Why Are Anchor Text Backlinks Important In SEO?

The anchor text is the linking content in a hyperlink. The words in the anchor text can determine a page's your search engine ranking. Anchor text is at times called the link label. While anchor text may not be related the link's actual text, it is more useful to readers if it is. So be sure that such text links are related to the destination's content. If search engines can use the anchor text to determine your page's content, this will move you up in search results.

Therefore, the better the anchor text, the higher the number of hits your pages receive. Do not use "click here" as your link label, since rarely gives search engines any relevant information. Text backlinks lead others to your pages. Occasionally backlinks are called inbound links. Top ten Google results can include pages that are not using the search phrase on the destination page. Such activity is called as "Google bombing" (or simply link bombing). Some of these link bombs are pranks, such as the famous 2003 Googlebomb pointing searchers to the White House page for President George W. Bush -- as the best response when anyone typed in the phrase "miserable failure." Link bombs have helped bloggers who use humorous phrases as backlinks to win a high ranking. The less common the phrase, the higher the page's placement whenever it is searched. On the other hand, a word that is quite common will return several pages of search results.

However, Google announced in January 2007 that "Google bombing" had been significantly reduced, thanks to improving the process to show search results. You can help other sites link to your pages by supplying the HTML code ready to copy and paste into their pages. This way, you get to choose the anchor text. But be careful -- if your site is all about shopping, you should avoid having "Shopping" as the phrase in every link to your site. Be careful as this may lead to "over-optimizing." If you overuse your search terms, the search engines may penalize you for keyword stuffing or spamming. On the other hand, most search engines, and especially Google, give higher rankings to websites that have many high-quality backlinks.

Two examples of quality backlinks are:

1) optimized search phrases pointing back to your site
2) The backlinking website is relevant to yours

When designing your web site, here are the main ways you can use anchor text links:

1) Link to your pages from other sites
2) Internal links inside your website
3) Links from your site's home page, including navigation and sitemaps

Finally, keep in mind that you are trying to reach visitors, not just search engines, so the phrases in your anchor text links need to fit properly to readers, in order to be useful to them, and thus to increase your site's traffic.