msdanielle – just another ego blog site

No, Google operators aren’t the folks who answer the phones at Google headquarters. Google operators are the commands you enter in the Google search bar when searching for particular web site data, like finding out how many back links you have, or which pages in your site include the words “make money online.”

Two of the more popular operators are:

link:
“The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “link:” and the web page url.”

site:
“If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the “site:” and the domain.”

“site:” can also be used to check for particular keywords within your site pages and return only those results, like [site:www.msdanielle.com make money online]. In this case, there are three pages indexed in Google with keywords related to making money online. You get the picture…

But there’s one other Google operator that I like to use that isn’t listed in their Operators page, and that’s the query modifier “allinanchor:”

“allinanchor:” returns the sites that have specified anchor text pointing back to their site. To clarify, I’m going to use my other blog PinkDeals as an example.

PinkDeals is an online coupon and deal site that I author on the side, and it’s targeted toward women like me. If I do a natural search for “online coupons” in Google, my site pretty much doesn’t show up because there’s an enormous amount of competition, and it’s a highly untargeted keyword phrase. However, if I do a natural search for “deals for women” my site appears as the fourth search result (Woohoo! Sorry, had to do that…). PinkDeals appears below DealNews, WomensDeals, and JudysBook.

Now, let’s take a look at the query [allinanchor:deals for women]. My site comes up number one! Yowzas! If and when PinkDeals gains significantly more back links and posts with “deals for women” in its anchor text, it could pass up the top three. (This is where I shamelessly beg for back links. Please link to www.pinkdeals.net for positive karma points. Or you can link to it and I’ll give you a back link from this post. Just leave me a comment to let me know. Preferred anchor text includes “online coupons for women” or “deals for women”)

Anyhow, this is an example of why anchor text is so important, and how it helps your site rank higher in natural (i.e. organic) search engine results for specific niche markets. But if you want to see an example of how powerful anchor text is for other larger markets, run a check for “allinanchor:make money online.” You’ll see John Chow is second, right below Bidvertiser, a fairly large and really crappy advertising network. His ranking is most likely due in large part to his recent back link promotion. Running an “allinanchor:” check for keywords that you’re targeting will help tell you the popularity of your site for particular anchor text phrases relative to your competition. If you’re nowhere to be found in the organic search results for your targeted keywords, you better start putting more of them in your anchor text!

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