There is a fascinating SERP artifact which almost prompts me to question whether or not there is no more valuable focus in SEO than anchor text. Anchor text you ask, how can that possibly be most important?? Well in truth, I’m not supposing it is but give these searches a moment of your time.
“Click here” Yes, really, do a search for “Click here”
- Adobe’s Reader Download – certainly the most pervasive download by anyone who owns a computer and easily found from any website featuring a PDF “Click here to download”
- XE.com’s Universal Currency Converter – consider all the travel, financial, and international websites which offer a simple feature to their users: Click here for current exchange rates
- Apple but wait… not the iPod or even the iPhone??? No, Click here to download Quicktime
- And consider this a testament to the largest ad serving vendor. Every website has a privacy policy and the use of a 3rd party ad network requires that you add to your privacy policy a link to that vendor’s privacy policy. Click Here for DoubleClick’s privacy practices.
I’m amused as every good designer knows you don’t use “Click here” as a call to action on web links. Sure, it makes it a little clearer for those unfamiliar with the internet that they are supposed to click here (rather, there) but imagine how much more powerful keywords such as adobe, reader, quicktime, and doubleclick would perform for those businesses if their anchor text was “Adobe Reader Download”
Let me clarify, I’m not suggesting Adobe isn’t already first position on a search for “Adobe Reader” but that anchor text increases the relevance and authority of the respective keywords on the associated website. No one searches for “Click Here” so Adobe is wasting an opportunity to strengthen their visibility on searches including those terms, e.g. “PDF Reader” or “Reader download” Sure, Reader is almost certainly as branded as an Adobe product as Kleenex is to tissues so that may still be a poor example to reinforce my point but, when we take into account the emerging Reader technologies, it is only a matter a time before Adobe is fighting for relevance. Consider too, how much more valuable “currency converter” or “exchange rates” is to XE.com.
Anchor text is such an influential consideration that Google has a patent associated with it and the topic is a frequent discussion on Search Engine Land (whose URL structure always amuses me, “Did you read their article about 080122-120943? It was excellent!”).
How much more fun can we have?
“More details”
- More details on the National Priorities Project
- More details about today’s weather forecast
“See More”
- Whoa… now there’s a study in URL Structure (nudge… nudge… Search Engine Land): seemore.com, seemore.org, seemorewildlife.com, seemoreshopping.com
- Vital BMX – ah… now there’s one that reinforces my point “See more here“
You can’t control the anchor text used to promote your website but recognize that you have influence and should at least pay attention and request of peers that they link to you in as optimized a manner as possible.
Great post Paul!
We are in the midst of getting two of clients to optimize press releases, and Maps programs. The reason being mainly so that we can can control the anchor text in these links. We have one client who sees they have maps listings (created by a local directory provide like SuperPages) and does not see the value having their own maps program. We showed him that we can alter the anchor text to include non-brand category terms & lo & behold they show up in the maps for all cities & and the core product category not just the store name, and the traffic volume jumps.
Also in PR releases just by creating the link back to the client site against a keyword as opposed to the URL is golden!
In bound links need anchor text to be truly an asset!
Nice work Ted. What have you found is more successful though in reaching the publishers you want to promote your news?
That is, I’ve found wire services are of less benefit than a few years ago as editors and reporters ignore them; treating them as the publication of the news itself rather than a means of communicating with the news industry. As engines like Google and Yahoo increasingly embed releases directly in the engines, there is no need (or value) to reporters in rewriting the news for their readers. Press releases need to be shared directly with the media to benefit from articles and wire releases effectively kill the story before it reaches anyone. How do we accomplish both? How do we benefit from the mass reach and syndication of a wire release AND get those critical voices to pick up and promote the story?
Paul i think you have missed a point that anchor text should also be used in a variety of manners, like jumbling text, used an alt text in image links etc. but truly a good post
Oh no question with you Kevin, anchor text is applied in a variety of ways. I sat on a panel at Webguild’s Web 2.0 today and coincidentally this very topic came up; is content more important than inlinks. The interesting conclusion from this search artifact though is that it suggests (merely suggests mind you) that site content is irrelevant.
We have not just the examples I’ve included here but brought up was the success of YouTube, a site with little-no indexable content which was prominently promoted in Google (even before their acquisition) on inlinks alone.
Click Here – The Importance of Anchor Text…
There is a fascinating SERP artifact which almost prompts me to question whether or not there is no more valuable focus in SEO than anchor text. Anchor text you ask, how can that possibly be most important?? Well in truth, I’m not supposing it is but…