Tiny Change that Puts me on 1st page in Google...

Today even 6 year old kids know that content is the king of Internet. If you have good and relevant content, search engines will find your site faster, people will visit this site more often, and you will be enjoying targeted traffic.

The most popular strategy to get a wider publicity for your website content is article submission. Perhaps you already tried this. If not, go to any search engine and submit keyword 'article' or 'article submission', and you will see tons of pages dedicated to articles and their submission.

Like many others, I also tried article submission for my website, and was effective. But under the harsh article flood on the market today, it is not that easy to get your website to the top of search engines. I already started to feel blue about article submission, and then it struck my mind...

I tried it, and now I am on the 1st page in Google for my keyword with over 71,600,000 competing pages!!

For those who do not know what is anchor text I will give a brief explanation.

If you put website URL in the text, this URL will be clickable. This means when your point mouse to this URL, you can click it and get forwarded to the site page indicated in URL. Perhaps you noticed that sometimes you can see a simple text which is linked to a special URL. The text does not have any http://... in its body, but when you point your mouse to this text, you see that it's linked to URL. Clicking on this text will get you to the page indicated in the URL to which this text is linked.

So, anchor text is a simple text that is linked to URL with the help of HTML code. In other words, anchor text is hyperlinked text like this Your Website Name

Anchor text isn't new to Internet marketing at all, and I was really amazed why changing simple http://... in my articles to anchor text got me to the Google top. After asking some questions on Internet marketing forums I got the explanation.

Today most of the search engines count heavily towards ranking of your website using anchor text. If you use the keyword or keyphrase of your website as the anchor text and link this text to your website URL, search engines will gulp this info faster and will rank you higher on this keyword/keyphrase. And now imagine that you have submitted your article with proper anchor text and URL to some article engines - they will distribute it worldwide. You will get hundreds of pages where the anchor text will be increasing your rank for any keyword you put in this anchor text.

In my case, I had many articles that were already submitted to article directories. These articles got indexed by Google, having some PR. I just changed the info in article resource box, i.e. put anchor text instead of simple http://... You see: one little change gave me lots of pages with PR that had my keyword and my URL! Within few days I got on the 1st page in Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, AllTheWeb and AltaVista for my keyword.

It worked for me, it will work for you too.

Surely there are more tiny tips how to squeeze more from anchor text, but disclosing everything in one article isn't smart. Search on this topic, and you will find many useful things to get ranked higher with anchor text strategies. -freetraff

Grand revelation....
Where do you submit articles too? Do you do it manually or is there a service or program that "blasts" them out? -sandiego

I used toppers like http://ezinearticles.com

But there are lot of nice article submitters. -freetraff

Plus I am coming up with my article tool to the market soon. If you wish, I can add you to the list of those who will be the first to get it. -freetraff

I'd be interested in it. I am "new" to ezine/articles...But do fairly well in understanding SEO techniques and this is one I haven't tried yet. -sandiego

Sandiego, there is a list of sites to submit your articles to on this thread: http://www.salespractice.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257 -SalesGuy

Why is that? -SalesGuy

Search engines like anchored text. I don't why but Google and other SEs pay attention to anchored text. And when the anchored text matches with your site name or the title of the page (if you can't match it with site name), then search engines see more relevancy in it and rank you better.

So, when people run search engines for the keyword that is anchored, they will find your text+link. The better rank you have, the higher you will be in the list of found results. -freetraff

In order for them to see the anchored text in your articals, they have to be published on a page that will be indexed or cached by the engines though.... giving you a targeted one way link to your site (which is better then other techniques in the eyes of the engines)

-sandiego

You are right. But getting published now is easy: lots of article directories that have nice PR. This is exactly what I described in my article. I already had articles posted on pages, I just changed the resource box.

But now I am posting with anchored/hyperlinked text in resource box, and it also works. -freetraff

Why will search engines "gulp this information faster" if you use anchor text?

Almost all of the articles I see on the Internet use a resource box with a link back to the author's website. Are you referring to something else? -SalesGuy

I don't think that is literally what he meant. They will not read or scan the page faster because there is anchor text, but anchor text will be beneficial to your rankings in the search engine. Plus if you write an article with anchor text back to your site, the search engine now goes to your site from that article as well to "gulp" the info on your site...

-sandiego

No, it's not that they gulp anchored text faster, they gulp your keyword faster when it is properly anchored. Hence your keyword gets gulped faster - thus you get more traffic on this keyword.

Plus, a lot of resource boxes don't have anchored text, they have just simple URL.

P.S. Thanks, sandiego, when I was writing the answer, you got my idea explained :) -freetraff

Why is that? -SalesGuy

No one knows for sure why search engines choose one tactics and put it ahead another - this is the big SE conspiracy :)

But the choice with anchored text is quite reasonable. Anchored text is not like simple text, usually people emphasize on something that is really important. So SEs give this text a priority.

Plus SEs like ranking different combinations of parameters like: anchored text + URL + words in the URL + the title of the page given in this URL. When all these match, seems like it is much better for SEs. -freetraff

That makes sense. On the other hand I can't see why a search engine would "gulp your keyword faster when it is properly anchored." -SalesGuy

Oh, that's easy. Imagine you have your keyword 'bla-bla' in the article body and the anchored text. Your article may have 3,000 words, SEs can go through them, but why indexing the whole bulk? Just imagine how much info they will have to process with zillions of new articles! That is why (I am not 100% sure) they focus on some major elements: header, meta data, first and last paragraph, anchored text and some other.

Surely the algorythm of checking the content is not stable: it changes all the time. But seems like at the moment my strategy works. So, I decided to share it with the others. Maybe you will give a medal for it or Nobel prize (I can take both). -freetraff

I'm not a search engine specialist so no prize from me but definately a "Thank You" for sharing. :) -SalesGuy

No problems. You are welcome.

I see you are good about recruiting people to this forum (forum stats). If you wish, we can do some affiliating for my new tools. I can give you exclusive commissions. Up to the moment I am selling only one tool (made by my programmers). But before Christmas I will come up with one more (hot thing) or even 2 (I am not sure about the 2nd one if I manage to get it ready before Christmas).

Just a suggestion. -freetraff

I haven't actively "recruited" anyone. Every once in a while someone will ask me where he/she can find information on learning to sell so I recommend a book (or two) and this forum. Doesn't everyone do this? :) -SalesGuy

I've noticed not all article sites allow you to use html coding in the article. Is there a way around this obstacle? -RainMaker

No. But still if you found the proper category, submit there. Too much is not bad, just remember about the quality.

Plus, mostly the web sites that do not allow HTML coding are free. -freetraff

Do you mean this is a free article submission service or the place where I can get free articles? -freetraff

I read that as send a blank email--get an article on the subject of article marketing. Correct me if I am wrong. -RainMaker

Sorry I posted an email address which I just realized does not comply with the rules of this forum. Contact me privately and I will give you the address of the free report on article marketing if you wish. Sorry to the moderator. Al. -Guerrilla Marketer