Is Anchor Text Less Important To SEO Now?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

An article by Patrick Altoft on Blogstorm seems to indicate that perhaps Google is placing less emphasis on keywords in anchor text and looking more for natural links.

The article raises some interesting points and if the situation is true, it could have a major bearing on search engine optimization and the way we try build links to out pages. I can understand his point where he feels that Google:

wants to show the most relevant and trusted websites at the top of the search results but anchor text has no relation to trust for most queries.

The argument he uses however, is fairly narrow using people’s names. The problem with anchor text in general is that it is used by both trusted sites trying to link intelligently to other sources, and by those who are trying to amass links with only keywords as anchors. Anchor text in itself does not imply trust, however, search engines, particularly Google, have enough information on sites to determine whether or not the link is to be trusted or not. Anchor text provides the contextual link that can then be associated with search queries.

I wrote a post not too long ago, the real power of anchor text, where we pointed out how Adobe ranked number one for ‘click here’. This is a common term associated with Adobe and not one that would be optimized by them. Checking today, they are still ranked number one for that term.

In a natural link building program, you are going to receive links in a variety of formats. There will be links to the domain name and root page. There will be links to page URL’s. There will also be links where ‘here’ is the anchor. Good search engine optimization practices should allow for a variety of anchors in links with the more powerful links carrying the best anchor possible.

If his observations are true, SEO will need to undergo a rapid change in procedures and many links will require re-evaluation. Until there is further evidence to the contrary, aim for a balance of anchor texts in your link building activities.