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Ironically, one of these is from the university where Google was born. Problem is that since the people linking to me have been using this format for all other sites, it would be quite futile for me to ask them to change their formats for me only.
This problem seems to be prevelant among non-commercial sites. Hope Google will educate the educators/non-comercials about the importance of anchor text or take into account the text in vicinity of those generic anchors. Please.
I just acquired a chunk of webspace on a PR7 page and loaded it up with 6-7 keyword-stuffed links pointing to my site. Does anyone have any factual proof that this will hurt me right now?
Well, give it two weeks and we will see. So far, most of my inbound anchor text is kw1-kw4 filled and my rankings since Florida (well, the tweak) have been about where they were before hand.
Forget the witch hunts and do what needs to be done. You will then sit back and wonder at the ones still blindly chasing their tails.
No, I think we just lost the thread of the thread...
I do great in google, mostly thanks to what I have learned here. I don't chase my tail and have stable sites that didn't budge in Florida.
However you want to define "competitive" makes no odds to the original point I was picking up on - the prior importance of anchor text. It was #1 on a list of things to do in google which pretty much guaranteed a site top places in the SERPS. End of story. Other people were doing it, so to remain "competitive" required playing the game.
That's no longer the case. Clearly things have changed, but it is still a part of the algo, and one that needs to be considered.
The sooner you stop trying to 'beat the systen' the sooner you will most likley get the traffic from Google. Don't fight Google. To simply for most I know, but I believe it to be true more and more day by day.
I totally 100% agree with you in principle. I look at it a slightly different way, but it amounts for the same thing. The way that I look at it is google are working to produce relevant results for users. So I create websites that are full of relevance for their topics. I call it macro-SEO and it's a by-product of good design (good page titles, good and correct use of W3C protocols and good content) more than it is deliberate SEO. I try and make it as easy as possible for google.
For non-competitive terms that, combined with a few inbound links to ensure you actually get in and stay in google, is all that is required.
For very competitive phrases, it's naive to think that will be sufficient and you can rest on your laurels. Even if you can do so for the moment. Highly competitive phrases require micro-SEO, deliberate SEO to compete with the people that do actually understand google and *are* beating the system.
An algo is a formula, and within every formula is a set of variables which carry more significance than others.
Anchor text used to be one of them.
The avenues of micro-SEO are diminishing. One of googles' objectives is to remove them entirely, but that's not to say they've succeeded yet.
In the case of the original post, the point is that keyword/phrase anchor text is still good, but due to the people abusing that in order to force SERPS positioning (as a lot of members here were doing), google have tweaked something.
There is a probability, that I think most here are experimenting with, that the tweak is such that too much anchor text with keyword/phrase takes you over the hill and becomes detrimental. Therefore, the probability is, and it's a guess/assumption, that a balance of anchor text and the odd "click here" instead of keyword/phrase enables you to increase keyword/phrase anchors without increasing the percentage of those anchors with keyword/phrase.
Even if that's wrong, it isn't something that's going to cause you any harm.
TJ
Yes, sometimes there are only 1000s of results but the top ranking ones are all highly SEO'ed and so difficult to beat whereas some SERP's have less powerful competition even if the count is high. To say that this is no competition is not correct.
Where do you draw the line? How many top results must be SEO'ed (how much SEO'ed?) for the term to be considered competitive.
Another note - I rank at #1 for a term having 11K+ count on Overture. However this term gives me hardly 100 visitors in a month. So I doubt that this count is a measure of the competition too.
Arun
As for anchor text, if you want variation i'd suggest doing that (variation) in stead of doing "click here" - "click here" is simply out of line with those good design principles and if you have any influence over it at all why would you want to throw the benefit away and make your links less user friendly at the same time? Good anchor text is still important, both for usability and for SEO, don't even think anything else.
The phenom from the first post is quite common, i believe. Click here is simply bad design, bad usability, as well as bad SEO.
/claus
"click here" is simply out of line with those good design principles
I totally agree, and personally I never use "click here" links for that reason on my own sites.
The point I wanted to make to the original post was not to worry too much about "click here" links to your own site, where you are not in control or in any position of influence over that particular webmaster. The truth is, at the moment at any rate, it probably does help if the OOP theories abound on here at the moment are correct.
But there is no question whatsoever that "click here" doesn't help in any other respect, macro or micro, and good anchor text is better.
By "good", in this context, I mean with "natural" (as far as google is concerned in respect of SEO) variation as opposed to 100 links all with "blue widgets" in anchor.
In terms of users and good design, there's nothing wrong with 100 links all with a "blue widgets" anchor. So there is a strong dividing line between micro and macro SEO as far as off-page factors are concerned.
In other words, there is a strong dividing line between designing for users and designing to rank well in google, in terms of those off-page factors.
TJ
Anchor text inbounds have been tweaked in the algo. No-one has yet worked out exactly how, but clearly the end result that google was aiming for was to reduce google-bombing by people using that anchor-text key to get exceptional results in google SERPS.
It isn't natural to have 500 different sites pointing to you all using the same anchor text. Google knows this and has been using this for some time. They really cranked it up (or something similar) during Florida.
Maybe the algo's have been tweaked. But that's not a very useful statement.
Why is "miserable failure" still working though?
And why would Google penalize for kw-rich incoming links? If so a perfectly good page that happens to have lots of incoming on-topic kw-rich links could inadvertently get Googlebombed out of the index for those kw's.
