Optimizing Your Website - Using anchor text on internal links
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Be sure to use keyword-rich anchor text. You may not have much control over how other people link to you, but you definitely can reward your own content with keyword-juicy internal links. Example:
<a href="example.html">your keyword here</a>
Use keywords that are similar to the page title. If for example your page title is “Sport Nike Running Shoes,” then the anchor text of a link to that page should look something like “nike sport shoes.” There’s no need to be exact in the anchor text, but it’s important to include your targeted keywords. Try to vary anchor text throughout the site to look more natural.
Search engines are after high quality, valuable, natural pages, written for humans. Too much SEO may alarm search engines, so try being as natural as possible.
Alt tags and images as links
Stay away from image links if possible. If not, then include your targeted keywords in image ALT tags, as those serve as anchor text in image links.
Example:
<a href="example.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="your keyword here"></a>
DO NOT stuff the ALT tag with keywords. It doesn’t work; it will alarm search engines, which might possibly flag your website for human review. If humans spot keyword stuffing in ALT tags, then you’re likely to be banned from the index.
Some web surfers use software that reads ALT tags out loud, and I doubt your visitors would be happy to hear “running sport shoes from nike, nike shoes, nike running shoes sale, buy shoes, buy sport running shoes” etc…
Yahoo and Google employ human quality raters, so watch out.
Broken Links
Broken links are a signal of low quality. Not only do visitors get intimidated, trust your site less and leave, but search engine spiders cannot continue indexing your site past a broken link. Links are like rails for spiders. Break a rail and the train stops. Break a link and spider stops.
You can check for links using Dreamweaver or the free Xenu Link Sleuth program.
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