Readers: During the last year, I have gotten ?virtually? acquainted with SEO specialist, Matt Morgan. I love the way Matt simplifies a topic that is challenging for most of us. I?ve invited him to be a regular guest columnist at Blogging Bistro, so expect to learn lots of practical search engine optimization tactics from Matt throughout 2013.
Today, Matt tackles a question many of my readers ask about:
When you embed a hyperlink in a blog post or in any web content, should the anchor text for that link include the phrase, ?Click here???
Matt?s answer may surprise you!
By Matt Morgan
Guest Columnist
Website trends, blogging best practices, search engine optimization, and the internet itself evolves so quickly, it?s important to review your current initiatives and strategies as frequently as possible. This article can serve as an updated?hyper linking?strategy for 2013.
If you currently blog to promote a product/service or are considering blogging as part of your online marketing strategy, this is a must-read. When writing a blog article, it is common to hyperlink to another website from within your blog post. It?s a great way to link out to a resource, give credit to another blogger, as well as increase your search engine rankings. However, certain hyperlinks can actually hurt your website?s search engine rankings.
Increasing your search engine rankings with backlinks
As an owner of an SEO company,?I?ve?recognized that link building is responsible for 70% of a web page?s rank or position in the search engines. Basically, a web page is ranked by Google based on the number of hyperlinks from other websites that point to that web page.
The quality of those links is also a major factor. Links coming from high-quality websites will provide much more weight, or ?link juice,? than links from low-quality, or ?spammy? websites.
Bloggers and SEO companies know that link building is a very effective strategy to increase search engine rankings for targeted key phrases. If a web page has lots of links pointing to it with the targeted key phrase as the ?anchor text,? then the search engines will assume that web page is relevant to that term and display the web page in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
What is anchor text?
The visible text in a hyperlink is called ?anchor text.? For example: I want my company website to rank for the key phrase website optimization, so I will try to get as many links pointing to my site with that exact anchor text.
Google?s Webmaster Guidelines
You might have heard of guest blogging as a link-building strategy. I enjoy blogging on my own website, but when I offer my blog to another website, like BloggingBistro.com, it?s considered a guest blog post.
The guest blogger?s content provides valuable tips for the readers, keeps the blog fresh, and in return, the guest blogger can obtain a link to their site with ?anchor text? that matches the key phrase they are trying to rank for in the search engines.
Google has recognized that SEO companies are guest blogging with the intention to manipulate the search engine rankings with exact match anchor text backlinks. This tactic violates Google?s webmaster guidelines.
In an effort to reduce the amount of web spam, Google released the Penguin algorithm update in April of 2012. The Penguin algorithm seeks out websites that have a massive amount of backlinks with the exact match anchor text and can penalize the website, sometimes removing it completely from the search index. Ouch.
What does this mean for guest blogging as a link-building strategy?
Guest blogging is still a viable and effective link-building strategy. You can still build links that point to your site with anchor text matching your targeted key phrases.
However, the trick is to keep your backlink profile diverse. You will want to make sure that less than 50% of your backlinks have exact match anchor text with the targeted key phrase. When you are blogging and building links, try to create a natural backlink profile by varying the anchor text in your links.
Here are a few examples of the types of anchor text you can use as an alternative to your exact match phrase that will help diversify your backlink profile:
- Use a variation of your targeted key phrase
- Hyperlink your company name (this will help with your branding too)
- Hyperlink the full web address URL instead of using anchor text
- Use call-to-actions (ie. Click here, Visit my blog, or Learn more)
You might have also read tips that discourage the use of ?click here? or ?read more? as they do nothing to increase your rankings. Search engine algorithms change daily. As of the date I am writing this article, it is recommended by the Google team to use those phrases. It?s the natural way to hyperlink.
Google will still credit your site and pass pagerank for links with that anchor text. Of course, you want to focus on getting quality backlinks with your key phrases in the anchor text, but keep it diverse with the alternatives listed above.
Who should be worried about a Penguin link penalty
If your blog or website is pretty small and you are still building your readership, you do not need to stress about your backlink profile. I hope I haven?t scared you 
Focus on your targeted key phrases.
Popular websites and blogs that get a lot of traffic should be aware of the Penguin algorithm and ensure their backlink profiles are diverse. Chances are, companies that have a huge following have hired an SEO company or are guest blogging in an effort to increase their search engine rankings for specific key phrases. If your website has thousands of backlinks, then it?s time to review your backlink profile and ensure it is diverse.
Reviewing your backlink profile
There are many online tools available to review a website backlink profile. My favorite is the Open Site Explorer by SEOmoz. With this tool you can review all of the links that point to your website and it will show the anchor text for each link. I could go into serious detail about backlink profiles and tools, but we?ll leave that for another blog article.
Do you have a question about SEO?
Post your question pertaining to search engine optimization in the comments or email it to Blogging Bistro and we?ll address it in a future article.
Matt Morgan is the founder and CEO of Optimize Worldwide, a web design & SEO company based out of Northern California. Matt writes for numerous SEO blogs offering tips to help companies gain more online visibility in the major search engines through post panda/penguin website optimization, content marketing, and creative link building strategies. Offline Matt enjoys enduro motocross riding, networking with like minds, and hanging out with his wife Holly.
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Source: http://www.bloggingbistro.com/the-search-engine-friendly-way-to-use-hyperlinks/
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