We love exact match anchor text! It’s the Holy Grail of links that make our rankings soar – or does it? Many SEOs predict Google will continue to devalue exact match anchors as their algorithm evolves in the age of Panda. We’ve seen evidence of this phenomenon over the past year and many expect to see the value of exact match drop even further.
Many webmasters wonder if they should give up link building altogether. Not at all! Search engines collect a ton of data through links to better understand your content and how valuable it is. Recognizing these link signals can help you make the most out of every link you gain. Do you have any tips on anchor text? Let us know in the comment below!
Howdy SEOmoz! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday
My name is Cyrus. I do SEO here at SEOmoz. This week I want to talk about anchor text. Every week I get emails, I am sure you do too, from Australia Business Fax List webmasters asking for a link, and they always want that exact match anchor text for the specific term they’re trying to rank for. It is a good practice. It works well. But things are changing in the SEO world.
Exact Match
In the old days, if you wanted to rank for something, your tactic was very simple. If your target keyword was Bing cherries, you just tried to get as many exact match anchor text that said Bing cherries as possible to your website. Those of you who have been practicing SEO for a long time noticed something about a year and a half ago or so, that this EF Leads method did not work as well as it used to. If you got too many exact match anchor texts, it could actually hurt you. That’s why you say, that’s such a 2009 tactic.
Now with the Google Panda update, we’re talking about a whole other realm of ranking signals, such as engagement metrics, social signals, but we don’t want to forget these link signals. Even if exact match isn’t the end all be all, there is still a lot of information that Google and other search engines are getting from these link signals, and that’s what we want to talk about today.
