Adding Variety to Anchor Text for a Natural Backlink Profile
Guest Post by Andy Wallner
If you’ve ever encountered SEO, you know that the whole idea of search optimization is often a battle against search engines, not with them. The life of an SEO expert consists of constantly seeking ways to “trick” Google into thinking that people love your site, even if you’ve only had a few visitors (or have other, more financially related motives). Far too often, SEOers (that’s a word, right?) tend to find the quickest, dirtiest, and easiest ways to bring visibility to their sites, and forget that there’s actually a missing human element. Get big enough in a competitive vertical, and Google might pick your site to be analyzed by their engineers (I’ve seen giants toppled because of this).
It’s unlikely that you’ll ever actually trick a search engineer. But launching obvious link building campaigns can set off some red flags that bring negative attention to your efforts. So, what’s the best way to make sure that Google knows you’re not getting all natural links? Forgetting to add variety to your anchor text.
The State of Anchor Text
Anchor text is a puzzling thing to many new web marketers. Let’s say, for example, that you operate the site marketingdegree.net, and want to generate more traffic by targeting some keywords. What would you do? The phrase “marketing degree” seems to be pretty valuable, so we might target that alone. And that would make sense as many people would refer to the site like I just did above. With an exact match domain, the job is fairly simple and natural links are more likely to come in how I want them.
Now, let’s consider a different scenario. Let’s suppose I went a different route with a “brandable domain.” Google wanted to be more than a website (that’s why they didn’t pick searchengine.com). So, they chose a brand. Suppose I chose something like “Google.com” for my site in some alternate Internet universe. How likely would it be that everyone would link to me using the phrase “marketing degree?” Pretty unlikely unless I was already dominating the SERPs. People would link to me in all sorts of ways, from “click here” to “this site doesn’t agree with my opinion, however” as the anchor text. In fact, some companies have accidentally ranked for that anchor text – try searching Google for “click here” and you’ll find some pretty powerful players on page one (Adobe, Wikipedia, Apple, Mapquest and Yahoo!). When I got big enough, people would likely link to me primarily using “Google.”
Still, conversions matter. Adobe probably isn’t making any money by ranking number one in Google for “click here,” even though AdWords is telling me that I’m one of about 22,200 that searches for it every month and there is no advertising competition whatsoever for the term (jackpot right?). The chances of monetizing such a broad keyword phrase are slim (especially with all those heavy hitters dominating it in Google).
Adding That Variety
Anchor text for incoming links is vital to your success, but it’s not everything. You can think of links as having two different types of “juice” – the normal, delicious kind that passes reputation (called page rank by Google), and the just as delicious juice called “passing anchor text.” It’s far more complicated, but think of it like this:
- Any old link builds your site’s reputation with Google, and helps you rank slightly for all search terms relevant to your site’s content.
- Anchor text helps you rank for specific terms.
So why is it that so many beginning SEO enthusiasts set out on a link building campaign to build thousands of links using the same exact anchor text every time? Can you think of anything less natural? You can sit back and wait for the links to come naturally (like Google wants you to…), or you can add a little variety to your anchor text to avoid setting off any alarms.
First, consider the two juices of a link. As long as a backlink doesn’t come from the bad neighborhood of the Internet (spam land and porn, gambling, etc.), a link is pretty much a link. In other words, getting a link can never hurt you. Otherwise, every spammer in the world would be sending thousands of terrible links to their competitors’ sites to shut them down. This doesn’t mean you need to spend hours getting a link from a PR 0 site either though.
So feel free to mix up your anchor text – a lot. Think about all of the ways a person might reference your site and its content and write them down. How do you talk to people about your services? Furthermore, what value does your site offer?
Using the Long Tail for Anchor Text Ideas
Think of a nice long tail keyword phrase that you’d like to target, preferably one that sums up everything your site has to offer – luxury vacations in Egypt for senior citizens, for example. If you divide that long tail phrase into smaller phrases (luxury vacations, vacations in Egypt, senior citizen vacations, etc.), then come up with all of the variations for those phrases (vacation over 65, holiday in Egypt, Egyptian vacations, and so on), you have a nice list of natural anchor text for your link building campaign.
