A link is a link… right?

Webmasters and bloggers are always hungry for links to their blogs or websites. In this article, we’ll explore a couple of different linking tactics, and talk about the benefits of each one.

When someone links to your blog or website, they could do it in a number of ways. Here are a few of the most common.

• They could link with your URL, like this - http://www.chrisbloczynski.com/
• They can use your name as the anchor text, and it would look like this - Chris Bloczynski
• They could link to you with a keyword, such as entrepreneurship or internet marketing

Let’s take a look at why this makes a difference to you.

Linking with the URL as the anchor text… good.

Let’s face it… URL’s are not pretty. I mean, we’re all familiar with them, but you work hard to craft your writing and articles so that they look good, and dropping a long URL in the middle of a fine piece of text sort of muddies things up… especially when it’s in bright, beacon blue, drawing attention to itself and away from the copy you’ve worked so hard to create.

However, if someone is nice enough to link to you and they happen to use your URL as the anchor text, you probably won’t argue much about it. In fact, it would be rude and make you seem ungrateful for the link if you attempted to correct them. Linking with the URL isn’t a bad thing to do… it just isn’t the best way to go about it. You’ll still appreciate the fact that someone was nice enough to notice your writing and try to send some traffic your way.

When someone uses your URL as anchor text for a link, it doesn’t build much search engine authority for your site unless your keyword or topic is in the name of the article and you have your permalink structure set up in a way to display the name of the article. In fact, the main reason that you would arrange your permalink structure this way is to take advantage of exactly this type of situation.

Linking with the author’s name as anchor text… better than good.

Yes… it’s quick and easy, and who doesn’t want to be recognized by name? I do try to share links with my blog friends from time to time, and I’m sure that they appreciate me trying to give their latest article a little juice, but based on what I’ve come to learn about linking,

The fact of the matter is, when someone links to your page and uses your name or the name of your blog as the anchor text, you may not be building any search engine authority for your keyword or topic unless it’s specifically included in the name of your blog. Of course, you’ll then have all the authority for your name… which, if you’re Chris Bloczynski like me (or anyone else with a unique name), then building authority for your name isn’t exactly like leaping over a high hurdle. However, if you’re building a professional brand around your name, then you’ll want a handful of links that recognize you for who you are.

Linking using a keyword as anchor text… the best!

No matter who you are (if you’re a blogger, that is), you write on a certain topic or general idea. Your readers are probably able to guess, in general, what that topic is. Let’s say for the sake of this example that your topic is blogging. So, you blog about blogging.

So when someone links to your blog about blogging, they can do in any of the three ways I’ve talked about above… However, if they use a keyword as the anchor, then your friendly neighborhood search engine will take special note. The more links you receive with a certain anchor text, the more authority a search engine will likely assume you to have. If there are 1,000 links back to your blog about blogging, all with the keyword “blogging” as the anchor text, then your search engine will offer up your site in an authoritative position the next time someone initiates a search using the keyword “blogging”.

Why do I care about search engine authority?

Targeting search traffic should be a part of any traffic building campaign… it’s an extra stream of visitors that you would want to add to the streams you currently pursue, like from forums, comments on other blogs, and whichever other methods you use. If your site is optimized for a keyword, and your inbound links increase your authority because they have the proper anchor text, then the search traffic will come naturally to you.

If you’re soliciting links and you want to build search engine authority, then you’ll want to be clear about which anchor text to use when linking over to your site. Here are a few ways you can get good anchor text links.

• Paid reviews - If you purchase reviews from Review Me or any review service, you can specify which anchor text to use as the link when you design the review campaign.
• Reprint articles - Take a top notch article you’ve written and offer your readers the right to reprint it at their sites… with attribution to you as the author, of course.
• Guest post - Submit an original article to a site or blog that targets the same keyword and has more authority than you do, and include your author attribution with the key text anchoring the link back to your page.
• Ask your blog friends politely - They probably wouldn’t mind using your anchor text the next time they link to you.
• Submit an article to a distribution service - You can write an article on your key topic and submit it for distribution, and include an attribution to yourself as the author… no matter where your article is distributed, you’ll have a link there!

What can you do as a publisher?

If you’re a considerate blogger, you might add value to your outbound links by taking a moment to think about whether there is a topic or keyword that you can use as anchor text for your link. At most blogs or websites, there is an “About” page or a blurb on the main page that says what the topic is… why not use that as an idea for your anchor text the next time you link out?