Member Avatar for staminet

Hi All

I'm a little confused with how to optimize my website for Google etc.

If i was to advertise on a website via a text link, if my keywords where say 'hosting' would i need the word 'hosting' in the link that points to my website. If yes, is this what anchor text is all about.

Regards
Staminet

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by fromthe5

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Short answer first: anchor text is a real signal, but use it the way a human would — descriptive, concise and natural rather than stuffed with exact-match keywords. For editorial links (links placed because a site genuinely recommends your page) meaningful anchor text can help clarify what your page is about; for paid/advertising links the publisher should mark them appropriately (see Google guidance). (developers.google.com)

A few clarifications tied to the thread: is right that anchor text historically helped rankings, but over-using exact-match anchors is now risky. is correct that related words matter — modern Google systems understand synonyms and topic context — but the SEO buzz term “LSI keywords” is misleading and not how Google’s current systems work. Google now uses neural/ML systems (neural matching, RankBrain, BERT, MUM) to match queries to pages, so write to cover a topic clearly and naturally rather than “sprinkling” an LSI list. (searchenginejournal.com)

Actionable checklist (practical, low-risk moves):

  • Use concise, descriptive anchor text that fits the sentence and tells users what to expect; avoid generic “click here.” (developers.google.com)
  • Vary anchors across links (brand, partial-match, descriptive phrases) so your profile looks natural.
  • If you buy text links or run sponsored placements, ensure the host uses rel="sponsored" (or nofollow) and don’t treat paid links as your primary SEO plan. Google treats large-scale keyword-rich guest/link campaigns as link-scheme risk. (webmasters.googleblog.com)

Focus on useful content and relevant, editorial links. That strategy still beats trying to game anchor text alone.

Member Avatar for rflournoy@golfh

Bingo... the basic idea is to use keyword phrase in your anchor text... It's a good idea to vary the text and to not stuff keywords. The idea is that a surfer would click on your link b/c the descriptors were pertinent to his/her interest.

Member Avatar for sarika_mosaic

Hi All

I agree to the point and want to add something

As you must be aware of the semantic web, to make the site semantically strong, we make use of other words related to the keywords in Anchor Text, Alt Text, in Content etc, so as to make it semantically strong.

You need to find and incorporate the semantically closer words to your content. This will help user to not only search for your specific keywords but also for the related words.

I hope my point is clear.

Thanks

Member Avatar for fromthe5

Hmmmmm.. yes. Semantics. Scientific American says: By augmenting Web pages with data targeted at computers and by adding documents solely for computers, we will transform the Web into the Semantic Web.
The situation here is such that you're not optimizing your pages for computers. You're making web pages for people. People will enter keyword phrases into the search bar and the search engine will find the most relevant pages according to it's algorithm and present them in order starting with the most relevant. You need to target specific keywords that you think your perspective customers will use to find you. "Web hosting" is a pretty competitive phrase so you need to use a sharpshooter's rifle instead of a shotgun. Don't go for more than a few phrases per page when optimizing or you will likely dilute your effort. In your link text use those few targeted phrases only. (One phrase per link text) Link text keywords, like titles, can also be diluted so don't make them too long and involved. For more keyword phrases use more pages.

Member Avatar for sarika_mosaic

Web pages are optimised for search engines so that they rank our pages on top for people to see.

In today’s traditional search approach, when a user types a keyword for searching, the search engine searches through its collection of document for the typed keyword, it checks for the exact typed keyword in all the documents and returns only those documents which contained it and ranks it on some ranking algorithm.

Words which are same in meaning but spelled out differently would be totally ignored in the Search results (SERPs.) Plus the results retrieved would have 50% sites which are totally irrelevant to the search query.

To address this important issue of presenting only relevant search results, Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI was proposed as a new improved method of retrieval system.

Member Avatar for fromthe5

Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI was proposed as a new improved method of retrieval system.

I agree that it's a great idea and it might someday be the norm, but for today's optimization it isn't going to get you any good SERPS.

Member Avatar for sarika_mosaic

The process has been started and Google is slowly adopting this.

Member Avatar for fromthe5

The process has been started and Google is slowly adopting this.

If that's true it's real news. I hadn't heard that. Can you give me the source of your information?

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