Links matter for SEO. A lot.
Most marketers understand that links to websites count as “votes” on the web. Google — and other search engines — use these votes to rank web pages in search results. The more votes a page accumulates, the better that page’s chances of ranking in search results.
This is the popularity part of Google’s algorithm, described in the original PageRank patent. But Google doesn’t stop at using links for popularity. They’ve invented a number of clever ways to use links to determine relevance and authority — i.e. what is this page about and is it a trusted answer for the user’s search query?
To rank in Google, it’s not simply the number of votes you receive from popular pages, but the relevance and authority of those links as well.
The principals Google may use grow complex quickly, but we’ve included a number of simple ways to leverage these strategies for more relevant rankings at the bottom of the post.
1. Anchor text
In the beginning, there was the original PageRank patent[1], which changed the way search engines worked. It talked about anchor text[2] a lot:
“Thus, even though the text of the document itself may not match the search terms, if the document is cited by documents whose titles or backlink anchor text match the search terms, the document will be considered a match.”
In a nutshell, if a page links to you using the anchor text "hipster pizza[3]," there's a good chance your page is about pizza — and maybe hipsters.
If many pages link to you using variations of “pizza”— i.e. pizza restaurant, pizza delivery, Seattle