Too many of the same anchor make your ranking freeze and if you keep adding you slowly drop!

10 years ago

Yup, i've seen this too.

Every backlink i build i make sure the anchors are at least a little bit different.

Truth is thanks to the Hummingbird update you only need a handful of backlinks if you make your content right.

Content with tons of LSI type keywords and structured in a question and answer format will rank for tons of long tail and major keywords with just a handful of PR backlinks.

Noticed this back in October i think. Had an article on a site ranking on page 1,#9 with Zero backlinks for a keyword with 4k searches per month and it was a commercial type keyword. Couldn't believe it. When i looked at the article it was written like i said above. Just happened to get a really good writer by luck.

Been structering my articles like this ever since and getting great results.

Thanks
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Toyota Hilux Dealer

10 years ago

Originally Posted by TheAdsenseGuy

Content with tons of LSI type keywords and structured in a question and answer format will rank for tons of long tail and major keywords with just a handful of PR backlinks.

Noticed this back in October i think. Had an article on a site ranking on page 1,#9 with Zero backlinks for a keyword with 4k searches per month and it was a commercial type keyword. Couldn't believe it. When i looked at the article it was written like i said above. Just happened to get a really good writer by luck.

Been structering my articles like this ever since and getting great results.

Curious whether your experience can be used in car sales. For instance if I want to build links to my product page on a car model "Toyota Hilux Vigo", how would I find LSI keywords for it since model name is fixed. Do articles still work?

Thanks

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bhushan@rancor

10 years ago

Using same anchor text each time for building your links certainly going to hurt you, so its ideal to choose 3-4 related anchor text and use them for building links. This would avoid Penguin penalty and you'll be able to rank for more search terms.

Thanks

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Kevin Maguire

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

At least that's what I'm seeing with some of my clients.

Today I took about 80 of them under the loop while scheduling the next month by:

- Checking each keyword in Serpfox
- Checking the anchor % in Ahrefs

Of some keywords I remember they used to rank higher and every single time when I compared that to how often that anchor was used it was always in the top 5 of anchors most being used.

Some other sites didn't move for quite some time, like steady at page two or three, and again the keywords word used too often in those cases (compared to the rest).

Other keywords kept improving while others stagnated and again the ones who stagnated had the highest anchor percentages.

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule but in the majority of cases it turned out like this, so be careful.

I'm somewhat interested in the subject of AO myself. Could I dare ask you, what kind of link numbers per page have you found, where the AO penalty seems to have kicked in.

In theory, having a single link to a given page would be classed as 100% AO. That's obviously not true, so I'm trying to look into finding the baseline of inbound links per page where such a penalty might start working against a page.

Pillowing pages with a boatload of shitty links is not something I believe in either. Pilling junk on top of a good link profile would not wash with me or clients, so not really an option.

I work with a 1 client - 1 network setup, so the vast majority of pages I'd be working on would have a very low number of inbound's (20-50), just with a much higher quality of link pointing to it.

Lately I've been working on dropping keyword rich inbound anchor altogether to my own site. By creating concentrated hubs of authority pages within the site using only raw url (Category pages..etc..). And from there linking out to pages with keyword anchor. So far it's shown some really good results. But I would say for you, that type of SEO would be next to impossible to sell to the average client, and costs a bit more too

Thanks
1 reply

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire

I'm somewhat interested in the subject of AO myself. Could I dare ask you, what kind of link numbers per page have you found, where the AO penalty seems to have kicked in.

In theory, having a single link to a given page would be classed as 100% AO. That's obviously not true, so I'm trying to look into finding the baseline of inbound links per page where such a penalty might start working against a page.

I haven't made notes about the numbers, it's very diverse.

I know that when a site has let's say 15 links to the homepage, all with the exact same anchor that nothing happens as the number is too small to penalize you for.

HOWEVER: When you have let's say a site with 30 pages, and you give each page two links using the exact anchor that the page is optimized for (in title/url/h1-tag/alt tag/etc) then it WILL bring you in trouble.

Example:

hxxp://site.com/blue-widgets
2x exact anchor "blue widgets"

hxxp://site.com/red-widgets
2x exact anchor "red widgets"
etc.

