What is anchor text? Take a look at this simple demo web page created in Front Page.

The underlined blue text above is called anchor text. You see such text links on nearly all web pages

This is how the HTML code looks to create the above page I have highlighted the anchor text in red. The link text is highlighted in blue.

<body>

Our Demo web page

<a href="http://www.practical-water-gardens.com/">Focus supply the world's

best water features</a>

</body>

</html>

Google differentiated itself from most search engines when it was first introduced by taking into account not only links text and anchor link text on the web page itself but also anchor text and links text on incoming links to that web page. This approach needed a great deal of computer processing power bearing in mind the vast number of links compared to web pages.

Google knows for every link the source web page and the destination web page and it records these data for use in SERPs information.

There was a distinct advantage however in taking specific notice of the backward link in so much that the link back to a web page was often not under the control of the web pages designer. On this basis alone it was more difficult for a designer to manipulate the SERPs results. As time proceeded however it became possible to spam this backward link system in many ways and the power that PageRank held has to some extent at least been negated by the spam techniques used.

Despite the spam the concept of back-linking to your website remains an absolute key to high rankings. Getting lots of links is far more important than on-page optimization. Just make sure that they are from valid sources.

We are ethical South African search engine optimization practitioners based in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Internet marketing efforts in South Africa are still in their infancy. Search engine marketing and search engine positioning is built around 3 basic concepts - organic search engine optimization, optimizing for PPC (pay per click) campaigns and site functionality. All three areas must work together to succeed.