Comments on: What Is Anchor Text and Why Should You Care?

By: Lance Warley

Lance Warley — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:57:04 +0000

Thanks for the great tips, Lauren.

By: Bruce Hirsch Beach Portrait Photographer

Bruce Hirsch Beach Portrait Photographer — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:03:28 +0000

Lauren:
Great article and I am enjoying the SEO Workbook.
Also did you know that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie?
Thanks again!!

By: Simon Brown

Simon Brown — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:46:59 +0000

A useful post. We’re too often pushed these days to “keep the word count low and language simple”. For some things this works but out in the real world it too often shoves out detail and diversity. Things it appears are as essential in SEO as good books.

On Milton’s point about IPTC captions populating the ALT tag. I’m using a template site from PhotoShelter and am happy with the system. The ALT tag describes the image, so does the caption. Populating automatically like this seems an ideal solution for an essential and repetitive task. Perhaps I’m just naturally lazy.

I’m also unsurprised that apparently few people use the manual customisation. I’m competant with CSS and HTML and realise how big and complex a job it is.

PhotoShelter recognise they are here primarily to serve photographers. We want to get our photos out there quickly and effectively, without having to learn or hire in web programming.

By: Milton Barber

Milton Barber — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000

@ Allen: A somewhat off-topic reply, Allen. I did not call into question using the IPTC Description as the default. I did suggest a simple addition that would let manual customization users have more control. Nobody would feel that PS’s usability had been compromised if you added one parameter to one widget!! (This kind of addition is, after all, something you have been doing regularly anyway.)

By the way, I would certainly have guessed that more than 1% of PS users use manual customization.

By: Allen Murabayashi

Allen Murabayashi — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:13:47 +0000

@Milton: We’re trying to balance automation and usability. I agree giving very granular control would be ideal, but for 99% of the users, populating the ALT attribute with the image caption is accurate.

By: Wesley

Wesley — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:22:45 +0000

Interesting post on a critical component to gaining search rank. I know it’s meant as a primer, but it’s worth mentioning the importance of anchor text diversity.

Once you identify the terms you wish to rank for, and set about building links from credible sites that incorporate relevant anchor text (great advice on how to ask for these, by the way), try to create variations on the anchor text phrase. By doing so, you avoid the risk of ‘over-optimization’, which is a great way to lose rank.

There are very thorough posts on this subject that you can find pretty easily, as well as a good discussion within Google’s support forum.

And, of course, anchor text only works for your business when people seeking your products and services search using your targeted terms, so do your research!

Thanks for the post, Lauren.

By: Milton Barber

Milton Barber — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:56:40 +0000

I find it kind of interesting that you hype the use of the ALT attribute in the tag, but Photoshelter gives its users no control over what appears in their ALT attributes. Photoshelter blindly puts the IPTC description there. A parameter to the [[image]] widget would permit the users some control.