Jane Sheeba

Successful business & life - have them both!

How to use Anchor Text the best way for SEO?

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Anchor Text SEO in 2019 - How to Optimize It for Safe Backlink Profile?

If you have been in the field of SEO and digital marketing for long enough, you must know and understand the value of anchor text.

If backlinks are termed as the skeleton of the SEO process, then the backbone of SEO would be your anchor texts. It truly plays important role in not only providing you quality backlinks but also in the whole process of optimization.

Anchor texts are mainly added to co-relate or connect two or more similar or related pages using links.

And this also helps the search engines as well to find relevant and similar type of content and pages.

There was a time when Google used to check the anchor texts to understand the relevancy of the content, the keyword, and the website niche.

But this was method of anchor text checking were soon cut short by Google as they brought Penguin update in the year 2012.

The reason behind this update was pretty much obvious. Since Google used these anchor texts to check relevancy, users used to add plenty of keywords and anchor text them with relevant content irrespective of the sit’se niche.

This definitely added to the problems for the end users. They started getting irrelevant pages or sites as search results due to the wrong use of anchor texts.

This is exactly where Penguin came in. This update helped Google to find and eliminate all those sites that had spammy content or over-optimized content.

This is exactly why you need to understand how Google reacts to anchor texts and how you should be using your anchor texts to benefit your SEO efforts.

Anchor texts still play the same important role in link building, but you need to know a bit more, and understand how you can use them safely to optimize your website.

Anchor Text in the field of SEO

Anchor Text in the field of SEO

Anchor texts are nothing but texts which are hyperlinked. If a user clicks on that link, it will take them to a different page or a website.

To create anchor text in your content, you will need to know a bit of html. To use hyperlink or anchor text, you will need to use the following html tag:

<a href=”Your website link”>Your Anchor Text</a>

This line will create a hyperlink or anchor text for you, provided you add a valid link to your text.

Anchor Texts: Types you need to know

As you can understand, SEO is not that easy and using anchor text is not that simple as well.

To use the anchor text efficiently and get the best benefits out of it, it’s really important that you understand the types of anchor texts and which of them can be used as well.

If you can master the anchor text SEO, you can get the best possible result out of it.

Basic Anchor

These anchor texts are those which are of general types. For example: go here, click here, read more, etc.

These anchors are used naturally in the content and are not required
to be forced.

You can use them normally in your content and does not include much of SEO benefits.

Branding through Anchor Texts

If you consider the SEO value, this type of anchor text can be considered safe.

This type of anchor texts makes use of the brand names as the texts to be hyperlinked. Most of the sites with brand names use this type of anchor texts in their contents to enhance their branding.

Naked Link Anchor texts

This particular type make use of the URLs as the anchor text and hence the name.

These types of anchors are mostly used as natural anchors and do not involve a lot of SEO value either.

Brand and keyword anchors

Brand and keyword anchors

In this case, you will need to use the brand name and the keywords together as your anchor text.

This type of anchoring is not considered to be problematic and can help you build a nice anchor profile as well.

Image Anchor texts

Image Anchor texts

As the name suggests, in this case anchors for your choice of URL are the images. If you can use proper and relevant images for anchoring, this can certainly build your anchor profiles.

While using this type of anchors, you must take extra precaution. Whenever Google crawls your website or finds an anchor text with your URL, it registers a keyword.

But in this case, Google notes the “alt” tag for your image as the keyword. So, make sure to use a relevant and important keyword as your “alt” while using image anchors.

Else, it will be noted as “noText” anchor and will have no SEO value at all.

LSI Anchors

LSI refers to different variants of your main keyword.

For example:

If your main keyword is “garage repair service”, the LSI keyword you can use “garage maintenance service” or may be “garage repair mechanic” etc.

If you are not really expert in finding LSI keywords, you can use some online tools to find some.

Once you have them, you can use them as anchors in your content.

This will ensure that your keyword density is not more than 1.5% of your content, yet you are able to put in your anchors according to your requirement.

Long Tail Anchors

Long Tail Anchors

Long anchors can be of two different types: partial and the long tail anchors.

Partial anchors are small but normally those which contains some or whole part of the keyword, whereas the long tail anchors are the ones which are longer in length and include more words than the actual keyword.

Exact Match

Exact Match

Out of all the different types of anchors, this one is the most important of the anchors and must be used with great care.

These anchors are the texts that match with the keywords totally, or in other words, when you use the keywords as your anchor texts.

In this case, you will need to use the brand name and the keywords together as your anchor text.

This type of anchoring is not considered to be problematic and can help you build a nice anchor profile as well.

While using this type of anchors, you must take extra precaution.

Whenever Google crawls your website or finds an anchor text with your URL, it registers a keyword.

These anchors play the most significant role in improving your rank but if you used in a wrong way, these anchors can also be reason for your downfall.

How can you optimize your Anchor Text?

