Title Tags and link exchanges I just got a link exchange request, where the requestee was a legal site, and was asking for a link title of "Colorado DUI Gunslinger".

Links are, of course, what makes the internet work. Link titles, or link text, which is the piece of text attached to the link, like this, is critical for Search Engine Optimization purposes. The link text tells the search engine something about the page when the link is crawled, and is a vital part of what is known as page reputation. Page reputation is one of the more important factors in how a page is ranked in the search engines.

For example, if you search for news on google or yahoo, you'll find CNN.com ranked at number 1 or 2 (sometimes the BBC site outranks it). Why is this, you ask? What makes CNN one of the top ranked news web sites? It's not due to "on page" factors, like having the word news repeated many times in the text of the page. CNN.com doesn't even have the work news in the Title Tag, which is probably the single most important on-page factor.

Nope, it's all about the text links. There are thousands, if not millions of site that link to CNN.com with the word news in the link, just like that. Every link is like a vote for how important a page is, and what that page is about. And CNN gets a lot of votes, and the search engines count those votes as one of the most important factors in how sites rank.

There is an entire industry of text link brokers that has sprung up to service this need. People buy (or more likely, rent per month) text link ads on pages with high pagerank to enhance the page reputation of a certain page for those specific keywords.

Therefore, choosing your link text is a very important decision, whether trading links with other sites, or in choosing the menu navigation on your own site. It makes no sense to choose words that aren't the most important and relevant keywords for searches to that page. In the case of the link request mentioned above, I'd say it's a safe bet that there aren't many people searching for a "DUI Gunslinger" on google. A "DUI lawyer", or "DUI attorney", you bet!

Labels: seo

 

posted by Dave Matson at 9:53 PM