I’ve had some talks with some real knowledgeable SEO guys; guys who make a living providing SEO services…
And yet…. There’s still experts disagreeing with each other on some fundamentals about SEO.
Do links from irrelevant sites work towards building your rankings?
YES ( I opine) , but some seo gurus say it’s not effective in building rank trust or increasing your relevancy in the search engine’s eyes, since you’re getting votes (links) from sites that aren’t carrying any “vote-weight”.
Some people say that it’s not the site giving the link that matters, but the conteXt, ie. conteNt surrounding or adjacent to the anchor text that matters, so when people join a blog network and they see that their syndicated articles are on an “about nothing” site and their content is placed in the Uncategorized category, or some other category like Business, they tend to think that they’re not getting relevant good links.
Most experts DO agree on this, though with conventional wisdom stating that it’s the text surrounding your anchor text that matters most.
Varying your anchor text, yes or no?
Should you vary your anchor text or not?
Terry Kyle says no, just slam that url with the same anchor text over and over again, the URL will eventually rank for long tail keywords even if you don’t do any backlinking using long tail keywords in your anchors.
Angela, from the (in) famous Angela’s links packets club agrees, too, saying that she’s seen results just from using one anchor text only for certain urls, and I can only assume she’s getting ranked for the long-tail keywords that are part of that content page as well.
Read between the lines here, though, think deeper on this….
What’s the real keyword competition like for some terms? In my opinion and experience, the harder a term is to rank for, the more variety of anchor text you will need in your backlinks, because your competition is doing heavy link building for that term, using that exact anchor text.
So if your niche is registry cleaners, and you’re hoping to rank for the term free registry cleaners, then you might have an issue ranking for the term free registry cleaners if your competition is getting links for that exact phrase.
However, if your competition isn’t getting any backlinks to a url using that anchor text, then you could stand a chance of ranking for that aforementioned term using singular anchor text links, if your on-site optimization backs it up (ie. those words free, registry, and cleaner are on that url somewhere)
Another example: Let’s say you built a blog, and entered in some home page keywords in, some of which are long tail keywords, then you will get ranked for those sub-main-keywords if the competition isn’t building links using that anchor text, too. But my site you’re on right now isn’t going to rank well for the term link building tips just from using anchor text like “link building” if there’s other sites out there already ranking for that term and have multiple anchor text links with the long tail keyword in there.
So I disagree with Terry and Angela on this one, but we could both be right, it’s just a matter of reading deeper into the whole equation of what’s being talked about.
Show me a site or url with singular anchor text links to a certain url that out-ranks other sites or urls that have lots of inbound keyword-specific anchor text links for this same particular phrase (long tail)and I will change my mind.
And if I do see an example from someone like this, all I can say is, you could have ranked higher, faster and better if you varied your anchor text (assuming there’s some real competition for the term/keyphrase etc….) and most of your energies went into linking for your main keyword which is great, but seo and link building has to have an emphasis on the ROI of your campaigns.
I’d much rather, see real results quickly by linking and ranking for the higher-converting keywords first, using dedicated anchor text so I/we can at least see some results sooner rather than later, and by results, I mean you get ranked for long-tail high-converting terms before you rank for the generic terms, and you’ll also start getting some page 1 traffic, albeit for lesser searched-for terms.
Anecdotal evidence, small tests…
I had several sites that frankly, I thought were never gonna rank for a certain term, at least not for a while but someone told me I was page 2 for a certain term for my main keyword on one of my sites one day so I took a look and decided to ramp up my linking to keep the momentum going.
MY sub-main keywords weren’t ranking that well either at this time so I varied my anchor text for my campaigns and the rising tide lifted all boats, so to speak; the main keyword hit page 1 in a few weeks after I ramped things up, my sub-main keywords did, too.
So, is this my way of saying that I do, in fact agree with Terry and Angela?
No, not really, as I deemed the rise in the SERPs for these multiple terms to be a result of getting traffic for the long tail terms, which then make my site deemed by the search engines to be more like what my main keyword is. In the meantime, I totally forgot to include on one my other sub main keywords in my linking campaigns and it wasn’t ranking anywhere in the top 15 pages, just a brain-fart there, but it was actually a good thing, because it proves my point.
I was page one for 1 tough term, 1 competitive term, and one long-tail term, but the associative keyword that was also part of my keyword-rich domain name wasn’t ranking for this term at all, not until I built links to it using……specific anchor text.
So, there was NO uplifting in the SERPs for this forgotten and competitive term when I was already page one for an associative, more competitive and generic term, but it seems to me that being ranked for 3 terms out of 4 made it easier for the 4th term to rise in the SERPs since those terms were associative, and already doing well in the rankings.
UPDATE:July 14th, 2010
Just got a site to page 1 for 3 word phrase with the 3d word in the phrase being plural
Singular version of this term not in first 10 pages, can’t get more related nor similar than that, now can we?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Daniel, I know there are times you will rank for KW that you don’t target. Is there any software that will detect these KW for you?
Yup, sometimes that does happen, but those terms are either not competitive, or those rankings are easily beat
Case in point, I’m ranked #2 for this term, but who cares
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en___US377&q=ric+confusion+chapter&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
I started one of my sites with a singular keyword phrase domain name and battered it with anchor text as the plural was much tougher for a new site to rank for. Got to Nr 1 pretty quickly for that as everyone else seemed to be ignoring it, then I optimised the site for the plural plus all the other major keywords and switched the anchor text to reflect.
I also used loads of variations including mid-sentence like “this site keyword keyword” and “here for keyword keyword” – I had just read something about making links look natural which is what prompted a lot of zany anchors – whatever I did worked and I have had a lot of success with that site and it now ranks number one for all major keywords in its niche even though there are more authoritative sites.
But, you need a quick switching backlink builder to do it as manually it is mind numbing. 1600 random links from completely unrelated sites proved enough and it is still at number one 6 or 7 months after I switched to another project.
A quicker way of getting to the top is by using Goole Places, it’s much easier to manipulate than the organic results.
Did you try using Russ’ software for manipulating Google Places results? I heard it works really well…