You’ve successfully made a connection to everything your site has to offer, without spamming the same anchor text over and over again. Your efforts look much more natural to everyone involved – the Google robots and humans alike. And don’t worry too much about not ranking for your targeted keyword phrase. Search engine results don’t work that way. After all, why would Google design a system that relies on unnatural activity to yield natural results?
You might even add a few odd anchor text links to make things squeaky clean, like “I love this site” or “good news for us all.” You’ll still get the link juice.
Finally, if anyone reading this has the guts, free time, and extra cash to try to get their site on the first page for “click here,” please let Trisha know so I can send you a batch of my almost world famous banana bread (only if you’re successful, please!). Unfortunately, I lack all three of my aforementioned elements to do so myself, but I have plenty of banana bread at the moment.
Final Note: I must make one thing clear for those that are about to leave an angry comment. We’re not discussing exact match domain names right now. If you have an exact match domain, adding a lot of variety to your exact match anchor text isn’t really all that necessary, except if you’re branching out to other keyword phrases. You spent enough money on the domain to impress Google already, and they’ll fully expect thousands of links to come to it using your website name as the anchor text.
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Andy Wallner is a freelance writer and web developer that specializes in providing information to students considering a marketing degree, or interested in online and offline marketing information. In his free time, Andy enjoys kayaking, playing trombone in a local jazz band, and learning CSS.
Read MoreA Re-Committment to TrishaLyn.com
Ah, how I’ve seemed to turn my back on this website! This wasn’t my first website I ever built, but it was the first domain name I ever bough and started hosting after tiring of Freeservers and Blogger. Including the time this blog was on Blogger, I’ve been blogging here for the last 4 years. I started in August of 2007. This blog started out as a way for me to share my knowledge about professional printing, graphic design, and what I was learning about affiliate marketing. This was right after my first Affiliate Summit in Miami in July of 07 and I wanted to share what I’d learned – which was so much! I quickly started blogging more about my career and affiliate marketing and less about professional printing and graphic design. I have no formal training in graphic design – I’m just some jackass with a good eye for layout and Photoshop – so I felt I had no business telling anyone how to do anything in the realm of design.
As I progressed in my journey into affiliate marketing, people started reading my blog, and noticing who I was online. By the time Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston rolled around, I’d been asked to lead a roundtable discussion on self branding at a pre-summit event held by Affiliate Classroom. I was asked because people had taken notice.
Not to bore you, lets fast forward to today. I’ve been working in affiliate marketing for about 5 years (since late 2006). I love it. It allows me to work with intelligent people, work from home, work on my schedule, make the money I want to be making, and I don’t feel like my Theater Arts degree is a hindrance since I write a lot and use those creative writing skills – just not in the same way I used to. There was a point at the end of 2008 where I had to fight to stay in this industry, and that meant leaving my job just shy of my 5 year anniversary there, working at a start up marketing agency for awhile, then an OPM agency, until finally settling down at For Me To Coupon. And I love it, and I’m approaching my 2 year anniversary with FMTC in January. Today I’ve spoken at 3 Affiliate Summits and two other trade shows. I’ve been included in Internet Marketing from the Real Experts and written several articles for FeedFront Magazine. I walk around a conference and can’t get from one room to another without seeing someone I know or getting stopped by someone. It’s a great feeling of professional pride and acceptance.
I realized recently that through my difficulties with a couple jobs and working my butt off, I lost the desire to blog. There’s a long string of time where the only thing on my blog was Affiliate Marketing Fanatics. But I’ve decided to kick some life into this old horse yet!
To the faithful that still subscribe (or were too lazy to remove me from their feed readers, whatever) I thank you. You may have noticed a lot of guest posts lately, and that’s helped me to reinvigorate the site and renew my spark. More are in the hopper, along with some notes I took at Think Tank (yes, I know that was in May, SO WHAT?!), some notes on sessions I attended at Affiliate Summit East 2011, and some general affiliate marketing stuff.
