What if I were to tell you that one of the most important principles of search engine optimisation is so simple you that you will kick yourself for not realising it before? I'm talking about something called anchor text optimisation. The basic idea behind anchor text optimisation is that when one website links to another using a text link, the text that the web designer uses to form the link is called the 'anchor text' i.e. someone linking to this article would probably use something like 'anchor text optimisation article' or 'anchor text optimisation guide'.

Why Is This Important?

You may well ask. Well here it is. Behind the scenes search engines look at the anchor text of the links that point to your site and use it as one of the major factors in deciding what your site is about and what search terms your site is relevant to. Let's take a look at an example. If I were to set up a website discussing the advantages and disadvantages of anchor text optimisation, I would want to collect as many incoming links from other SEO related sites as possible that contained the key phrase 'anchor text optimisation' in the text of the incoming link. If I have 100 incoming links from related websites that all have 'anchor text optimisation' in the link text then the search engines can conclude that my site is indeed related to the topic of 'anchor text optimisation'. When you combine this with the fact that my site is also optimised for my target key phrase then the search engines can clearly see that my site is all about that particular topic.

But Why Do Search Engines Place So Much Weight On Anchor Text

When you stop and think about it, a web designer can put whichever key phrases he likes into the content on his website so these on page search engine optimisation factors are very easy to manipulate and very easy to change. Links on other people's websites however, are very difficult to manipulate. The owner of each site has a choice of the text that they can use to form the link. So by looking at all the links that point at your site, the search engines can make a more accurate and unbiased decision about what the internet community are saying your site is all about.

An Extreme Example of Anchor Text Optimisation

If you visit Google and enter the key phrase 'click here', you will find that the result that is returned is the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page. Furthermore if you look through the page you won't see the key phrase 'click here' on there anywhere! So what's happening here you will probably ask. Well when someone puts a PDF file on their website, they invariably but a link next to it that says something like:

This file requires adobe acrobat. To download a free copy of adobe acrobat please 'click here'.

The anchor text on the links to the adobe acrobat download page is invariably 'click here'. Consider the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of links pointing at this page and I'm sure you can understand that the search engines are getting a pretty strong indicator that the adobe acrobat download page is in fact about the key phrase 'click here'!

Conclusion:

Anchor text optimisation - although a very simple principal is very, very, important to your search engine optimisation success and in my professional opinion is just as important as having the right target keywords written into the content on your website. The best advice I can give is to decide which key phrases you intend to target and set about obtaining as many links as possible with that key phrase in the anchor text of the incoming link.

Stuart provides search engine optimisation in Barnsley. Stuart works for an SEO company in Barnsley.