The Anchor Tag: Another Great Keyword Tool

In this article series about keywords and their importance in your overall marketing strategy, let's talk about some "off-page" optimizing.

What is the difference between "on-page" and "off-page" optimizing? Well, on-page is the keyword tool we've already discussed in prior articles.

· Listing your keywords in your meta tags
· "Peppering" your keywords throughout your content and in your HTML code
· Making sure your keyword density is not too high to be considered "keyword stuffing" which may cause your site to be grey-listed by the search engines (causing your site not to be indexed or served up in the search engine results).

"Off-page" optimizing is what you do with your keywords to tell the search engines that OTHER sites think your site is an authority in your niche market.

These "other sites" that link to you increase your popularity rating, or Page Rank, and give you more preferential treatment when being listed in a keyword search result. We do this using a keyword tool called the "anchor tag." It's not as blatant as "brown-nosing," but the results are the same.

Let's say you have a site that promotes your pet store.

You've done all the on-page stuff you've learned, and made sure your keyword density is just right.

Now that we've tightened up our site and made sure the search engine spiders will eat up your site, we need to start getting some links TO your site. This shows that others care about what you are saying about your pet store, as well as value the content of your pages. And it also is a great way to get some natural traffic coming to your site.

One very effective keyword tool is to use articles such as this one to increase the awareness of your site, as well as draw traffic to your site. Ah, but this keyword tool does one very important thing: it tells the search engines that your site is known for whatever particular keyword phrase you use in your article.

What is this great keyword tool to which I'm referring?

It's called an Anchor Tag, and it is a very powerful little tag.

It only has one job…to tell the search engines about this link you're referring to (in this case, the one to your pet store site). This is the tag that will probably have the greatest impact on what keywords your site will develop a reputation for.

How does it work?

Well, any time you are on another web site not your own, and you link back to your web site, (the underlined text people read and click on is the Anchor tag), you're telling the search engines that URL is known for whatever the underlined (hyperlinked) text says.

A perfect example of getting a reputation for the wrong keywords because of the anchor text is Adobe Acrobat. Do this: right now pull up another browser, and do a search for the keyword phrase "click here." Who is the top website served up for that phrase? And, how many pages have that keyword phrase in it? Over 6 BILLION!! Poor Adobe Acrobat is best known for the anchor text "Click here" which has NOTHING to do with its product!

So, you can see what a powerful keyword tool the anchor tag is. What do the links back to your web site say? "Click here" or "Visit us" are anchor tags you really do want to avoid! Besides….I don't think you could ever compete for top billing on the "click here" keyword!

In subsequent articles, look forward to discussing another keyword tool and other strategies using that tool.