I’m going to pare down the categories here, and redirect my energy into just a few. Please, tell your friends I’m back. Add me to your blogroll and I’ll add you to mine. Let’s DO THIS!
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Beginners Guide in Building an Online Shopping Cart
Guest Post by Elias Cortez.
Online shopping is one of the trends in today’s modern industry. People who would always want to avoid congestion in the market place, parking lots, long queue in the cashier prefer online shopping. There are many advantages of online shopping. First, it can help you save time, energy and money. Second, it gives convenience when you need to send something across the miles. Online shopping can lead you to different sites where you can liberally compare the best item at the best price. Though for some reasons, people find it difficult to liberally walk into online shopping, and cannot totally replace window shopping at the mall.
Building your online shopping cart is quite trouble-free. However, it may take several days depending on the number of products, store plans and designs. Here are the basic guidelines on how to build an online shopping cart for beginners:
- Get a domain name. When building a site, you need to find and register an appropriate domain name for it. (Example: www.mystore.com,www.mystore.net, www.mystore.org, www.mystore.info)
- Create your online store. This is considered as an obvious step when launching an online store.
- Add and supply products. What does your business speak for? What are your main products or services available? To increase visibility and sales, it is recommended to include a promotional or informational video on your product description pages.
- Select a design and layout. There are hundreds of templates available online that would fit and match your products and meet your needs. Original designs and a good layout can draw lots of customers to your site as they are very thrilling for them to see innovative and exceptional designs. Make your product labels and descriptions readable as well.
- Shipping and payment options. After you’ve created your online store, then the next thing to handle is the entire logistics chain of your store.
- Make a profit. You’re good to go! But remember that earning money on the internet requires enthusiasm and hard work. This is not an overnight-success activity. Expect some difficulties on the first stage of your business that’s why constant maintenance, advertisement, shipping arrangement, and optimization are necessary in order for your online shopping cart to run well.
Is online shopping safe and secure?
As a first time online purchaser, being nervous is normal. Many people who jump into online shopping experience apprehension and hesitation, so you are not alone. In fact, nothing is completely safe wherever you go, whether online purchase or real purchase. However, online shopping has proven itself with millions of transactions that went successful, and currently being safely processed each day. You would know if you’re in the right track if you choose a good and trustworthy company that safeguards your personal information, and ensures you customer delight.
How to find a company of good reputation?
Seeking an advice from a relatives and friends would be helpful in your selection. Remember, trusted companies are mostly recommended by trusted friends. To ensure further safety and security, it is advised that you must first know the information or background of the company on its website before making any transaction. If necessary, you can get their toll-free telephone number so you could gather more information about them.
Paying by Credit Card
When making online purchases, make sure that the company keeps all your personal information and credit number secure.
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Elias Cortez is freelancer writer that specializes in writing in the education field for students looking to pursue a career in graphic design. Read his latest articles titled “Graphic design schools” and “Graphic design career information” to learn more.
Read MoreWhat You Should Know About Industry Conferences
Guest Post by James Martell
Do you ever hear about conferences for your particular industry and wonder if you should go?
Do you worry about whether a trade show is worth the time and expense involved?
I was struggling with those issues when I went to my first affiliate marketing conference in 2002. I had been an affiliate marketer for about three years, and I wanted more information on growing my business. Yes, I enjoyed the travel opportunity. Yes, the weather in Santa Barbara was gorgeous and the hotel was nice as well.
Seriously, though, if I were only looking for a short vacation, Seattle is closer and Portland is much more affordable.
Specific to my situation, I would have had a hard time convincing my wife Arlene to cut me loose for three days if all I could promise her on my return was a suitcase full of dirty laundry.
Fortunately, I was able to attend the conference because both Arlene and I knew why I was going. Better yet, our expectations for the trip were met and then exceeded.
