As far as search engine page results (SERPs) are concerned, anchor text links have always been given a subliminally high weightage on Google (and other search engines) in contrast to general SEO tactics. More often than never, these anchor text links have been significantly congruous to a page’s ranking quotient. Most web masters consider anchor text links to be the second most important ‘positive’ factor as far as pushing a website’s ranking is concerned and that 95% of effective search engine optimization stems from the signals anchor text links generate.
This should make you reconsider if you have paid enough emphasis on your anchor text links. If not, well, it’s about time you do. Just as every optimization effort start with keyword analysis, link building with anchor text also involves a little bit of research and strategic evaluation. Whether you are requesting links from other sites, submitting to directories, or buying links, right anchor text makes all the difference. And when it comes to making the selection, there is always a conflict of choices – do all your links carry exactly the same anchor texts or is it better to opt for a partial match anchor text? For instance, if your target keyword is ‘Spring Florist’, is it better to get as many exact match anchor text that say ‘Spring Florist’ as possible to your website or is it better to mix it up by adding another word, changing from singular to plural, or stemming a word differently (say with ‘wedding florist’, ‘season florist’, ‘spring flowers’ etc.) Search engines like Google tend to highlight related keywords even though it may not be an exact match for your search term. This refers to the fact that partial match anchor texts hold just as much power as an exact match anchor text (sometimes even more!). The reason is that it is possible to contain some of your exact matches with partial matches and this serves doubly. Along with exact match queries, you can also rank for related long tail queries; which directly results in increase in page ranking and traffic.
Besides an appropriate anchor text, search engines look for many other signals to evaluate a link. Most significantly, they look at on-page signals of the page the link is coming from. On-page signals that arise from title tags, body tags, keyword handling, site/page architecture, etc. must indicate the fact that this particular site is indeed the best possible choice for the searched phrase/ text; like the ‘Spring Florist’.
Search engines continue to become more advanced, and as they tighten their procedures and algorithms, it will be increasingly important to ensure that the signals an anchor text generates or gathers are of good quality, are comprehensive and broad scoped. The better the effort and quality, the longer this strategy works and the longer link signals will work for you.
Google SERPs are increasingly incorporating broad matches to fulfill its long standing objective of “humanizing” its algorithms. Think like a human, and your site should be able to do well on the search engine rankings.
