Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A HREF = opportunity for increased page rank

Search Engine Ranking is a bugaboo to most folks. How exactly do you improve your blog rank without paying someone to artificially inflate your statistics or have your blog become a link farm?

Link popularity is determined by how many websites link to your blog or website and how relevant the links are to the content of your site. Google uses a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

Site Rank Magic Formula = (IL x SR x RL) / UL

Site Rank is equal to the number of Incoming Links to your site multiplied by the Site Rank of linked websites multiplied by the Relevancy of Links to your content, divided by the number of unrelated links.

This is NOT the algorithm used by Google, but it illustrates the process of page ranking. Incoming links are not THE answer to site rank. The rank of the sites that link to you IS important, but the relevancy of those links to the content of your site is MORE imperative.



Below is a reprint of an article from my Professional Writing and Editing page on CoolAdz.com.

Contextual Keyword Anchors

HREF is an attribute of the anchor A and specifies the URL targeted by the link, defining the anchor into a link.

As a webmaster, I have seen these words a million times. However, I never made the important connection that anchor text could be used to describe and promote the receiving web page as well as guide and help users of the originating web page.

Writers of web content should provide contextual clues as to the destination of any link on their site. Each anchor on your website is an opportunity to make your site more accessible and to enhance the value of your contextual links to other pages.

Using descriptive anchor text addresses the issue of accessibility. Most assistive devices like screen readers bypass traditional methods of navigation and go directly to the content and provide a list of hyperlinks on each page. Imagine you are surfing for information on a topic and you hear the anchor text, CLICK HERE, over 10 times on one page. Would this be helpful?

There is a bonus to adding descriptive key words to anchor text. The relevance of the page containing the anchor text is enhanced and the relevance of the target page in relationship to the keywords is enhanced as well. Use anchor text to provide contextual clues when linking to another site or to another page within your site.

Look at your web page or blog and note each anchor. Think of how you might edit each anchor to enhance the experience of visitors to your site as well as provide a link to more information.

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