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SEO experts - please give your opinion!

by Chris Thompson
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm more than halfway through the Stomernet STSE2 videos, but I have not figured out the answer to this question yet.

Say I'm working on SEO for the term "terrible twos" (my niche is parenting toddlers, as evident by my sig below).

Google says "Terrible Twos" gets 6600 searches per month while "The Terrible Twos" gets about 1600.

Now, if I create a bunch of backlinks with the text "The Terrible Twos", then by default it also contains "Terrible Twos". So should I always use "The" in my anchor text to capture both terms, or will it dilute my effort in capturing a lead ranking for the more core term?

Thanks for any opinions / thoughts.
#experts #give #opinion #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Kurt
    I agree with varying the anchor text.

    However, this specific example adds another element, and that's "stop words" such as the, and, an, a, to, on, if, etc.

    The "the" will probably be dropped and alternating anchor text using "the" and not using "the" likely won't be counted as "variation".
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
      Ok thanks for the advice guys,

      So perhaps I should just create links with anchors such as:
      terrible twos
      dealing with terrible twos
      help with terrible twos

      and so on ...

      I am very pleased that after going live on ClickBank and having NO blog so far (only a very thin site, blog with real content is in works), I'm moving up the rankings.

      Earlier this week I was in the 300s for "terrible twos". I collected some backlinks on that anchor text and now I'm above 100 ... very measurable progress. Give me a few months, I'll claim the first page!

      I figured it was a good starting point, since it is not hyper competitive but not super-easy either.

      I know normally we would not share priority keywords here, but it's kind of obvious from my signature file what niche I'm after. No point in hiding it.
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    as long as your root keywords are included it does not matter what you have around the root

    Google will consider them both

    I do this all the time, the problem is you do not know which version Google is going to favor over the other one, but you will get ranked for both versions

    this is part of my SEO techniques to go after a very competitive keyword by using long tail and eventually I get ranked for the root keyword with the most competition

    Ed
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  • Profile picture of the author blithfield
    Yeah just vary anchor around the main term by using longtail versions and adding 'the' on etc.

    Keep it very natural, and make sure the content your linking to is watertight optimized for the keywords. I wouldn't ever set out to get the same particular anchor text on links, always vary them.
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    • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
      Absolutely vary the text for both "The Terrible Twos" and "Terrible Twos".

      I would, however, even add a few "click here's" as anchor text, along with even your URL as the anchor text linked to the Terrible Twos page.

      The reason being that a few "click here's" will make the listings appear more natural to the search engines.

      The average site when adding your link will quite often use non-optimized keywords and phrases when linking to you. So you'll want those incoming links to appear as natural as possible.
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  • Profile picture of the author Solidsnake
    Banned
    As long as you have backlinks pointing to that article with your keyword, it will be competitive... "The" is not important...
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  • Profile picture of the author maestro2010
    The, an, or , why ,where are called stopping words and should not be used in for keywords.........try using only "terrible twos" , so avoid the in anchor text as well...........
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  • Profile picture of the author yellar
    Definately use 'The'
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  • Profile picture of the author Rohit Shah
    Originally Posted by Chris Thompson View Post

    I'm more than halfway through the Stomernet STSE2 videos, but I have not figured out the answer to this question yet.

    Say I'm working on SEO for the term "terrible twos" (my niche is parenting toddlers, as evident by my sig below).

    Google says "Terrible Twos" gets 6600 searches per month while "The Terrible Twos" gets about 1600.

    Now, if I create a bunch of backlinks with the text "The Terrible Twos", then by default it also contains "Terrible Twos". So should I always use "The" in my anchor text to capture both terms, or will it dilute my effort in capturing a lead ranking for the more core term?

    Thanks for any opinions / thoughts.
    Instead of concentrating on link building, first concentrate on Titles. I prefer having title as: The Terrible Twos | yoursite.com
    After updating your titles, start building links with any anchor text, it should not be same anchor for all links, use different versions of them, try to maximize the amount of versions of anchor text.
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