When linking to other sites, or to other pages within your own site, it is very important to use the most descriptive anchor text possible. Many new webmasters and bloggers just use the words “click here” as their link. This is a mistake.
Google places a higher weight on linked text when it spiders a page. This is why Text Link Ads (aff) advertisers are allowed to choose their own text when linking to their site. With the exception of the SEObook (aff) and Local Search Watch, none of the link advertisers used their company name. For example, Financial RealTime used the anchor Stock News And Quotes and Premier Tax Online used Taxes Prepared Online By CPA.
The main reason link advertisers do this is to rank for their anchor text search terms. Take the case of Cognos with their Business Intelligence link. A check of the Overture keyword selector tool shows there were 53,334 Yahoo searches for that term last month. A search for Business Intelligence shows that Cognos is ranked number six on Google and number four on Yahoo. Judging by the amount of Adwords and Yahoo Search ads on the search results, I say that “Business Intelligence” is a very high priced term. Therefore, you can imagine the value of being listed for free on the organic results.
Now this is all well and good for Cognos, but how does it help me? Well, Google rewards you for using descriptive anchor text as well. Take the case of my review for linkback offer. If you do a search for johnchow.com, you’ll see that all the top results linked to me with descriptive anchor texts. Not one site use “click here” for a link. The best example would be Value Wiki.
While it is very easy to link to something with “click here,” the chance that you’ll rank for that search term is zero (unless you’re a PR10 site like Abobe, Apple or Real.com). Because of this, you should always use a more descriptive anchor text link. This goes double if you’re deep linking to pages on your own site. By constantly using the term “Review My Blog” when linking to my blog reviews, I beat PayPerPost.com for that search term.