The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google’s search results.

For example, if many people use the text “buy blue widgets” to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase “buy blue widgets” in Google’s search results.

The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

<a href=”http://www.example.com“>this is the link text</a>

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:

1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel=”nofollow” attribute don’t pass the link text to Google. Example:

<a href=”http://www.example.com” rel=”nofollow”>great keyword</a>

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won’t be able to index the link correctly. Example:

<a href=”http://www.example.com “>great keyword</a>

In this example, there’s a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.

Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google’s Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won’t consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/page.htm“>great keyword</a>

The web server redirects “http://www.example.com/page.htm” to “http://www.example.com” with a 301 redirect. In that case, it’s likely that Google won’t use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:

<a href=”http://www.example.com“>This</a> is an example. The link text <a href=”http://www.example.com“>great keyword</a> will be ignored by Google.

The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is “This”. The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.

If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/page1.htm“>This</a> is an example. The link text <a href=”http://www.example.com/page2.htm“>great keyword</a> will be ignored by Google.

Links are the most important factor when it comes to getting top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

How can you get search engines to display the web pages with the best conversion rate in the search results and what can you do to to make sure that unwanted pages are not listed?

Depending on how your website’s navigational links are structured, some pages can get higher rankings than others. Here are eight things that you can do to guide search engines to the most important pages of your website:

1. Make the web pages easy to find

Make sure that the most important pages on your site can be reached with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more important is that web page.

2. Link from your own pages to your own pages

The easiest way to get related links to a web page is to link from your own website. Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all pages of your website that are related to that page.

3. Use the right keywords in your navigational links

If you want to see a certain page of your website on Google’s first result page for the keyword “blue widgets” then the links that go from other pages of your website to that page should contain the keyword “blue widgets”.

This does not guarantee that the linked web page will be listed for that keyword but it increases the relevancy of the page for the keyword.

4. Use absolute links on your website

Do not link to mypage.htm but to www.yoursite.com/mypage.htm. If other people scrape your web page contents, you’ll get backlinks from these sites.

5. Use the nofollow attribute

Add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren’t important for your search engine rankings. For example, your privacy policy page or the web page with your terms and conditions probably needn’t be listed in search engines.

6. Remove unnecessary links

The fewer links you have on a page, the more important is a single link to another page on your site. Remove unnecessary links from your web pages.

7. Exclude irrelevant and duplicate pages from indexing

Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing. If search engines don’t have to parse your unimportant pages the other pages of your website will get more attention.

8. Recover lost pages

Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages on your site.

Optimizing the links on your own website improves the position of your web pages in search engines. In addition to optimizing the links, you should also optimize the content of your web pages to make sure that Google and other search engines list your website for the right keywords.