Well, if you discuss with professionals, you will see that there are actually different opinions amongst them about the importance of anchor texts.

But if you research well, you will see that analysis will definitely stand for the proper use of anchor text as it plays significant part in the result of SERP ranking.

To ensure that you use the proper anchor text and get the best out of it,
you need to follow a few rules:

Use relevant anchor texts

Use relevant anchor texts

This is absolutely necessary and must be followed with your eyes closed.

Whatever might be your choice of niche, it’s necessary that you use the right and relevant text as your anchor while placing them in your content.

If you are able to use relevant keywords as your anchor texts, then you are sure to get a better SEO value for it.

On the contrary, if you have a region specific keyword, you might want to write a region specific content rather than using a generalized content to have a better and enhanced result.

Use Various Anchor texts

Use Various Anchor texts

Although anchor texts are important for backlinks and must be used against the keywords to have the maximum benefits but to ensure a better ranking, use of different types of anchors can help a lot.

For example:

Rather than using the same keyword for anchor text, you can use LSI keywords, or sometimes using brand keywords will do as well.

Stay away from the toxic sites

Stay away from the toxic sites

While creating a backlink to your website, it’s important that you use high authority sites for that purpose.

This can certainly boost your SEO process as well.

While having backlinks from high authority sites can help your website, choosing spam sites or toxic sites might give your website a negative point as well.

The best option is to look out for the site authority before you have a backlink from that website.

And also make sure to choose relevant site niche as well.

Guest Posts

Guest Posts

Although this is one of the oldest techniques in the books of SEO, but these days most of the experts wouldn’t bother to use this technique.

Having said that, guest blogging or guest posts can still be used to build a nice profile in the digital world and you can easily leave your digital foot print on high ranking domains as well.

Just make sure to use LSI keywords or partial matched anchors while writing guest posts; this will certainly help you get a better result than your are hoping for.

Keep track of your backlinks: In case you are handling SEO process for your website on your own, you need to keep a log of your backlinks.

This will help you in the long run to understand when you need to stop. Unless you stop in time, your website will be over optimized and as per the latest Google algorithm, over optimization is not what they want.

So, it will be really good i you use an excel sheet or any professional SEO tool to keep track of your work and in due course of time you shall get the desired result for your website.

Domain Leasing, Google Penalty Update and Should you be worried?

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Domain Leasing, Google Penalty Update and Should you be worried?

Google has rolled out an update that penalizes businesses that practice domain leasing.

So what is domain leasing?

If you have been renting out your domain briefly to another company or a third party, that is domain leasing.

When I say renting out your domain, you don’t rent out all of it. You basically rent out a folder, or a sub-domain.

For instance, let’s say your domain is yourdomain.com. Assuming its quite popular you have every chance of monetising it.

While there are various ways to monetize a popular domain, one of the ways is to lease it out to a third party.

So that third party occupies a sub-domain in your name like coupons.yourdomain.com.

I have used coupons as an example because that is one of the most popular leasing that’s happening around among the big companies like CNN.

Domain leasing - CNN coupons

The third parties use the popularity of the big company to get traction. And the big companies use their popularity to make some commissions.

Of course, the third parties pay the big companies in the form of commission or pay a rent for the duration of leasing.

Either way, it is a win-win for both the parties.

Usually the big companies put up a disclaimer saying that they or the staff of their company are not related to the content presented on that leased domain.

Now the recent Google update is targeted on these leased domains – one of the main reasons being the content on these domains is usually pretty thin and similar in multiple instances.

And the content is published purely with the monetization goal.

So as a small business owner, should you be worried about this domain leasing Google update?

In short, you don’t have to be worried.

If you have a super popular domain and if you have monetized it by leasing it out, then yes, you should be worried.

Or if you have a small business (in the lines of coupons, reviews etc.) that could use the popularity of a big company and if you are willing to pay the whopping lease fee, then you should be worried.

But most small business owners don’t fall into either of this category.

So there’s nothing to worry for the most part and you can mark yourself safe!

PS: Got more to say? Please share your thought in the comments below!

Major keyword research mistakes that will disrupt your blog – how not to make

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Major keyword research mistakes that will disrupt your blog

One of the great things about this article is that I don’t really need to persuade you into admitting the fact that keyword research is essential (you already know that).

And it remains to be one of the highest return SEO activities that can prove highly necessary for the success of your marketing efforts.

For those who don’t understand what keyword researching is (or have been living under a rock all this while) here’s a quick recap.

Keyword research refers to the process of hunting down words or phrases that people will have more chances at searching for.

Having good knowledge about these aptly named keywords can not only help boost your content strategy but can also help you double up on its marketing efforts.

The keyword research process itself might look like a pretty easy thing to do (some would even say it’s a real cakewalk). I, for one though, politely beg to differ.

Anyone one can gather up a bunch of keywords and make a good content or a post out of it (it’s not that hard, you see), however, when it comes to dealing with great keywords that can actually make for a meaningful difference.

