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Use the right link structure for
high search engine rankings
You probably know by now that inbound links play a major role in getting high search engine rankings for your keywords in Google and many other search engines, but if you aren't using the proper link structure, you aren't getting the maximum ranking benefit from those links. This article will explain the most effective way to structure your inbound links.
Introduction
A typical link has three components:
- Link anchor text - This is the "clickable" part of the link.
- Description - A short text snippet that describes the page being linked to.
- URL - The actual URL of the page being linked to.
Each of these three link components plays an important role in the linking process. We'll describe each in detail.
The link anchor text
As stated above, this is the "clickable" part of the link. It is extremely important to have your web page's most important keyword or phrase in here.
Keep the link anchor text as short as possible! Never use the website name or any other generic term like Click here for your link anchor text. If you do, you're pretty much wasting the value of the link.
Instead, use a search term that you want the page to be found for, something like Large Widgets. This helps boost your page's link popularity (and search engine ranking) for the term large widgets.
The Description
Try to keep the description as short as possible while still making it long enough to entice the user to click the link. Contrary to popular belief, longer isn't better when it comes to link descriptions.
Don't try to target more than two keywords or one keyphrase with each link. Just one keyword or phrase is actually best. Your goal is to get the page ranked as highly in the search results as possible, so using a long list of keywords in the link anchor text and description is self-defeating (it dilutes the keyword density of the link).
Place your keywords or phrase as close to the beginning of the description as possible (close to the link anchor text). The keyword / phrase in the description "reinforces" the keyword / phrase in the anchor text. The closer they are together, the greater the ranking benefit. It also helps to repeat the key phrase one time in the description.
The URL
As with the link anchor text and description, it helps to use a keyword or keyphrase in the page's URL. If you use more than one word, don't run them together or separate them with underscores. Use dashes instead:
Incorrect:
www.example.com/largewidgets.html
www.example.com/large_widgets.html
Correct:
www.example.com/large-widgets.html
Why? If you run the words together or use an underscore, the page will only be found in the search results if someone were to search for the term written exactly that way.
No one would search for largewidgets or large_widgets so your page would never be found. They would search for "large widgets" or widgets. The dash (hyphen) tells the search engine to treat the search term as two separate words.
Conclusion
Here is an example of a well-designed link for search engine ranking purposes (hover the mouse over the anchor text to see the URL):
Large Widgets - Handcrafted large widgets. High quality large widgets at a great price!
If you'll take the time to carefully develop your link structures in the manner recommended above, you'll end up with high-ranking web pages and lots of targeted traffic!
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