Anchor Text, Keyword Research, and Getting the Top Spot in Google

Achieving the top position in Google for keywords is possible.  Any site that does enough SEO right and markets their keywords can achieve success in Google and the other major search engines.  Google doesn’t discriminate based on the type of size of a company, the playing field is even enough so that any site can have a chance at first-page results.

The most important aspects of SEO to remember when aiming for top Google results are three things: Content, Links, and Keywords.  If anything should be kept a high priority in SEO, Content and Links are the top two aspects to remember.  Content and Links go hand in hand, and it’s not possible to achieve nearly the success one can bring without having the other working together.

 

Anchor Links are links that appear on your site, pointing to other pages within your site, or other pages on the internet.  The key to the Anchor Link is the text that actually appears as a link.

 

For example, if you are selling cat food, and your site’s home page proclaims, “Click here for the latest cat food bargains,” leading to a page filled with cat food products. The underlined portion of this link is the Anchor Text.  However, this is poor text for the anchor link to use.  Instead, the actual text “cat food bargains” should be the clickable portion, not “Click Here.”  Therefore, the link would read “All the best cat food bargains on one site!”  Google will give much more weight to Anchor Links that contain keywords relevant to your site.

 

This second part is where the content comes into play.  If you have a perfectly written Anchor Link, but it leads to a page without the relevant content, then Google won’t afford nearly as much weight to the link.  Be sure the pages that your Anchor Links lead to contain the same content and keywords that were present on the link.

 

Going back to the cat food example, if the link,” All the best cat food bargains on one site” took the user to a site containing all different types of pet food, then the anchor link won’t get as much SEO weight as if it were leading to a page speaking specifically about cat food.

 

WordTracker is a great too to use to determine the best keywords for a site.  Google also offers free keyword research tools on its AdWords site at http://adwords.google.com.  Another important thing to look for is not only the amount of traffic each keyword is getting, but also the competition each keyword is getting.  Automatically choosing the keywords to focus on that get the most traffic is not always the best way to find a good keyword list.

 

For example, if your website sells bottle openers, and one of the most popular related keywords is bottlecaps, it wouldn’t be a good keyword for your particular site’s market.  Also, lets say for example that one of the types of bottle openers you sell are vintage and antique bottle openers.  There may not be top search traffic for “vintage bottle openers,” but there also might be 0 competition for the keyword, which means the word may be worth your while to focus on.

 

Finding opportunities within keywords such as these, refining them, and maximizing their SEO potential is the key to staying new and fresh within your marketing campaign according to current trends on the search engines.  Any campaign that is left to get stale will do just that, with the search engines changing almost daily in the way they rank sites.