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Link building is the bread-and-butter for any SEO firm. Links are one of the largest metrics Google uses in determining where your website ranks in its search results. However just getting a link to your site is not always enough. Your linking strategy may not take in to account anchor text, which was recently shown on SEOMoz to be the most important part of a link. Anchor text, in essence, is the clickable text that will take you to another website. If the link was a boat, the anchor text is, well, the anchor. It is what the link tells the user, and the search engine, you will be finding if you click it. Here are a few tips to help use anchor text more effectively:

1. Take Advantage of Internal Linking

Internal linking is the easiest place to effectively use anchor text. On your own website, you get to choose exactly what anchor text is used, and where it points. Do yourself a favor, and use keywords in your anchor text. Don’t waste your internal links by saying “click here” to see our SEO services. Use this as an opportunity to say “also check out our Utah SEO services!”

2. Use Article Submission/Blog Posting

Here is another golden opportunity to choose your own anchor text. If you are going to write an article for someone, might as well use this as an opportunity to grab a link to your website as well. Once again, since you get to choose your anchor text, try to use anchor text that has one of your keywords in there. Don’t say “click here”, unless you are trying to rank for click here. Not surprisingly, Adobe ranks #1 for the word click here. Why? Because anytime someone needs to download adobe flash to watch a video, the link says “click here” if you can’t view this! Well, don’t try to compete with adobe for a worthless term. Use your anchor text in articles to show Google and users exactly what you are relevant for.

3. Don’t Worry About Always Having Perfect Anchor Text

Naturally, not all links to your site are going to have perfect, keyword targeted anchor text. That is ok. While you do want to use targeted anchor text as often as you can, it will still benefit your site to get a link that just says your company name, or your web address. Surely you want to rank for those terms as well. It simply looks more natural to Google if you have a mix of anchor text.

Anchor text may be one of the most often overlooked, and underused part of link building. But SEO experts understand the value of anchor text, and they are the people getting the full amount of value from their links.