The second big mistake I made in promoting our website was not including the text that I wanted people to use to link to my site. At the time, I didn’t even know it mattered.
The reason it was such a big mistake is that other webmasters put whatever they wanted to for the link text. So instead of optimizing our site for good keywords like “dinosaurs for kidsâ€. Our site was not optimized for any keywords, except “dinosaur time machineâ€. Since then I have managed to optimize our site for better keywords (we will discuss this more later). The bottom line is that when you ask for reciprocal links from other webmasters, be sure to make it clear what you would like the anchor text to be (Note: they won’t always put in the text you ask for).
Also, be sure to vary the text you ask for between two or three keyword phrases.
Some of the the top Search Engines have caught on to the commonly used technique of using the same “anchor text†to raise your search ranking and so it appears as though they might devalue sites that are linked to with the same anchor text over and over. I don’t believe this has happened yet, however, some SEO experts do. Due to this possibility, before you start exchanging links with other sites you should choose two to three keyword phrases to use in the “anchor text†that people can use to link to your site. For example for our dinosaur website, I might have people link to my site using the following anchor text variations:
“Dinosaurs for kidsâ€
“Dinosaur Toysâ€
“Dinosaur Gamesâ€
Some SEO experts recommend including the same keywords in your anchor text, but different variations of that text. For instance, for our dinosaur site, if we were targeting the keyword phrase “dinosaur for kids†we might use the following three anchor text links:
“Dinosaur website for kidsâ€
“Dinosaur for kidsâ€
“Dinosaur Time Machine for kidsâ€
Either method is a good method of varying the text you ask for in your reciprocal links. Since Search Engines are always changing, it is possible that at some point in time varying your text will be very important. On the other hand, there is no way of knowing for sure.
There are many different theories among SEO experts as to what is the percentage of links with the same anchor text that will devalue the anchor text used to link to your website, but at this point there are only theories. So it’s best to remember to use two to three different “anchor texts†when asking for a reciprocal link. The only really good exception to this rule is when your website name contains your keywords. For instance, the official name of my website was “Website Promotion Bookâ€. Since the official name of the website contains the search terms it should not matter whether or not people always use the same link text to link to my site. Although, even in this case it makes sense to vary your keywords.