My test results on backlinks

% of keywords in anchor text

[Drum]

My site has hit the Google "filter" and is number 160 for a pretty competitive kw phrase (it was #7 before Florida). So I decided to test why I am #160 by just looking at the back-link anchor text to my site. I used ATW for research in finding the back-links.

I have 158 back-links for my site and here is the breakdown of how the anchor text is used (what is displayed in the anchor text):

Company name 41%
URL 23%
Banner 2%
keyword phrase - company name 20%
keyword phrase 14%

So then I decided to look at what is number one for that keyword phrase (26 backlinks, same PR as mine)

URL 58%
Company name – keyword phrase 42%

So then I looked at number two (163 back-links, same PR)

Company name 24%
URL 21%
Banner 26%
company name - keyword phrase 24%
keyword phrase 5%

I did two more sites and I noticed the trend was that % for “company name - keyword phrase” decrease as I went down the list.

I thought to myself maybe it has to do with order of the keyword phrase:
“company name - keyword phrase” (does this do better?)
“keyword phrase - company name” (does this do worse?)

So then I found another site like mine that has the “filter” applied too. (This site was ranked 250 with similar PR and 89 back-links).

keyword phrase - company name 98%
keyword phrase 2%

So I am coming to the conclusion that if you are going to use keywords in anchor text of your back-links you should position the "company name" or something else before the keyword phrase.

Has anyone else noticed this? I know there are a lot of other parameters at play here, but I thought this might be one small part of the puzzle.

[ds98127]

yeah,
i have seen that as well (in travel .. kindly edit if required..thanks) and decided to name the website in a way as to incorporate the copany name and the keyword and company preceding keyword.
If yu look only at external links i came across this figure for a good optimization
company name 12% roughly
company name with main keyword 30%
focus keywords ( broad range) 50%
broad spectrum keywords 8%
if company name and main keyword can be merged one can get a 70% return on company name and main keyword which is a great combination and best suited to capture the broader range as well with the 30% left.
Anyone did some research on this ...please share
cheers
niko

[Trax]

i can not really confirm this.
i have most of my incoming anchor as sitename keyword and the filter applied too

its more than just this

[Yidaki]

Drum, what are the titles of the pages you analyzed?

link anchor: keyword phrase - company name
page title: <?>

link anchor: company name – keyword phrase
page title: <?>

[Drum]

Right now it is "keword word phrase - company name".

However i have tried deleting the whole keyword phrase for a while in the title but i still had the filter applied.

[Oaf357]

Great post. Good research too. I'll keep this in mind in the future.

However, what about "URL - Site Name" where the site name contains keywords?

[nileshkurhade]

There has been a update. Backlinks - PR everything has changed. Anybody else noticed that.

[nileshkurhade]

Forgot to say SERPs have changes 2.

[NexDog]

Most interesting and this is the most logical filter explanation I've seen. Now I see that Google is just IGNORING links that contain only keyword text but add a company name in front and wham!....you're in. Time to get busy contacting webmasters etc. :)

[Yidaki]

>Right now it is "keword word phrase - company name".

I have expected that. My feeling since florida was that keyword phrase at the beginning of the title is weighted less now than keyword phrase in the middle/end of the page title. So your analyzes seem like a proof of that. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with anchor though ... Will build my newest page with mixed titles then and see if there'll be any difference.

[Velmu]

From the user point of view I think that the name of the page should be first and then the site name. I wouldn't change the order just because of what Google happens to like at the moment. Of course in the front page the site name should be first.

[nileshkurhade]

So I am coming to the conclusion that if you are going to use keywords in anchor text of your back-links you should position the "company name" or something else before the keyword phrase.

this might be correct, i have followed the logic since i began my link exchnage program. But i use the keypharse+company name format for anchor text. To add - i see my competitors who have more links (even back links) than me but just use keyphares as anchor text have been pushed back to page 3-4.

Overall very good observation.

[edited by: nileshkurhade at 6:21 pm (utc) on Jan. 11, 2004]

[BigDave]

At least with the title, you should always have your company name first for branding putposes. Go out and look at how all the bricks and mortar companies do it.

As for links go for some variety. 98% kw - company?!?!?! sounds like the anti-SEO filter was spot on on that one.

[div01]

There has been a update. Backlinks - PR everything has changed. Anybody else noticed that.

Yeah...I'm hoping it is still in flux.

[usavetele]

I am wondering if anybody can help me figure out why my site isn't ranking well for 2 of my three word search terms? I am wondering if it's because of my links or what. I don't think my site is much different than ones in the top ten, but obviously it is.

Sticky me and I'll tell you the search terms I'm having problems with. Much appreciated.

[Drum]

One thing i noticed is it is "easy" to get new baclinks - but very very hard to get them to change or even delete your link.

I have tried to chage my % around to match the ones at the top, but hardly any of the webmasters want to change my anchot text to be "company name - kw phrase".

[nippi]

Guys, not all about incoming link anchor text.