Reasons to Attend Online Marketing Conferences
When I returned from my first Commission Junction University, Arlene and I were more than satisfied with the benefits I brought home. That’s why, when I returned to CJU the next year, I was accompanied by Arlene and 40 other people.
These days I attend several marketing events every year, and I advise all of my affiliates and colleagues to attend at least two per year. The primary reasons include;
- The time spent at these conferences is actually an investment. When you get back to the office, you’ll be working better, working smarter, and you’ll be far more motivated.
- The money you spend attending these conferences, to include travel and meals, is normally tax deductible. If you happen to own the business, I don’t have to tell you how important that is!
- You’ll have the opportunity to speak with and listen to leaders in your industry, and will probably come away with a few new ideas.
- You’ll be able to tap into a knowledge and experience base far larger than anything you would be able to accumulate on your own.
- The most important reason to attend an industry event, however, is the same reason I kept going back to the Commission Junction Universities; We need to grow.
Over the last decade, I have attended many trade shows and industry conferences, and I have listed a few of my favorites below. I have personally attended each of these events, and I have been invited to speak at several of them as well.
Whether you are an affiliate marketer, or are just interested in what the Internet can do for your business, one of these events offers something you can use.
The Best Online Marketing Conferences 2011
Affiliate Summit
This event is described as the premier affiliate marketing conference, and with good reason. The Summit is held in New York and Las Vegas, and offers a variety of educational events in addition to top industry speakers and acres of merchants and vendors.
Blog World Expo
The Expo gathers bloggers from the four corners of the earth to Las Vegas for three days so they can take advantage of networking events, presentations, and of course, vendors and merchants galore. You don’t need to be a blogger to enjoy this conference, though. If you are just looking for a way to use social media to promote your business, you should plan to attend.
Webmaster World’s PubCon
Most people expect this to be a publishing convention, but the first one was actually held in a pub, so the name actually describes a group of colleagues around a pub table. Well, Webmaster’s World has outgrown the pub, but it still provides an informal, relaxed venue to share marketing strategies and advanced SEO methods.
Commission Junction University
I cut my teeth, so to speak, on this event, and if you actually need a reason to spend three days in Santa Barbara, this conference is a really good one. You’ll get a chance to meet with over 800 industry leaders and top Commission Junction affiliates, like me. You should attend just to find out what affiliate marketing can do for your business.
AffCon
The cool part about newer industry shows is that they’re usually inexpensive, and this one is free, for the moment. This may not last long, though, because AffCon is still packed with leading panelists, all the usual vendors and merchants, and lots of great information for beginners as well as experienced affiliate marketers.
ShareASale Think Tank
What is the difference between a Think Tank and a regular conference? Imagine the level of creativity inspired by great parties, a sports event or two, and one of the best assembled brain-trusts in the industry. Affiliates, managers and merchants would all benefit from this event.
Every business relies on marketing, so it’s likely that your business would benefit from any of these events. If you’ve never attended these or any other online marketing conferences, 2011 might be the year your business really takes off.
Of course, if you aren’t a full-time marketer, there are probably other gatherings which are more focused on your specific industry. You should also least check out the ones that sound interesting.
Shopping for Your Own Trade Show
Matt Papas is an associate of mine who has a weight loss website. Matt could benefit from nearly any Internet marketing conference, but he could also get some great information at fitness or medical conferences. For instance, he could learn more about how to market to clients who are looking for a Medifast coupon code, or looking for the right answer, complete with details, to the question, “Does the Nutrisystem diet work?”
Arlene, of course, attends some events with me, but occasionally she should take in other events as well. Arlene’s website, epliepsymoms.com, offers support and information for parents of epileptic children, so she could also benefit from medical conferences. She could also add conferences specific to epilepsy support organizations and other childhood diseases.
Regardless of your industry or interest, finding the right trade show could only take a minute or two on your favorite search engine. Search for a phrase like “Restaurant Trade Shows” and you’ll find a list of events and probably a Facebook page or Twitter account you can connect to as well. Someone out there is dying to show you how to attract more customers using Google Plus or how the right color of interior paint will keep customers in your store longer.
