By effectively using links in your blog posts, you create a win-win-win situation for your readers, your fellow bloggers, and yourself. Learn how to make your links the best possible with some expert advice.
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I liked your post Ive never engaged in a speedlink post but having read yours, I can see that they are a nice way of reaching out – thanks again for the mention.

It’s always nice to be appreciated and valued. Good linking does just that.

I’ve just linked through here in a recent post, with anchor text that I hope is suitable.

Nothing inherently wrong with linking by blogname, Im just saying that if you wanted to, you could go that extra 10 yds and make it that little bit more relevant.

The mixing up of anchor text thing. Well, again just a personal opinion but if you think of it in terms of not everyone searches in the exact same way then you’ll begin to appreciate the benefits of mixing up the anchor text. Seo in Hitchin isn’t the same as Hitchin SEO or Seo Consultant in Hertfordshire or Hertfordshire SEO etc. By varying it, then overtime you’ll improve your scores on these Kw’s too.

Another side point too is to think in terms of natural linking patterns and avoiding things that might be viewed as blatant link text manipulation. If every single keyword into ones site was the same over and over and over, then it *could* be viewed as a possible attempt at trying to exploit the algorithm for that singular phrase and *could* result in some kind of negative.

I’m just wondering, though, “mixing up” anchor texts as you mentioned. Wouldn’t it be more effective for a blog to concentrate on just one set of anchor texts in order to maximize the number of links to it rather than have the links spread out among various anchor texts?

Thanks for stopping by

I guess it would depend on whether the keywords within the anchor text are parsed and individualised and what kind of weight is applied as a result. Personally were I search engine looking to apply maximum use of such terms, I would apply more weight to an entire phrase within a link and less to individually parsed words.

Consider this:

Baa baa black sheep have you any wool: A Nursery Rhyme.

If these words are contained in their entirety within a link, then a search engine could make a judgement that the page to which they pointed to might just be about the nursery rhyme. You could determine this perhaps by using other pages that referenced a similar line and if you wanted to be really clever, look at say the title tags and heading tags to draw some kind of meaningful conclusions.

Now if those same words were individualised and enough people used similar strings then would that same page also be relevant for terms like ‘black’ or ‘black sheep’ or wool’ or ‘nursery’ or ‘nursery rhyme’ or ‘rhyme’?

For me it would have to be a no, because to do so would be to attribute incorrect context and would ultimately weaken relevancy.

All that said of course, from a visual human perspective, I dont see anything inherently wrong with using things like say, ‘robwatts: link baiter’ or ‘robwatts: SEO’ etc as to the reader it adds a little bit more to who they are reading and what they might be about. As you pooint out though such an approach might well piss people off, especially amongst the blogging community who could well see it as an unwelcome commercial intrusion.

For example, since I write about personal development, I could sign using “Frédéric Panek :: Personal development”…

However, the article stated as well that this method was considered annoying and sometimes even offensive when abused.
I remember reading a post whereby the author warned his users to not use such method or he would edit the names without prior notice…

Cheers,

Yeah, I hear you on the trackback thing and absolutely agree too. Somethings amiss with my install somewhere as for some reason posts are not sending them, even though I have it enabled as an option – which is kinda sucky! I really need to get it sorted.

Glad to hear Ive been added to your reader

Will be checking out some of those vids on your site over breakfast tommorrow.