to other Blogs and Websites using your Own Blog Posts
One of the best ways to connect with bloggers, readers, and websites is to use your blog posts. How? You can do this with linking, backlinking or hyperlinking.
A backlink is an incoming link created when one site is linked to another iwth a hyperlink. This interlink, in SEO terms, is called the backlink, as it points back to the desired webpage.
So why is there a mad rush to create backlinks? Backlinks help you gain better authority and visibility online by increasing your search engine rankings. In the world of SEO, search engine ranking is everything, regardless of whether you are a blogger or an SEO analyst.
What are SERPs or Anchor Text?
Not sure what search engine ranking is? Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. After ignoring the ads at the top of the first results page, you probably focused most of your attention on the entries on that first page. I bet you didn’t even look at the second page of search results, and if you did, you didn’t go on to page three. Most people only look at to the first page of search engine results.
The goal is to land your site on that first Search Engine Results Page (SERP). When you do that, you attract members to your community—your blog.
To achieve the desired SERP, it is essential to learn the art of using appropriate anchor text. If you don’t know that term either, let me explain. Anchor text is the clickable text or word/words in a hyperlink. In other words, when you click on the anchor text, it takes you to the page that it’s linked to.
Anchor Text Best Practices
On that note, here are the best ways to use your anchor text for better results.
1. The Relevancy Factor
Yes, links are great for SEO. But you shouldn’t just stuff your article with irrelevant links.
You can take this article as an example. I have hyperlinked some SEO terms to their respective definition pages on other websites. Doing so allows you to refer click through and refer to these resources if you need more information.
Effective anchor text should be relevant to the article and must add more sense and value to it. Avoid generic words or writing generic posts to introduce the desired anchor text. Remember, the ultimate goal is to create insightful articles for readers that generate enough enthusiasm for them to follow and subscribe to your posts.
2. Anchor Text Distribution
Think of choosing anchor text as home improvement and decoration activities. Buying the best and the most attractive showcase pieces for your home is one thing; placing them in the most appropriate places is another. If either of these fails, your home won’t look attractive and welcoming.
The same goes for anchor texts. After you decide on the most relevant anchor texts, it’s essential to place them well within the blog post. If you select anchor text, which can be thought of as keywords, hastily and put the hyperlinks in inappropriate places, your article might appear jarring to the audience. You will start losing readership fast.
So study and employ the most effective and viable anchor text distribution model for the different keywords you have selected. For a novice, it can be hard to do this. Fortunately, there are 100s of SEO guides, educative blogs, and other sources to learn the art of keyword and anchor text distribution. Study just a little, and you’ll know what to do.
3. Be Careful When Linking to Other Sites
There’s nothing like visiting a restaurant and having a sumptuous feast! But you don’t want to dine in an unfamiliar and foreign restaurant only to spend the evening fighting with an upset stomach.
Linking to foreign (unknown) websites can prove similar to the second dining experience and leave you and your blog in bad shape.
To avoid this scenario, be cautious not to link to any spammy, toxic, or low-quality website. You could ruin all the hard work you’ve done to build an audience if you don’t choose authoritative websites to link to. It can be challenging to avoid linking to promotional ads with clickbait words, for instance. Sometimes such ads or sites can harm your reader’s computer or network, and that’s the last thing you want. It’s safest to earch out the thought leaders in your subject area, and link to their posts.
Following the sound practices of selecting anchor texts and optimizing backlinks will help you improve SEO and viewership. Digital Monopoly is an excellent place to learn about linking strategies, anchor texts, and all other things related to SEO.
When you are competing against millions of blogs on the Internet, it is important to optimize your posts and put them in front of your target audience. Build an effective SEO plan by choosing appropriate anchor texts and backlinks.
After all, blogging customs are just as important as the customs of our culture and community. The more we know about and follow them, the more able we are to participate in and build blog (and book) communities of our own.
Tell me about your experience using anchor text in a comment below.
About the Author
Sanjay Bojan is a blogger and researcher who contributes on various high profile sites including Forbes, Huffington Post, and TechCrunch. For writing wok and brand promotion, you can contact him at sanjay.bojan2@gmail.com.
Completely agree with your ways to distribute anchor text for better blog SEO. It’s a well-known fact that having authority sites linking to you is highly beneficial for SEO. You should also remember that the sites you link to play a significant role in how search engines rank your page. This is where the co-citation principle comes to play. Make sure that your anchor texts don’t link to toxic or spammy sites just for the sake of winning reciprocal linkbacks. Instead of wasting your time on such sites, focus on healthy, authoritative sites that are relevant to your niche.
Awesome advice. Thanks, Robert.
Sanjay Bojan, good to see you here.
I agree that a natural looking anchor text profile is important for better & stable ranking, as well as to keep a website safe from Google penalty. Page title anchor texts really work good but the safest one is branded and naked (URL) anchor texts.
Whenever linking to an external site, do analyze the site thoroughly before giving an outbound link, otherwise same can damage your site’s ranking performance potentially.
SEO ranking improves when visitors stay on your site longer, view more pages, and repeat their visits. The more user-friendly your site is, the more likely this is going to happen.
Really helpful post. You touched on a few really key points here! So much we see people absolutely cramming in as many links in their post as they can… Relevancy is so important! I like to use linking more of a way to improve customer experience on your website.
Yes, getting sucess in blogging require lots of hardwork, consistency and patience. All the points you mentioned above are very important and following them properly we can easily achieve success. I can’t wait to try these tips you’ve mentioned. I hope others will find this post useful just like I did. Thanks for posting, Sanjay.