SEO Explained - Page 15
Anchor Text, Paid Links & Traps

The importance of Anchor text

When the Search Engines evaluate these links to your website, they not only examine where the link comes from, and the PageRank™ of the site/page linking to you, they also review the text that is used in the link. This text used in the link is called the “Anchor Text”. A link in the format

<a xhref=”http://www.nikesneakers.com”>Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Bob’s Sneakers</a>  

....when displayed on the screen looks like this:
Nike Sneakers & Running Shoes, Bob’s Sneakers

This is ideally what you should aim to achieve ie anchor text in the inbound links which contain your primary keyword phrases. Many sites (directory sites, forums) wont allow the use of anchor text, but it’s still worth a generic link to http://www.nikesneakers.com but if the site in question will permit it, then use of anchor text in the link is the best approach and will help your SEO ranking.

Who should you avoid for linking?

Sites which are offering links on a page which itself contains hundreds of outbound links are not really worth posting to. Most directories segment their content into pages which do not contain too many links on each page. If you see a “links” page which has hundreds and hundreds of links – avoid it for link building.
 
Any site that you see engaging in SPAMming or keyword stuffing i.e. where keywords are gratuitously duplicated to try to game the search engines, should be avoided too.

Paid Links

Paid links can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website. Google tend to discourage this practice, but the reality is that it can still work well for some websites. There are companies who help find paid links like:  http://www.text-link-ads.com/ , and some directories offer premium listings for a fee.

As with reciprocal linking, a good guiding principle to use is to consider whether people visiting the site from who you might purchase a paid inbound link – are likely to be the sort of people who would be interested in your product or service. If they are, then it may well be worth paying for a link. Usually you wouldn’t purchase a link from a site unless it has a good page rank itself, therefore ensuring that it’s likely to have a reasonable source of visitor traffic – and therefore likely to refer traffic to you.

In the next section we’ll explain how to check who is linking to you, which is a good way to measure your progress in link building.

Page 16 - A SEO Healthcheck of your website