Does Link Text Influence Organic Rankings?

Last Updated: 29 September 2016 By Mike Haydon

I was asked the following questions recently:

1. Does obtaining links for the term “Blue Widgets” (plural) help your rank for the term “Blue Widget” (singular)?
2. Does link building for the terms “Dark Blue Widgets” or “Light Blue Widgets” help your rank for the terms “Blue Widgets” and “Blue Widget”?
3. Does building links for your domain “BlueWidgets.com” help your rank for the term “Blue Widgets”?

These are fairly popular questions, and I am asked them on a regular basis. Here are my answers:

1) Yes. It is always better to try to rank for a plural of a term, because it also relates to the singular of the term. You can go the other way and optimize for singular, but think about what you are trying to offer. For example, would people be more likely to find your site relevant if they searched for computers or computer? How about cell phone or cell phone? Or Aesop’s Fables or Aesop Fable?

2) Yes. Adding extra words to your link building strategy can be a great way to increase your rank for the base keywords as well as the extended keyword phrase.

3) Usually not. The search engines look at “BlueWidgets.com” and see “bluewidgets com” (two words). Use one of the “how a search engine spider looks at the page” tools. I like www.seochat.com personally. If your domain name was “blue-widgets.com” and you did some linking with just your domain name in the anchor text, then the search engine would see it as “blue widgets com”, and it would go towards your rank for “blue widgets”.