Why is "miserable failure" still working though?
Percentages, IMHO.
TJ
When was it ever proven that anchor text was a important factor?
I'm saying that there is no *proof* that it *is important* in the scheme of things.
[www-db.stanford.edu...]
Look at section 2.2 It talks about Anchor text and its importance.
[i]"The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine."[/i]Not on a competetive keyword/phrase you didn't!
Well it used to work & many people used to work with anchors. If you don't believe it let's leave it. :)
My methods has seen me stay on page 1 for most of my preffered key phrases for the past 5 years.
I think then these are good examples of non competetive keywords ;)
I'm saying that the number of results returned does not necessarily correspond to the keyword/phrase competitiveness.
I agree with you over here.
I just acquired a chunk of webspace on a PR7 page and loaded it up with 6-7 keyword-stuffed links pointing to my site. Does anyone have any factual proof that this will hurt me right now?
Hi Is300, others may disagree, but I don't think it will do you any harm - the problem is that it might not do you any good either!
I've got highly targetted links on 400 pages of a PR6/7 site. They're highly targetted because they are adverts - and they describe what I sell (doh...) and they now provide in excess of a factor of 10 more vistors than Google. So if Google don't like them - that's G's problem!
The effect of all these links was to boost my PR to 7, but there's no evidence they have hurt my post-Florida position.
History...
Was #1 for search term "custom widgets" for over a year.
Disappeared after Florida.
Came back to #19 after Florida.
I still have not seen my site in www2, www3 or -in for this keyphrase.
I have been #19 for past 3 weeks in www and decided to tweak.
I thought maybe my site was stable enough to try the tweaks. I took a different approach and instead of trying to improve my ranking by de-optimizing, I opted to load my anchor text with "custom widgets" to see if I would drop in the SERPS. I also added more of the keyphrase in the text and alt tags.
Results so far.
I dropped from #19 to #20. I still am not in www2, www3 or
-in.
Interesting facts...
For the keyphrase "cutom differentwordbutsamemeaningwidget" I popped up to #8 in www but still nothing in www2, www3 and -in.
For the phrases "custom birthday widget" and "custom birthday differentwordbutsamemeaningwidget" I am popping up #1 in www,www2, www3 and -in.
So what have I learned?
I can't really tell. It seems that separating the money phrase gets me better results. There definitely seems to be an uphiil - downhill type scenario where when you over optimize, you are pushed over the top. What is really wierd is that www2, www3 and -in have yet to carry any of their weight over to www. At least for me. The results always seem completely different then www and I have yet to even see results for my money phrase. Can anyone explain this?
p.s. the money phrase has Results of about 1,280,000.
If you go here.
[google.com...]
You can read this:
"Since Google only returns web pages that contain all the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. Your new query will return a smaller subset of the pages Google found for your original "too-
broad" query."
So if Google only returns web pages that "contain all the words in your query". How come when I do some very competitive searches and look at the cached page why do I see this?
"These terms only appear in links pointing to this page:"
I don't think this is as a result of Google Bombing having looked at backlinks to some of these sites, I'm almost certain that it's the result of broad matching/stemming search terms/semantic interpretation/offline categorisation. Does anyone know one of Googles lexicographers so that I can explain the nuances of the English English language to them.
Best wishes
Sid
I opted to load my anchor text with "custom widgets" to see if I would drop in the SERPS.
Fantastic! Perhaps we should establish a Dangeous Sports Club for webmasters :)
Why would you think this dangerous since I see many sites listed that have stuffed keywords in all manners much more then my site. I have repeatedly reported these sites to the G and have yet to see them dropped nor any indication that they will be dropped.
Sorry, I am just frustrated and am trying to get a handle on the filter/algo or whatever. My next move is going to be to out the site back to its original state and see if I pop up to #19 again. If so, I am going to start deoptimizing one phrase at a time to see if I get any results.
I still find it interesting that by splitting the money phrase, I get better results. In other words...
"custom widgets" = #19
"custom whatever widgets" = #1
Maybe I should take the money phrase and bust it up on my pages to see what happens.
Best regards
:-)
So if Google only returns web pages that "contain all the words in your query". How come when I do some very competitive searches and look at the cached page why do I see this?"These terms only appear in links pointing to this page:"
You often see this when the words are in the title, but not on the page - and sometimes even when the words are in part of the title which is truncated and not displayed.
custom widgets = no results
custom relatedwidget = no results
custom birthday widgets = #1
custom birthday relatedwidget = #1
I show results in cw and fi that are very similar to www where the money phrases are popping up okay.
The 3 word phrases are popping up #1 in all the data centers, it's just the money 2 word phrases I am having problems with in www2, www3 and -in.
Still nothing in www2, www3 and -in.
Anyway, it's interesting that changes in anchor text have so little effect, but the way i read your posts you didn't change the important keywords, just added unimportant ones - try employing a bit of stemming on your anchor text (widget, widgets, widgetting), otherwise i'd say you should try working with the contents of your pages (on-page factors), or as the popular phrase goes "add more content".
/claus
Today I dropped from www and -in. My PR went from 5 to 4. I actually improved in www2 and www3 to #18.
I am wondering if this is because of the changes I made or was I dropped temporarily. I am going to wait a couple days and change my site back to the way it was to see if I can get back to #20 in www.
Definitely looks like some kind of penalty to me. Any thoughts?
Thanks
