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My site sells "blue widgets" and the competitor sells "widgets". I've searched the source code of the competitors index.cfm, and haven't been able to find a single instance of "blue". In the google cache, it says that "blue" is only found on pages with links to my competitors' page.
Clearly, the fact that there were no on-page references to "blue widgets" hasn't prevented my competitor from leveraging their higher pagerank on this key-phrase.
Just an interesting observation.
I doubt whether Dmoz itself holds more weight just because it's Dmoz. It's quite possible to get nearly zero value out of a Dmoz listing. To get maximum value out of a listing, it helps to be in a category where the available PR is not overly diluted by excessive outbound links.
Additionally, if you're selling blue widgets and the name the Dmoz editor approves for your site is Mortalfrog's Blue Widgets Company, then you're even better off because the keywords will appear as anchor text in the Dmoz link to your site. That is valuable!
A Dmoz listing that garners a lot of PR, with the site properly named to take advantage of the anchor text effect, you're in good shape.
How do you go about building links with relevant text? It seems to me that you don't have power over what someone puts in their link to you.
a. Make it clear (to the sites that you do have some control over) how you would like your link to appear.
b. Gain more control over the others.
Also, it seems as if relevant dmoz incomings hold a lot more weight than other incomings
DMOZ pages tend to have high PR and just as any incoming link from a site with higher PR will give you a boost, a DMOZ listing will as well. As far as it giving a greater boost than a non DMOZ link, well that is just part of the mysterious Google magic mojo.
RE changing all that.
I've noticed that over time as the text on my home page has changed....so has the link and anchor text that goes with it.
By changing/rearranging your own text....people will apply links to your new description/site accordingly - hopefully this is an option if you feel you have been boxed into a particular phrase or term or feel that you need to diversify. Just a thought.
A Dmoz listing that garners a lot of PR, with the site properly named to take advantage of the anchor text effect, you're in good shape.
Thanks for the DMOZ tips. I've been looking through the ODP and have found a few more quite relevant directories, one with better PR than where I am now. I'll try submitting to this one, and see if that helps.
mortalfrog
Depending on topic of your site, there are many directories that are looking for links, and allow you to provide your own title and description. To find them type:
keyword "add url"
into Google and it will list all kinds of directory pages containing your keyword and add url. Then select the appropriate category and submityour site. Do other searches with:
add site, add website, submit url, submit link, or any other combinations. With this method I have found hundreds of directories and other sites to list in for free up to PR6.
Also check out this thread: [webmasterworld.com...]
When I've felt the link was important enough and I've been able to email the site (as opposed to filling out a form), I've gone so far as to look at the style of listings on a links page, check out the html code, and write my own listing and send them the code... noting of course that this is meant to be a suggestion, and that I'm sending the code to save them time. ;)
Heh. Love that idea. I gotta remember it for the future. ;)
1) does it help to make the text links inside the site kayword rich as well. (The links are linking to other pages in the same site or back to the index)
2) we have some banners on other related websites, these banners have alt tags. Are these given the same weight as text links?
Regards
Marc
Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
My view on your questions:
1) Definitely. On outbound links to other pages in your site, it's very useful to have anchor text containing the keywords applicable to the destination page. Also, somehwhere on your page you should have at least one outbound link containing the keywords for which that same page is optimized.
2) ALT tags, I don't think they carry nearly as much weight, since they are not "votes."
Beachboy, are you talking about outbound links to other sites? I know that was accepted as an influencing factor last year, but is that still current? It seems to me that I remember a thread or two a couple of months ago that discounted any outbound link influence.
<added>
Oh now I see. You are still refering to links within the site. OK.