Compare everything that is different in your sites witht hese others.

size, page titles, links etc,

[steveb]

Stuffing anchor text with company names or any other extraneous stuff is suicide in more ways than one. Anchor text should be as brief, descriptive and topical as possible for a page. How much of a dampening effect there is for extra words is a point of contention, but adding non-relevant words is bad that way, and bad for users in terms of descriptiveness and bad as a sign of trying to trick a search engine -- which search engines will never like once they recognize it.

[NexDog]

Put it this way, when I do a search on allinanchor:my_keyword, we are ranked on page 3 just like the serp. When I do a link search on a new competitor on page one that appears on page one for the search term and allinanchor (as in link:www.competitor.com), he comes in at 190 and we are 500+ and 90% of those links contain the keyword anchor text.

So therefore it is logical to assume that Google is just ignoring alot of the anchor text in our backlinks.

[steveb]

"So therefore it is logical to assume that Google is just ignoring alot of the anchor text in our backlinks."

No it isn't logical at all to assume that, especially when you use the term "new" to describe the other site.

Sites that engage in garbage link exchanges seldom show those as backlinks, but could have thousands of anchor text links from junky link pages, or have thoudands of internal pages.

Comparing backlinks to allinanchor sometimes is useful, but often the two don't relate much... especially in a competitive area and when looking at a spammy site.

[soapystar]

and then weighted for age?

anyone notice old link campaign anchors working where the new anchor text for a site is penalised?

[NexDog]

No it isn't logical at all to assume that, especially when you use the term "new" to describe the other site.

Sites that engage in garbage link exchanges seldom show those as backlinks, but could have thousands of anchor text links from junky link pages, or have thoudands of internal pages.

Comparing backlinks to allinanchor sometimes is useful, but often the two don't relate much... especially in a competitive area and when looking at a spammy site.

The site is far from new but it's rise in the serps most definately is. I think we can safely cross reference [link:] and [allinanchor]. I say this because when you do link:www.yourname.com, Google doesn't show you all the results but the PageRank system reflects all the links. So now when we do a search on allinanchor:keyword, the results returned are from the anchor text in all the links.

And we have many thousands (50,000+) links that don't show up in a link search and there is no way the site that I mentioned has more links than us.

[soapystar]

but Google isnt honest with the allinanchor..it just reflects the serps..i can do the allinachor search but then when i check the actual links for a site the links dont actually have that text in....

of course what actually is happening is that the anchor text is being reduced in weighting and surrounding text and the keyword relationship of the linking page is greatly increased in weighting added to the already mentioned over seo links filter....this explains why multiple sub swapping works..because most of the say 40 links have common words such as say discount widgets...artificially inflating the importance of the linking page for that word/words and incresing the value of the individual links...

[steveb]

"I think we can safely cross reference [link:] and [allinanchor]."

Your last paragraph disproves that on its own. It's a serious mistake to think there is a necessary correlation.

The site at #1 for allinanchor for a 20million+ keyword shows under 150 backlinks. The site at #4 shows 108 backlinks... but has over 20,000 pages in the index (down from 39,000 when it ranked #2 for allinanchor), and of course all of its pages links to its main page. The site at #1 for allinanchor has 352 pages in the index... literally 351 are reciprocal link pages.

Oh and all but four of those 20,000 pages are link or add your link pages.

The #3 allinanchor site shows 1450 backlinks, and almost certainly has more total links pointing at it than the above two combined. (It's a "real" site rather than a seo phantom.)

Each individual bit of the above information doesn't necessarily extrapolate out the rest of the information for that site, nor explain its rankings. It is a serious error to think that things are definitely connected that are not.

====

more to the point, as soapystar says, right now allinanchor definitely is not purely an anchor text ranking.

[NexDog]

It's weird though because allinanchor searches are mirroring the searches for those keywords in countless searches that I've done. My theory of Google ignoring some backlinks is my only solution to our current dillema. And when I look a the new top dog in our main keyword searches, they use "CompanyName Keyword" absolutely everywhere. They are a reasonable sized host that was nowhere in he serps 4 months ago but now they rule and only because of their HUGE backlink campaign. That is, text link on popular php and seo sites and forums - all containing that combination of keyword.

[BigDave]

allin searches are a red herring. Can you imagine any way that would allow google more of a chance to mess with SEO wannabes?

PageRank has a published definition of how that "ranking" is developed. The allin searches only say that they will return the sites that meet that definition. There is not guaranteed or even implied order.

If you go and decide that allin is an accurate ranking tool, and start depending on it, google can make a very minor tweak each mont and really mess up all your grand plans.

Use the allin to find out who your competition is, but it doesn't necessarily tell accurately how they rank for that keyphrase.

[NexDog]

Anyhow, I'm still going with the "ComapnyName Keyword" combination and I guess we'll see what happens next month if indeed there has been an update already....has there?

[bether2]

if indeed there has been an update already....has there?

Looks like there's been a backlinks update. See
[webmasterworld.com...] .

[g1smd]

Don't forget that the algo has over 100 factors to take into consideration.

There is not a magic "one thing to do" to guarantee success.

[PatrickDeese]

Hey Drum -

Interesting research. Just out of curiosity, what site did you check your backlinks from?

Only Google, or did you also use ATW and Alexa as well?