Text Link Usage

where's the emphasis?

[LostOne]

I've always been curious of external linking strategies but not sure if I've heard opinions on the strength of a four or five word link. The reason for the question lies in trying to make a link not look like an obvious SEO tactic and possibly accepted by more webmasters or website owners.

Let's look at green widgets. Rather than using "green widgets" as the anchor I prefer using something like "consumer guide to green widgets" embedded within a sentence. The preference is to gain SERP positions of green widgets.

Question:

Does the added text dilute the effect on the desired phrase green widgets?

Thanks for any opinions!

[wheel]

Since when is linking using 5 words 'natural'? It's not - at least not commonly. I think the premise is reaching for something that's not there.

If you want to make your anchor text look natural, get more links with your company/domain name in it.

[LostOne]

Thanks Wheel. I have oodles...I mean oodles of url and domain links including DMOZ and Google.

One email worked this morning for me. They said no problem with adding the sentence with link. Of course that's not a misc link request. It's more on the order of obtaining citations because of content (copyrighted content) they're using without permission.

Any opinion on the question?

[Mach2]

Great question, LostOne!

Usualy this kind of question is answered with an "I think" beggining. (not here specificaly, let me make myself clear :)).

IŽd also would like to read a good and solid answer on that.

[Robert Charlton]

Since when is linking using 5 words 'natural'?

When the link is to an article on your site that has a 5-word title.

[Christyl Stevens]

Does the added text dilute the effect on the desired phrase green widgets?

Since Google gives you ranking consideration for the first eight words within your anchor text my best guess is that if your two word phrase is diluted by including five words then the dilution is very small. Small enough to not worry about it. Therefore, confidently include more anchor text where applicable.

[tangor]

We're getting down to fine tuning. Approaching a trillion or more pages, so that one word is not working anymore... the two word is a bit problematic, adding a few more words... does it help or obfuscate? I don't have the answer (and didn't add "I think").

It just gets worse from here on out, the ocean is getting broader and deeper... Fond of similes, but should be appropriate.

[tigger]

the key I follow is diversity, setting up links with one word, two, three as many as I want to make it "look" natural

[wheel]

You're doing it wrong. Get enough links that you are an authority. Then if you want to rank on a term, put up an article on that term. Don't use offpage factors to rank for specific terms, that's a recipe for your next thread on 'my rankings plummetted, what do I do?'.

Since Google gives you ranking consideration for the first eight words within your anchor text

Puleeze. Really? Anybody believe this is a 'known'? Not seven, not nine, no no, it's eight words?

And why on earth would anyone care at that level of granularity? That's a wasted effort spent on pure speculation.

[ponyboy96]

the key I follow is diversity, setting up links with one word, two, three as many as I want to make it "look" natural

x2

This is the strategy that I follow. Also make sure that your domain name/brand name is the most commonly used anchor text.

To the OP, I think it will work just fine. Just so long as the keyword you are targeting is in there.

[Mach2]

Also make sure that your domain name/brand name is the most commonly used anchor text.

This is one of the most important points. Even going contrary to any "LKB class", that state we should use "keyword rich anchor texts", this is in fact on my perspective far away from being natural.

Who, in the normal web linking life, uses anchor texts link "aaaaaaaa LDC TV aaaaaaaa" instead using "I like a lot this link http://www.aaaaaaaa.com/tvs/lcdtv"?

Having the most of the anchors with branding name is more natural in my opinion. The other percentage would have optimized anchors, being a natural behavior.

Bye

[edited by: martinibuster at 3:34 pm (utc) on Aug 4, 2010]
[edit reason] Delinked URL for example. [/edit]

[JAB Creations]

The wait for [ link ] floating glowing widgets of doom [ / link ] is finally over!

To me that is natural because describing in short the content on the linked page is seems natural.

In example if there were killer fuzzy bears waiting to ambush us but the forest also had shaved bears then you wouldn't merely reference bears right? You'd reference fuzzy bears.

- John

[freejung]

Don't use offpage factors to rank for specific terms

Really? It's always worked for me.

I have to respectfully disagree, wheel. If I understand you correctly, that you should only (or even mostly) request links to the homepage and only with domain name or company name as anchor text, then the kind of linking pattern you're advocating isn't "natural" for most sites either.

If I write an article on an interesting topic and bloggers write about it or quote it with a citation, they're mostly going to link to the article directly, mostly using the title of the article. They're not going to link to my homepage with my domain name, that would be a disservice to their readers, who would then have to dig through my site to find the specific article they're citing. Same logic for product reviews, downloads, etc.

Furthermore, I would argue that it's perfectly "natural" to ask someone who re-uses, quotes or references your content to link directly to that content as a citation. That's not an unnatural link, it's a genuine endorsement.

Indeed, in many cases it seems like you pretty much have to have external links with relevant anchor text for deep pages to rank for hard terms.

If you're getting those links by convincing people who reuse your content to link to you, I seriously doubt you're going to get flagged as spam.

[Mach2]

Furthermore, I would argue that it's perfectly "natural" to ask someone who re-uses, quotes or references your content to link directly to that content as a citation. That's not an unnatural link, it's a genuine endorsement.

Indeed, in many cases it seems like you pretty much have to have external links with relevant anchor text for deep pages to rank for hard terms.

If you're getting those links by convincing people who reuse your content to link to you, I seriously doubt you're going to get flagged as spam.

I agree and this is a parctice I particulary use and recommend.

[mfishy]

I simply use the entire page as a link this way I will improve my rankings for all 250-400 terms.

[wheel]

lol mfishy.

[anallawalla]

first eight words within your anchor text

I have never heard of this either. A Google search only found some scrapers who have picked up this thread. It's not a good number for an algorithm because most anchor text has a lot fewer words.

Since when is linking using 5 words 'natural'? It's not - at least not commonly.

"Natural" is what happens in SEO-indifferent content. I often link 5-6 words when I don't care about the destination site's SEO, e.g.

<a href="http://www.example.com">Here is a link to additional information at Example Inc</a>

I see others doing this. When I see laser-targeted words leading to a page that is optimised for that phrase, I see "SEO" written all over it.

Hence "Consumer guide to green widgets" is a nice variation for anchor text. That is what a non-SEO would use, making it look "natural". It might not be the killer anchor text, but it would also benefit searches such as "guide to green widgets", particularly if the word "guide" were prominent on that page.

[mfishy]

Wow, wheel is the only one who likes me? :)

On a more serious note, exact anchor text seems to be the way to go right now, IMHO.

[wheel]

On a more serious note, exact anchor text seems to be the way to go right now, IMHO.

Maybe. I see results in my industry, sites ranking, that no way is there the justfication from good backlinks. There is something else that is seriously weighting the rankings. (i.e. I set up a site for a client 3-5 years ago as a backup site. Threw it in a couple of directories just to get it indexed. Now it's ranking front page for some very nice terms.)

Still, not sure I would shift gears, this seems like a ranking factor that may get dialed back eventually.