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Anchor text - upper or lower case or mixture?
paulie69
Posts: 77
Joined: 06 Jun 09
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05 Mar 10 3:39 pm

Anchor text - upper or lower case or mixture?

Hi everyone,

I have a couple of questions about anchor text and case sensitivity.

Does anyone know if it's okay to capitalize the first letters of anchor text? Does capitalization matter in anchor text at all? As an example, say I have a site built on the theme of (yes, you guessed it!) dog training, where on the left hand side menu I had a keyword "Stop Dog Jumping". At the same time that same keyword is specified in the page layout (as in Xsite Pro), lower case only (I've heard its better to do this?) as "stop dog jumping".

Is it okay to use both forms as anchor text?
Indeed is it okay to capitalize the first letters of the keyword (as written on the LHS page menu) when the page layout keyword is in lower case? Does G see this as the same thing?

Basically should every thing be lower case or doesn't it matter (ie mix it up a bit, upper and lower case versions).

Thanks - hopefully this make sense ;)
Paul.
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wollowra
Posts: 869
Joined: 14 Mar 08
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06 Mar 10 12:34 am

 Hi Paul,
There are mixed reports all over the net about this.
I found one good article that explains this somewhat on Ezine..
http://ezinearticles.com/?Google-Case-S ... id=1060466

I did a Google search on.. ( Hot summer ) then again without the lower case ( hot summer ) and got some 'small' but different results on 2 front page listings.
Google has always said that case sensitive text does not matter, well my search proves different.
I am going to test this myself with Headings and anchor text as they may show up different.
I am not going to sweat over though, there is much more to SEO than case sensitive keywords.
If anyone else has some results post them here so everyone can discuss it.

Regards
Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
smuigal
Posts: 75
Joined: 13 Feb 09
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06 Mar 10 4:00 pm

 Hi Paul,

I remember going through the same issues with my XsitePro sites. I think I started out with the caps and then read that no caps was better which bummed me out.

Long term success will not be focused on how your page urls are created. So don't "sweat the small stuff" as they say. The only thing I can think of as to why it is good to have no caps is for when people want to return to your site and think... hm... now what page was that?
    http://mydogsite.com/Page.html
or
    http://mydogsite.com/page.html
The second version is easier and you don't have to tell people to "remember" to cap the first letter.

The key to building traffic is going to rest on your off-site efforts of backlinking. Good site structure is important, good on-site seo of course, but you can still rank high for keyword phrases that are not in the title. They say it is harder, but it happens all the time. Adobe ranks at number one for the keyword term "click here". The title of the page is Adobe - Adobe Reader and the domain name, clickhere.com with the title of the tag having Click Here in it as well as the domain name being, clickhere.com doesn't outrank Adobe due to the huge backlinks that go directly to Adobes download page.

I would personally keep it consistent. Regardless, I wouldn't worry about it. If you have no traffic and your site is not ranking or listed, hey, just make that quick change in the structure for consistency and start working on your backlinking.

Changes only hurt for a while. I changed my page title at some point and it took three weeks for Google to put my site back where it was. I was really upset there for a while, but it did come back. It's a pain and a worry to see your site dip or completely disappear for keyword phrases you worked hard to rank for, but if you need to make adjustments, just remember that it is ok to do so, you may lose some traffic for a while, but it will come back.

:)
Chrisi
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wollowra
Posts: 869
Joined: 14 Mar 08
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06 Mar 10 11:37 pm
smuigal wrote:
Long term success will not be focused on how your page urls are created. So don't "sweat the small stuff" as the say. The only thing I can think of as to why it is good to have no caps is for when people want to return to your site and think... hm... now what page was that?
    http://mydogsite.com/Page.html
or
    http://mydogsite.com/page.html
The second version is easier and you don't have to tell people to "remember" to cap the first letter.


Great Points Chrisi.

Regards
Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
paulie69
Posts: 77
Joined: 06 Jun 09
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07 Mar 10 2:50 am

 Hey Troy and Chrisi,

Thanks guys for your fantastic advice, it's helped me a lot and also helps to restore my confidence somewhat! I really appreciate it :)

Kind regards
Paul.
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