You may have all heard of the infamous case where a search on Google for the phrase "miserable failure" led searchers straight to the biography of President George W. Bush. The technique which accomplished this was a Google Bomb. The technique is very simple, but effective – and the search engine method behind it can be very useful for your website.

The Google PageRank algorithm puts a very high degree of importance on anchor text. If a large number of sites link to a page using a particular anchor text, that site is construed to be highly relevant to that phrase and the words within it. The theory is that a site will link to a page using a phrase which effectively describes the site. This theory can be used very effectively by ethical and unethical SEO companies alike.

It is important to keep in mind that the Google Bomb technique has little effect on very common terms – you will not be successful at creating a campaign to take the first position for "television". A phrase must be reasonably unique to succeed as a Google Bomb.

The point of this article is not, of course, to encourage you to run out and acquire links to your site using unusual texts – it’s to encourage you to think carefully about anchor text when requesting a link. A common mistake is to accept links which are merely the domain name of the site – google.com, or which contain a common linking phrase such as "Click Here" following the unlinked text about the site. These links, though still indexed, are next to worthless. Google wants to deliver highly relevant results to it’s customers, and that means they need every piece of information they can get to analyze your content.

Choose your anchor text wisely and you may receive much better results for your preferred keywords.