June 22, 2005
May All Your Anchor Text Be Keyword-Rich
Certain words on a Web page carry more weight than others.
Title tags and headers are often considered more "weighty" than regular paragraph text, while meta-tags and alt-tags have almost no weight in current search engine algorithms.
There's certain evidence that bold or italicized text carries more weight than words that aren't so emphasized.
Perhaps because they're (usually) underlined and in a different color, and definitely because they are a link, anchor text, a.k.a. the words in a hyperlink, are more important than non-linked words on the page.
Because of this, don't use phrases like "Learn More" or "Click Here" as hyperlinks. Instead, plug your keywords into your inter-site links. "Learn More About Web Marketing Seminars" or "Rich Brooks went on a cross-country roadtrip in 1997 and America has never been the same" perform much better as links.
Search engines prefer these type of links because they give a hint to what the following page is all about. Visitors prefer these type of links because their eye is naturally drawn to the most important themes of the page.
Take a look at your own Web site. Are you asking people just to click here?
Posted by at June 22, 2005 06:35 AM