I am of the opinion that there is a ton of more things to be had than what the concept just lets on.

The problem with keyword researching – every SEO’s nightmare.

Getting your site listed for target keywords is one of the most cost-effective methods for efficient link building.

Therefore, it’s no wonder that marketers and SEO’ers tend to spend a ton of time optimizing their sites to get better ranked in the SERP’s and critical wordings, as this can better boost their conversion rates and can, in turn, level up their profits too.

It doesn’t really matter whether you are a newbie trying to learn the ropes or is an SEO master with years’ worth of experience; the chances are that you will already be familiar with the need for conducting a keyword research process.

This particular process can inform you better about the content types that you want to be concentrating on.

In addition, it can also help you tremendously with designing SEO strategies that can actually work and boost your online organic presences – brilliant, isn’t it?

However, even with all the best tools and research techniques available out there, there are times when mistakes are bound to happen no matter what – leaving you with results that are just unsatisfying and often very annoying.

My advices to you though, avoid them, the mistakes, like the plague. And fortunately, there are plenty of great ways to do just that.

Below in this article, you’ll be finding out more about some of the common mistakes that you may be making with your SEO game.

You will also find some remarkable, quality solutions for them.

Five keyword research mistakes you might be making now (and the solutions):

1) Choosing keywords that don’t reflect the average searcher

Perhaps one of the most common SEO mistakes out there, vying for the wrong keywords or the least popular ones to use is one of the main reasons why a lot of the good websites out there don’t get the traffic levels that they are expecting to land, even though they deserve it a lot.

Always opt for a set of keywords that brings something unique to the table. However, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be too unique or too specific, as this may limit your site’s visibility.

Use keywords that are bit mainstream, but not too much either because, unlike the former, these may make the users jump through several results before they are going to land on yours. My advice?

Shoot for the middle ground. Use keywords that are both a bit mainstream and unique to you (e.g., SEO master shop, New York – location being the unique factor).

2) Plural vs. singular

A common mistake is continuously made by SEO’s all around the world; it never fails to amaze me how even the most seasoned veterans tend to fall for the plural, single keywords trap.

While I admit that they will always be different in nature, and one will never affect the other, there are times when switching between them can boost or hamper your traffic flow by a ton – depending on what the situation is.

If you are running an e-commerce site or is trying to sell off something to the users, it’s best for you to go with plural words as this can help better with your product promotions.

On the other hand, let’s say that you are trying to promote a service or your business, single words will work better since they can bring a sense of uniqueness to the table that the former cant.

3) Not focussing on the local side of things

Not focussing on the local side of things

Many SEO’s especially the newbie’s, tend to focus more on expanding their visibility to the maximum thinking that the more reach their site has, the better chances it’s going to have at being a true-blue success.

While I admit that it’s true to a certain extent, local SEO too is something that must be had your attention just the same.

Offering steady traffic flow to small-scale businesses and helping users to find better, relevant info’s near where they are.

Not having an area specific keyword can definitely prove detrimental to your local SEO game, as this would hamper your site’s chances at getting noticed despite being within the same area.

4) Auditing previously used keywords

I know that it is widely accepted that SEO is an on-going process and is something that’s never going to see the end of the day.

But how frequently do you review the pre-employed keywords to see if they are still viable and working like the day they were put there?

If a marketplace is like the web and is always shifting and turning (which it is), then it’s only natural to assume that the users searching habits too will evolve and develop over time – making keywords that were once awesome now pretty obsolete and even non-usable.

In most cases, I am of the opinion that a yearly review is enough to get the job done.

However, any period that’s shorter than this and you will run the risk of having a chaotic process that’s going to make everything harder.

That is being said though, in some fast moving and competitive markets, a regular keyword tracking may prove a ton more useful than having long termed ones.

5) Having an uneven keyword presence

Having an uneven keyword presence

Not everything is created equal, and this is even truer in the case of keywords; some are going to be quite challenging to get a ranking for, while others can prove to be a rapid win for your businesses.

In my opinion, though, the trick to seeing consistent gains from SEO strategy is going to lie with the habit of addressing all keywords despite their difficulty levels.

Be open to everything, even for those long-tailed ones.

The key here is to embrace them for what they are, and also though some of them can prove to be a hassle unlike any, they can prove extremely convenient in the long run, seeing that they would have a less of a competition to fight against.

Conclusion

An essential part of any good SEO strategy, having the right keywords at your disposal can not only ensure that you’d have a right place in the SERP’s but can also make sure that you’d get a good amount of traffic flow to your sites – something which I think every SEO’ers are looking for.

It doesn’t matter how careful and confident you may be, sooner or later, some mistakes are bound to crop up.

Above you can read about some of the standard errors an SEO would typically make.

Furthermore, I have also provided some handy tips to help you better walk around them.

If you have any questions or queries regarding keyword research, SEO, or anything along the lines, feel free to drop a comment below.