Will You Be Attending an Industry Conference This Year?
Well, why in the world not? If you have yet to attend one of this year’s online marketing conferences 2011 is not quite over yet . The amount of time and money you’d put into a conference will be more than justified by the ideas and motivation you’ll bring home. The only real question, then, is;
Which of these conferences will you attend?
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Author and website developer James Martell is the President of Net Guides Publishing Inc. and is a popular speaker at many national events all over the country, including Commission Junction University and the Affiliate Convention. When James isn’t working or traveling, he enjoys the coastal life just south of Vancouver, BC with his wife, Arlene, and their four children.
Read MoreHas Photo Sharing on Facebook Met its Match?
Photos are always an excellent way to attract more people to your personal website. Facebook has always been the best way to store your photos and share them with the people on your friend list. By sharing a glimpse into your personal life, your readers will associate a more human element with your website, blog, or company. Over the summer, Twitter unveiled a new photo sharing service that is set to rival Facebook’s dominance and make it easier to market your website.
Facebook has recently changed the privacy settings on how you can tag people and places when uploading a photo. The steps to posting a quality photo for your followers to see are more complex than they have been in the past making it a more selective way to share photos with friends and family.
Twitter’s ease of access and openness make it a simpler tool for people to share content quickly. Recently, bored New Yorkers stuck in their apartments due to Hurricane Irene used Twitter as an escape mechanism to deal with their boredom. As reported on Yahoo News, they posted pictures from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” where the Statue of Liberty was destroyed by tidal waves.
If you are a marketer using an integrated social media campaign over several different platforms such as Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube; it has always been a struggle to seamlessly blend all of the social networks together. By posting a photo or video and sharing your location directly to Twitter, the need to market on other social media websites becomes less of an issue.
A couple of months ago, in order to share photos through Twitter, users had to use a third party service like Yfrog, Twitpic, or several other similar sites. Facebook had the advantage of offering a centralized photo sharing service that made it easy and convenient to store content. Now with a centralized gallery available on user’s profiles powered by Photobucket, pictures sent to these photo sharing websites are collected and stored in a gallery on Twitter profile pages.
Because tweets are searchable through Google, you can optimize your post with organic SEO keywords so it will appear higher in search results. Twitter’s new photo sharing service will soon be available on smartphones and will be easy for LG Android phone users to instantly upload a photo for their followers to see. This will give you the opportunity to perform important search engine marketing while at the grocery store checkout lane or out for a jog. You can easily attract new followers while away from your computer.
Facebook is still a great way to organize and store personal photos, but Twitter’s new photo gallery is an excellent way to make your content public as well.
Read MoreKeywords to Highlight Your Site
Guest post by Pat Tate.
In today’s world everyone has a website. Whether it’s a business, organization or individual, the Internet has made it possible for users to sell products, share information and express themselves on their own webpage. Whereas it’s more accessible and easier to create a website, it’s harder to generate visitors due to the fact that there’s a high volume of competition. By following these quick and simple tips, you’ll be able to have a website that stands out amongst your competition.
To start, the core of your website should center on keywords. Keywords are the words people use when typing into the search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.). For example, if you’re looking for golf equipment you may want to type in “golf equipment” (golf and equipment are keywords). The search engine will then display a list of websites that sell golf equipment. If you want to make your search more specific, you would enter in “women’s golf equipment” to get a more detailed list of golf equipment specifically geared towards women. Your keywords also tell Google what your site is about since Google uses a complex algorithm to determine which sites are relevant or not. Another reason why keywords are important is that most website hosts use them. So if you’re not utilizing keywords, you’re only giving your competition more of an advantage.
