A good ranking on Google requires two things, good content and great links. But it is not a uniform division. Because Google assumes that only a page with good content would get great inbound links, it places around 70% of the importance for ranking on links and only around 30% on content. That little detail will only put you above all the competitors who are still messing with META tags and spam keywords. But if you want a huge advantage over the rest of your competition, read on. I’m about to show you how the pros do it and win every time.
Part 1: perfect your anchor text
So what is anchor text and why is it important? Anchor text is the clickable word or words that make up the hyperlink. You’ve seen the anchor text a million times (the underlined words are usually blue). Google believes that any word special enough to be used as a guide in a link is very valuable, which makes anchor text extremely important for you to use correctly.
How powerful is anchor text? More than most people dream of. Try an experiment. Go to Google and search for “click here” (without quotes). The main coincidence for years has been an Adobe Acrobat Reader page. So that Adobe page has “click here” copied 50 times in the text? No. In fact, “click here” doesn’t even appear on the page once! Do you have “click here” embedded in your META tags? Not; again, not even once.
So how can you possibly rank first on Google for a term that you don’t even reference? Due to the thousands of web pages that use “click here” as anchor text it links to Adobe’s free download of Acrobat Reader.
By the way, did you realize how many pages Adobe outperformed for a term it was never optimized for? Almost two billion! So yes, I have to say that anchor text is extremely powerful.
Part 2: Build Consistency in Links
Most people don’t realize that although http://www.Wikipedia.com and http://Wikipedia.com lead to the same Wikipedia home page, Google sees them as two different links. Let’s go one step further. If you keep the “www” and lose the “http”, you have another link that goes to the same place but is treated as unique by Google.
Everything said; Be as consistent as possible when requesting links. Find a format and stick to it. One hundred inbound links to the exact same URL is much better than 25 links each, using four different URLs leading to the same location.
Part 3: PageRank leads to page rank
Google’s PageRank algorithm can make or break your search engine optimization efforts and plays a big role in ranking your web page. So, PageRank and page rank? Here’s a tip to end the confusion. When you see the word “PageRank,” it refers to a trademark name owned by Google. PageRank is a unit of measurement that Google developed and uses to determine the value of a web page. When you see the words “page ranking”, we are simply talking about how a web page ranks or ranks in a search engine for a given keyword.
So how does it work? Google considers a page with a GPR of 6 very important, while a page with a GPR of 0 is not so important. If you get links from high GPR pages, you will create your own PageRank. If you get links from non-GPR pages, they can still help you, but they don’t give PageRank any additional credibility.
A higher GPR leads to greater credibility with Google and possibly to becoming what they consider an “authority” that can literally double their top locations. To see what I mean, google “cats” (without quotes). Match number 1 is Wikipedia.com and it refers to small furry felines. Match number 2 is also from Wikipedia, but it is a Broadway musical.
And that? Notice how that second match is indented? That means it was not meant to be number 2 and it could actually have been number 10, 16 or more. But since Wikipedia.com is what Google considers an authority, it has little bumps like this. Pretty cool, huh? And trust me, you don’t have to be Wikipedia to become an authority. Everything you need is in this article. I have done it many times.
There are different ways to view the GPR of a page. If you don’t already have it, visit Google and download its “Google Toolbar”. It will show you the GPR of any page on the web.
Part 4: Use the best tools
Last but not least, SEO is like anything else, if you use the best tools for the job, your results will be faster, better, and longer lasting.
In the past, search engine optimization professionals and do-it-yourselfers had to do everything by hand. It took forever and a simple mistake could mean weeks of work down the drain. However, today there are many software tools to help get the job done in a faction of the time. Just find the BEST for what you want to achieve.
For our particular needs, we were looking for an app that could help us link and build our “authority” status and check the progress of the ranking. Over the past six years or so, I have used almost a dozen software programs that claim to be the best. Some were pretty good. Others were a waste. The one I recommend most often to my SEO seminar students is SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) because it gets amazing results and is one of the most affordable options at $ 167.
Even if you’re not ready for a tool, you might want to check out the link above and read some of the video tutorials. They show you how to find “authority” link partners, get special information about anchor text, and how to better spy on your competition.
That is all for now. Good luck and keep it up!