So it's not all that black/white. I have quite a few clients that give me 6 keywords but for 6 different URL's and then it always becomes a bit nasty as I build small amounts of links (each one is surrounded by unique content so the costs add up quickly, hence the small amounts, 10-15 links per month).

When I think of those campaigns in the past then it can easily be done for 4 months without problems, but I have seen issue's occur after about 8 months continuing it so that's about 100 links in total or 17 links per URL.

Don't stare yourself too blind at those numbers as you also have to realize that each link is in fact 3* the same anchor (from homepage / category page and the post it self) as I use Wordpress.

Google is just searching for patterns so for the more URL's you use exact anchors and nothing else, the fewer of such links (per URL) it tolerates.

[ 1 ] Thanks

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larryboy03

10 years ago

Iv seen some great success in never having links pointing to my site for my exact keyword. Here is some examples on how I do it.

Let's say my keyword is "iphone reviews"

Here are the links I build to increase serp rank and avoid penalties:

best iphone reviews
some iphone reviews
take a look at some iphone reviews
some of the best iphone reviews
check out the top iphone reviews
quality iphone reviews online

Theses are some great ways to diverse anchors, I don't do just this, I also make many different variations like, visit this site, go here, click here, check out this cool website.

Also the URL it self is something you should be doing.
I think these work very well

Thanks
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James Willis 10 years ago

I agree. Variation phrases to a short keyword phrase has brought me success. It's basically turning the anchor keyword into long tail phrases.
- Thanks
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seane

10 years ago

This is spot on. Modified "exact match" anchor text seems to be, (currently, at least), doing very well.

Originally Posted by larryboy03

Iv seen some great success in never having links pointing to my site for my exact keyword. Here is some examples on how I do it.

Let's say my keyword is "iphone reviews"

Here are the links I build to increase serp rank and avoid penalties:

best iphone reviews
some iphone reviews
take a look at some iphone reviews
some of the best iphone reviews
check out the top iphone reviews
quality iphone reviews online

Theses are some great ways to diverse anchors, I don't do just this, I also make many different variations like, visit this site, go here, click here, check out this cool website.

Also the URL it self is something you should be doing.
I think these work very well

Thanks

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John Romaine

10 years ago

10-12% seems to be the sweet spot.

Not sure about anything above that, but I wouldn't want to muck with it.

What are you guys seeing?

Thanks

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MikeFriedman

10 years ago

There are a LOT of variables to be making the assumption that what you are seeing has to do with anchor text. Things like...

The competition. Maybe the sites have reached a point where they are going to need a serious push in order to continue to move up. I've worked on many campaigns where a site reaches something like #8 in no time. Then it seems to sit there for a month or so, even though the same amount of work is being done on it. Then suddenly it jumps again into the top 3. The higher you go, the stiffer the competition.

Link quality. Maybe a lot of the links that were recently added are not as strong as you think. None of the common metrics people use (PR, DA, CF, etc.) are 100% up to date.

Onsite changes. A site may have been redesigned or edited in the past month or so. That can have a positive or negative impact.

I could go on and on, but I think I made my point. There is a lot more to it than just something as cut and dry as anchor text percentages. I have clients in HIGHLY competitive niches which are pushing 60-70% of their links having the same anchor text. They are ranking just fine.

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John Romaine

10 years ago

Agree totally Mike.

I can only go by what I'm seeing and what I know...and I look at a lot of sites every day. The same recurring trend seems to be around that mark for me.

I've also seen sites performing very well with 80-90% anchor text as well, but typically that's brand name stuff in footers.

There's definitely no "one size fits all" answer here that's for sure. As you said, far too many variables.

Thanks

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Toyota Hilux Dealer

10 years ago

Actually this happened to one of my sites. I had hired a SEO company to do link building for it. The site began to rise in SERPs, the more links they created the higher the site went and then at some threshold point it began to tank and it is not even on page 10 now on most of its keyword. It went from PR3 to PR0 in this latest update. It now gets as many hits in a month as it used to in half a day two years ago.

Thanks

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petjelly

10 years ago

Diversification i the key here. I have seen this to some of my keywords when I was using exact keywords but then I started to add longtail keywords +click here+ check the website + brand name etc and the website started to rank.

Thanks

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Too many of the same anchor make your ranking freeze and if you keep adding you slowly drop!

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