What Are Backlinks and Why Are They So Important?
Alison Rothwell
The most important off page factor to gain high google rankings is
appropriate anchor text pointing to the specific page of your website
that has been optimised for a particular keyword phrase. This is achieved through a "backlink."
What Exactly is Anchor Text?
First off let's define anchor text. Anchor text is that portion of a
hyperlink that is viewed by a user on a webpage (the clickable text).
Here is an example: in html code, the link is www.domain.com and the
anchor text will be bolded as " anchor text "
Here is a typical html link:
<a href=" http://www.domain.com "> Anchor Text </a>
Or a real life example - my link is http://www.seotrainingclub.com/ and
my anchor text is "seo training", so I would write my text
links like this:
<a href=" http://www.seotrainingclub.com/">seo training<*/a>
Again as you can see my anchor text is contained between the >
</a> after the domain and quotation mark portion of the link.
How anchor text works
Now I've explained what anchor text is, let's look at the logic as to
why anchor text has such a dramatic effect in the search engine
rankings for your keyword phrases and what exactly "appropriate" anchor
text is.
Google decided to base a large portion of their algorithm on inbound
links (links from other web pages) because of its initial breakthrough
technology "PageRank™".
Google (and most other search engines) count each link as a vote for
the linked "to" web page by the linked "from" web page. Analyzing all
constituents of a link "from" a webpage to determine the specifics of
the link allows for much more specific information to be gathered about
the vote being cast.
There are really only the two above mentioned common elements: the web
page that you link to (this does not have any alternatives), and the
anchor text (which can be anything that you like) based on the choice
of the webmaster giving the link. It is because of this choice that the
anchor text becomes important. If there were no such thing as link
popularity in the algorithm, the anchor text people would choose to
link to a website with would be truly representative of that website's
content.
Basically Google uses anchor text (and assumes you aren't biased by
link exchange) to answer the question "OK, you're voting for a site
(and that's great!), but what exactly are you voting for?" Anchor text
is your explanation of what you're voting for. In essence you're saying
"I am voting for this site because it is a great site that represents
(Whatever you put in your Anchor Text)".
So when someone clicks on a link to my homepage with the anchor text
"seo training" Google then understands that my site is all about seo
training.
* I've had to add a * so that you can see this link!
Customer Comments
Most Helpful Customer Comments
Great, simple explanation of anchor links there. I do like your jargon free way of going about things!
Right! The backlinks in the anchor text are really useful to gain a high google ranking. Great article! Very insightful!
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Backlink: Google Ranking, December 28, 2009
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