Question about article directories and backlinks

Others may well disagree with this advice, so don't take it as gospel...

I advise you not to vary your anchor text if the keyword for which you wish to rank has moderate to high levels of competition. You're going to need all the links you can get that use that keyword as anchor text.

If you have several keywords that are not that competitive, then by all means vary it up so each ranks.

It's all about effective use of your time and/or outsourcing funds.

Regarding using your URL only for backlinks, it's a bad idea unless your domain is the keyword for which you wish to rank. For example, if my target keyword is blue widgets and my URL is - then using URL as anchor text provides some ranking power.

John

This blog post suggests that varying your anchor text is good.

Cheers,

Drew

Thanks John,
finally, my first plan was not bad For the keyword, it's the main keyword for that niche. Not highly competitive, but moderate yes.
Others Warrior's viewpoint?

I can tell you with certainty that in my own substantial experience building sites and getting backlinks to them, I have never seen any kind of penalty/punishment from Google as a result of using identical anchor text. This is across many niches and using everything from single-word keywords to long-tails. Do I vary them sometimes? Yes, but again, only if the keyword in question is not tough to rank for.

John

Hey magy,

I'm no internet "guru", but from what I have learned it depends on the keyword you are trying to rank for. If its high competition, you're going to need as many backlinks for that word as possible. (feel free to criticize what i have to say, im no pro). But throughout you building your backlinks, mixing up the anchor text with other related keywords helps.

-JBorjaPerez

We have no idea what you're talking about, surely, you must be french ;-)

1. Same article = duplicate contents so it's only useful for backlinks but will not generate direct traffic if it's indexed on back index. Some directories like hubpages.com penalize duplicate content by blocking any links from articles.

Suggestion: hire someone to rewrite articles in a few copies or use article spinning service. Popular/easy method is to use google translator to translate from english to other language and back to english again, then fix the syntax and grammar errors and voila! - original article, just check with free articlechecker.com to be sure.

2. You need to know what keywords you want to rank for and focus on those in your anchor text. Need to create links "naturally" with different anchor text as well as "click here" and url only. With time you can use the same anchor again and again, but don't overdo it in the begining.

If you link only to your homepage that's not too good unless you don't have any other content on site. Link to various pages of your site.

3. If article directory allows 2 backlinks use 1 with anchor text and 1 url only. It's better to use backlink with anchor text in articles 'cause you'll get the url-only links if you submit to search engines and directories anyway (also from bookmarking).

4. Best strategy: Link Wheel = get links from many various sources ( blogs, hubpages, squidoo, social bookmarking, twitter, youtube, etc.). Create also backlinks to pages with your existing links like pages in article directories. Do a lot of social bookmarking to get indexed faster.

Don't overdo backlink creation. For fresh site 3/day is enough (have to be consistent).
For older sites 10/day is OK - anything above that is a tough call.

This is strategy I use and it works so far, but there are various opinions - you decide!

All best!

Magy,
John pretty much nailed it and I will agree with his post ... 180 backlinksis not that many so do not let those bad advice people that tell you if you get too many links then google will "slap" you.. This is a huge myth.

Two things you are missing though.

1. Post the articles to your own blog first

2. You do not have to wait for EZA to approve your articles before submitting them toother article directories.

James

Edit: do NOT listen to the "duplicate content penalty" myth ... It is a myth actually a better word for it, it is a LIE... This penalty does not exist. You can submit the same article with no problems at all.

Great advice here, thanks guys

Magy,

I'll muddy the waters a bit more for you. LOL

There's something called Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) that comes into play here as well. Basically, this is conjectured to be part of Google's ranking algorithm, and it gives a temporary boost in ranking position to new content Google finds. It wears off pretty quickly and then your ranking falls to where it "belongs" in the index. Many people who aren't aware of the QDF Effect naturally assume something they did caused the big drop in rankings. This is what many are mistaking for some kind of sandbox issue. Now, there may well be a "real" sandbox effect, but I would say that 99.9% of the time when you see something on your site that's new go from Page 1 to Page 30 overnight, it ain't because of the 50 links you built the day before. Just QDF finally wearing off. Just another part of this to keep in mind.

As with pretty much everything, it's more complicated than we want it to be.

John

It is not compulsory that you change the anchor text.
However you need to revise your link if you are hyperlinking to a page which is not related to anchored text.