Welcome to Part I of Edition No. 20 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Highlights from Friday’s updates:
A Game-Changing YouTube Feature
Free Web Version of Photoshop
‘Snapchat Plus’ in Development
Contents
I. Tip: Filter Tweets by Language
II. Analysis: How To Choose the Right Anchor Text
Tip: Filter Tweets by Language
When would you want to filter tweets by language?
Journalists: If you’re searching for reactions to, or sources for, a particular topic – especially something that’s internationally relevant – use this to find users who speak your language.
Marketers: This will help you filter what people are saying about your brand/product in regions that typically speak the language you search. It could also be a great way to find leads related to a particular topic, product or industry.
Simply add "lang:en" or "lang:es" (or whatever two-letter abbreviation corresponds to your desired language) without the quotation marks to any Twitter search.
Did you find this tip useful? Share it to help spread the word.
Analysis: How To Choose the Right Anchor Text
Anchor text is a word or phrase on a webpage that is linked and can be clicked. It’s also a factor in Google’s search algorithm.
So how do you decide which exact word/phrase to link to when writing content?
The first thing you need to know is that anchor text is a signal to Google (and other search engines) as to the topic of the linked page. There are several types of anchor text of which to be aware.
With the context in mind, here are some steps to guide you in choosing anchor text:
Linking to a Homepage or Summary Page
In this case, a branded link text is probably best. Some examples:
If you’re linking to The Guardian website, you would want the name of the news site to be the anchor text.
If you’re linking to the Wikipedia page for Tom Hanks, you could use his name.
Linking to More Specific Pages
Usually, though, we’re linking to pages with more specific content, and not just a high-level brand name. In this case, we need to “summarize” what’s on the other side of a link in a few words or less.
Anchor text should be brief, and while there’s no hard and fast rule, I think anything more than five words is usually too much. How often do you type searches of more than five words into Google? Occasionally, I’m sure, but it’s probably the exception and not the rule.
In 99 percent of cases, you don’t need to do research to choose your anchor text – just use common sense. But if you’re fairly new to the concept and want to understand it a little better, do this exercise.
Consider the anchor text you want to use to link to a particular web page. Again, this should be roughly the same as what someone would type into Google to find the content.
Now, put that actual phrase into Google. What comes up? You may not see the page to which you’ll be linking show up on the first page. You will, however, find the top organic search results for that particular search term.
These are the pages that Google, based on previous searches and lots of data informing the algorithm, deems most “useful” to users who search for that term.
While the page to which you want to link may not have shown up in the results, you should be able to gauge whether those that do are similar. If that is in fact that case, then you have chosen a solid anchor text word or phrase.
For example, when I search for “best coffee shop in new york”, every page-one result is a listicle, all of them with at least 10 cafes, and others with many more.
I now know that users are looking for lists with lots of different options when they search for “best coffee shop in new york”. And that, my friends, is also known as “search intent.” That is, knowing what a user is “intending” to find when they search for a particular keyword1.
What Effect Does This Have on SEO?
What does all this have to do with organic search traffic?
Well, every time someone uses a particular word or phrase as anchor text for a particular link, it’s basically a “vote” on Google as to what that content’s about.
You can do this for both internal links – that go from one page to another on your site – as well as external, outbound links. You cannot, however, control the anchor text other sites use to link back to you.
If you’re curious and want to check what pages are linking to your site, use the Ahrefs Backlink checker tool. (By the way, that link right there is a perfect example of common-sense anchor text without having to do any research.)
It will not only show you who is linking to your pages, but the anchor text they use to do so. (There is a limit to the number of results the free version will show you, but it’s still useful.)
Now get linking.
See you Friday for a practical analysis of the latest news in the world of digital content strategy.
A “keyword'“ can be multiple words