Anchor

We talk a lot about links around here, both internal links and inbound links.  In today’s Introduction to SEO webinar, SEO Linking Essentials:  How to Generate Inbound Links, Travis got into the nitty-gritty of the process.

Anchor text is a little like the outlet that links plug into.  If your outlet is poor, you’re not going to get good performance from your link because it won’t have reliable power.  Using your carefully-chosen keywords as anchor text for relevant inbound links gets the amps flowing.  As tempting as it is to write copy for your site that tells people to click here and here, it is much better to give them an idea of where they are going, say, Grand Canyon or Great Barrier Reef.  That way you don’t lose your visitors and you don’t confuse the crawlers.

Just for fun:  anchors.

What a lot of spiders! They must like it here!

Why should I bother to read your site?  There are so many sites out there and I really don’t have time to look at yours.

Good question.  Both human and crawler visitors want to know.  Answering that question with your content is the big task of content writing.  Fortunately, our latest webinar in the Introduction to SEO series, Copywriting for SEO:  The Art and Science of Content Creation, provided insight to our audience today.

To begin, you need some attention.  Great titles for your articles attract readers, but they won’t stay long if that’s all you have on offer.  Spiders, much like people, get impatient and bored with the same old stuff.  Give them a compelling subject underneath that great title, and they’ll stick around.  It’s even better if you make it funny, educational, engaging, or all of the above.

However nice it is to have folks sticking around to read the content you’ve spent so much time and energy creating, it’s not enough.  You want them to DO something while they’re with you.  Ensuring that there is a call to action—a link to click to download a white paper, perhaps—up high on the page helps to turn casual visitors into actual leads.

Finally, write like a human, but keep an eye on the spiders.  Spiders understand a lot more about context than they used to.  They will be able to get the gist of what your content is about, much like your human readers.  Using your keywords in your content makes spiders notice them and subsequently improve your rankings for them.

The answer to why I should bother with your site?  Because it’s fascinating, timely, relevant, useful, and often really entertaining.  And I don’t mind all the spiders it attracts; I don’t have arachnophobia.