How to Control Your Site External Anchor Text
That’s a frequent question I get from my clients. Really, apart from taking care of internal anchor text and adding links with proper text yourself, is there any way to control the anchor text of naturally acquired external in-links? Let’s find a few ways together:
Get a domain name containing your keyword:
Putting aside all debates about whether domain name plays any direct role in the search ranking algorithm, there’s no denying the fact that most people link to the site using the domain name as the anchor text: DailySEOTip is what most links to this blog will look like, and Google will most probably translate it as “Daily SEO Tip”.
Of course, this method has the main disadvantage: most short meaningful domain names are already taken and it is too tough to find something worthy available.
Get the most out of your page title:
An extremely important aspect of the page title (already mentioned during our keyword-optimized title discussion) is that page title usually serves as the anchor text for the external links pointing to the page:
- Title is automatically picked up by social bookmarking services (and most users don’t care to change it).
- Title is what some people will use to link back to your post in their round-ups.
- Title is what many scrapers use to link back to the scraped page (and there’s some link juice there too).
- At last, title is picked up by CommentLuv WordPress plugin (and thus you will get even more benefit from commenting on blogs like this one).
So if you aren’t optimizing your page titles yet, you should probably start right now 
Mind your online moniker
If you are just starting, consider creating some descriptive nickname containing your keyword. A couple of well-known example from search marketing industry include UtahSEOPro, SEOAly and … well SEOsmarty .
People tend to link to someone other’s articles using the author name and constructions like “According to…”, “… said”, “… found”, etc. So an alternative descriptive moniker might also help in your targeted link building.
Any more tips to get at least some control over external anchor text of naturally acquired links? Please share them here!
Ann Smarty
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It is always good to try to get inlinks to deeper parts of your website. In that case, make sure that the Title of the web page for the link includes the keyword or keywords and preferably early in the Title. Others may well use that Title or a slight variant, particularly if your content is worthwhile.
Barry Welford’s last incredible blog post..The NOW Web From An Even Higher Place
most people link to the site using the domain name as the anchor text – this is so true !
emil’s last incredible blog post..If you judge people…
I am having trouble with just this! Cool post. I thought I had the perfect URL for my target keyword but people just use “Source” or something like that. The UFC/MMA blogs are VERY shiesty on giving links, and when they do use the anchor text I want of “The UFC Results” they usually nofollow it.
Not sure how to combat the nofollow
good post though. Thanks again!
Alex’s last incredible blog post..UFC 96: Quinton Jackson vs. Keith Jardine Poster
Noah | Business Development Reply:
August 27th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I wouldn’t worry too much about the nofollow; thats how I’d combat it. Sure, there’s debate up the wazoo about nofollow, but the fact of the matter is this. Nofollow still helps. Go do some tests and you’ll see what I mean. They might not be worth as much as dofollows, but they’re still helpful, so don’t sweat it too much.
This is good advice. Heck someone offered a link the other day with anchor text I desired for the site and they added another link with different anchor text above the link – as we know more is not always better!
David Dalka’s last incredible blog post..Barney Harford Now Orbitz CEO – Welcome to Chicago
@Barry Just learning about SEO. Why does keywords early in the title matter for SEO?
Duane Brown’s last incredible blog post..Having a Road Map will Lead to Success
Alysson (SEOAly) Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Hey, Duane. The keyword terms that appear earliest in the title are thought to have a greater impact on ranking than terms that appear later in the title (i.e. if a page targets the term dog food, having the title be “Dog Food – Natural and Organic Recipes” would be better than “Natural and Organic Dog Food Recipes”).
Alysson (SEOAly)’s last incredible blog post..Search Engine Optimization Jacksonville – Hometown Scams
Ann Smarty Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Thanks, Alysson. It’s great our readers can help each other when we are away!
Yes, the issue is that everyone links to me with “UtahSEOpro” instead of “Utah SEO Pro”. I’d much rather “Utah SEO Pro” so often times I email and ask them to change it.
BTW, can you change my link?
haha
Utah SEO Pro’s last incredible blog post..301 Redirects with Social Media – SMX West Presentation
seo bag Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
The good remark, Utah SEO Pro !
How you think, whether there is a difference between “seo bag” “Seo Bag” and “SEO bag”? And which link better?
Thank you very good
Properly optimized titles make for natural keyword rich links back to the individual page or post, like Ann notes above. A very good point – as if we needed yet another reason to make sure we optimize our titles properly from the get-go!
Alysson (SEOAly)’s last incredible blog post..Canonical URL Issues and Link Equity
I have a tip to add. Many times people that link to your will be people you know or know of. i.e. You know the blog owner that linked to your site or one of your articles. You can sometimes contact the blog owner and ask them nicely if they would change the anchor text slightly so that it might resemble a keyword or phrase that you are targeting. I have done this several times in the past with positive results. If someone likes your site or content enough to link to it on their own accord they will usually accomodate such a request.
I’ll give you an example when someone links to my site they might use sem-group.net which is an acronym and not really a term I am targeting so I might ask them if they can change the anchor text to something like “search engine marketing group” This will create better anchor text than if they had just linked using my actual domain name.
Gerald Weber’s last incredible blog post..Facebook’s BK Sacrifice App and 6 Other Examples of Brilliant Viral Campaigns
Gerald makes a great point. Not all sites that provide links understand the importance of Anchor Text. By simply asking a backlinking site to make a small change, you may also have a chance to educated them, and help them acquire more valuable backlinks for themselves.
Just ask, you could be doing them a favor!
@Alysson Thank you very much for the reply. That’s something I’ll have to start keeping in mind. Been doing SEM for the last 3 years and just starting to learn SEO. The differences are interesting and fun to learn.
Duane Brown’s last incredible blog post..Having a Road Map will Lead to Success
thanks.. nice informations.. very good.
very very good..
Great post and learned something new and interesting. It’s a complex process!!!
This is my first time comment at your blog.
Good recommended website.
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Hi,
Really nice, interesting and informative blog. Thanks for posting.
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How to control your sites external anchor text