context of anchor text?

[australian]

Let's say my product is a "bright widget" and I want to create a contextual link. I've seen 2 ways people do this in a blog post. One way is an unobtrusive "casual" way where the product is insinuated into a post, like this:

When I wear bright clothes, I enjoy walking around with my bright widget and enjoy the refreshment my widget provides.

The other way is more direct and "up front," like this:

If you are wearing bright clothes, you should check out this bright widget website because as far as widgets go, it's great!

So my question is, are the search engines smart enough to tell the difference? If so, I would think the 2nd way is better because it's up-front and less manipulative in appearance (whereas the first way seems really manipulative).

Or do the search engines not even care at all...

What are your thoughts on this?

[dburk]

Hi australian,

Between those two examples I doubt that search engines would make any distinction. It's your blog, you can post whatever you want.

There will be a difference when you use poor quality text, due to the Panda series of updates, and the text near the link can sometimes influence the relevancy score. Google does not reveal exactly how the text near your anchor influences the relevancy score, but you can see this influence by submitting different versions of the page to the AdWords keyword tool and observing the sort order of the relevant keywords.

[gameutopia]

I don't think it matters too much if you are interlinking to your other posts or pages. If you are talking about an advertisement to another site or program sometimes you need to be careful with the wording just to abide by the terms of the program. Like adsense you aren't supposed to say hey check these out.

[australian]

Thanks for the two excellent replies! I should have prefaced my question by mentioning that I do 'guest blogging' from time to time, so I can use either method.

I just didn't know if the search engines are that discerning as to "intent" of the context (and if one type of "intent" would be given more "juice" or not).

[samual james]

Both example play same role in eye of search engine but 1st one looks genuine in eyes of users

[vvsingh]

Even though it is an emerging science, the idea of search engines paying attention to the mood, emotions and attitudes of web content can’t be ignored. I read about it on a blog post on Quick sprout. The links is
6 On-Page SEO Strategies That

[dburk]

Originally Posted by australian

Thanks for the two excellent replies! I should have prefaced my question by mentioning that I do 'guest blogging' from time to time, so I can use either method.

I just didn't know if the search engines are that discerning as to "intent" of the context (and if one type of "intent" would be given more "juice" or not).

Hi australian,

Yes, you are on to something that is true, but probably not in the way you seem to perceive it.

The basic assumption inferred in your question seems to be a one-size-fits-all answer, but the truth is a little more sophisticated than that.

Google does look for searcher intent and try to match that to results. However your assumption that one form of text would be better than the other, fails to recognize that some searcher's intent match one set of text while another searcher's intent matches the other version of text. So for some keywords, the first version of your text would be a better match toward the searcher's intent, while other keywords may indicate the second version of your text as a better match toward that searcher's intent.

The bottom line it that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to your question. Context matters, the answer varies depending on the context.