Quality content is always important when building your website; however, with the right keywords, your content is more likely to be seen by users. Instead of assuming what keywords are useful, it’s more effective to research and find the best keywords. When researching, you’re looking for keywords that are:
- Relevant to your website topic
- Get a certain percentage of searches in the search engine
- Profitable
The amount of traffic a keyword gets tells you how popular that word is. One easy and free program that allows you to search words is Google’s Keyword Tool. The keyword tool will give you an estimate of how many times a keyword has been searched and will propose alternative keywords that are similar. In addition, Global Monthly Searches, which is located at the bottom of the page, tells you the amount of hits a keyword gets from every country per month. If you want a more selective search, you can limit it to a particular location.
The tricky aspect of keywords is making sure a keyword gets enough searches but not too much. If you select a keyword that is extremely popular, then your website will most likely have more competition. For example, if you type in “cats” into the keyword tool, you’ll see that “cats” gets over a million searches per month. When selecting a keyword, you want a word that gets around 10,000 hits per month, which equates to 300 give or take pr day. As noted earlier, the Keyword Tool is a reliable source to find related keywords. As with a thesaurus, you can type in your keyword and obtain a list of similar words that might be more helpful in generating visitors to your website.
We’ve covered what makes a keyword and how to find popular but not over-used words, now let’s see how we can obtain profitable words. You can determine if a keyword is profitable by the amount of monthly searches it generates. The more searchers a word has, the higher probability that users are looking to purchase what they’re looking for (golf balls, golf bags, etc.). Yahoo Overture offers advertising on Yahoo and is a great source for finding profitable words. You have to pay to advertise but you don’t have to pay to research! On their site you can enter in a keyword and see how much money they charge customers to use that keyword; the higher the cost, the more profitable the word. Once you’ve found a few high-cost words, you can take them as use them as your keywords.
Along with researching the cost of a keyword, see which advertisers and affiliates are using this word. If you go to your basic search engine and type in the word, you’ll see multiple ads displayed on your page. These advertisers appear every time someone searches their keyword. Also check out ClickBank, where you can see if a word is profitable or not by counting how many affiliates are promoting that word. ClickBank’s “Gravity” tool displays how many affiliates are signed up for a product.
Finding the right keywords is only half the process, now it’s time to circulate them throughout your website. The way you utilize your keywords will play a crucial role in determining whether your prospective visitors find you. Keyword density refers to the amount of times you use the keywords in your text. A few guidelines to keyword density are:
- Place your keyword(s) in the title of each page.
- Insert your keyword(s) in the first and last paragraph of every page with content.
- Place the keyword in the upper left-hand corner of the page (Google reads from left to right).
- Your primary keyword should be in your domain name.
- On each page, insert your keyword in the title, first paragraph, last paragraph and within the middle paragraphs (every other paragraph).
Keyword density, expressed as a percentage should be less than 2%. A 2% keyword density means that for every 100 words, your keyword is listed twice (or that 2% of your text is your keyword). The reason you want less than 2% keyword density is that if your density is too high, Google will ignore your website thinking its spam. By using a variety of different keywords related to your website, you’ll be able to expand them more throughout your page will gaining a higher probability that visitors will find you.
The last ingredient to creating a successful website is anchor text. Anchor text is a link on your page that may look like “click here” or “join now”. To maximize your keyword, include it in the anchor text, such as “click here for the Ping Faith Golf Clubs”. Anchor text is valuable to your success rate in that Google uses anchor text when determining which sites are relevant to a keyword.
These tips and guidelines will give you the assistance you need in creating a website that generates visitors. The main components to remember are keyword, keyword density and anchor text. Utilize Google and Yahoo for their free and easy-access tools that will help you select the right keywords. Remember, that whereas keywords are important, they’re useless if your content lacks quality. Make sure to spend as much time and effort on your design layout and text so visitors will stay on your website and hopefully notify others about your site as well.
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As a senior Pat Tate started to explore Internet Marketing. She uses her blog as a journal to keep track of the people and programs that she has met along the way. Grandma’s Internet Marketing/blog. She is an avid golfer and invites women to join her to talk golf at Women’s Golf Center. She has always loved toys and as the proud Grandmother of five beautiful Grandchildren she gets to play with new ones at Grandma’s Toy Review
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