Anchor Text Has Lost Its Edge

14 years ago

Last year’s results showed anchor text as the king, he who has more anchor text links wins!

Apparently I must have been sleeping last year because this has never been something I have seen!

Anchor text matters. Alt img text matters. Period!

Whose to say his links didn't "drop out" or competitors didn't up their game during his recorded time?

Thanks
2 replies

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seowizz 13 years ago

Hi Brad,

I just wanted to pitch in here as seen as I wrote the post

The title of the post is obviously for link bait purposes and it worked. Every good SEO know's anchor text, alt text etc... is still important in terms of rankings. However, I deal with well over 30 blue chip companies who have all seen their rankings drop.

When we conducted analysis on the sites in the top 5 new there was 1 common theme and that was the sheer percentage of brand links. Those with the higher percentage of brand links seemed to rank higher, whereas those with hundreds of anchor text links using the exact term were being punished.

I am fully aware this doesn't mean the end of anchor text but I am not narrow minded enough to think that "the most anchor text wins". I have seen far too many sites ranking for 'the' most competitive terms in the industry when they have ZERO anchor text. This is a trend that is becoming more and more common.
- Thanks
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jhonsean

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Brad Callen

Apparently I must have been sleeping last year because this has never been something I have seen!

Anchor text matters. Alt img text matters. Period!

Whose to say his links didn't "drop out" or competitors didn't up their game during his recorded time?

This is new to me can you please elaborate more on this. hope i may clarify things on it to help me more on SEO.
"Last year's results showed anchor text as the king, he who has more anchor text links wins! "

Thanks

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graham23s

13 years ago

Nice post mate

Would you say a mixture of anchor text links (with your main keyword in it) e.g. "something something main keyword something" aswell as "main keyword" is the way to go?

cheers

Graham

Thanks
2 replies

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seowizz 13 years ago

Hi Graham,

I think any kind of variation helps to future proof your link profile. With our clients we tend to use brand + anchor text as well as creating natural links naturallinks.com , we still use exact anchor targets but building a natural link profile is a priority now more than ever.
- Thanks
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Mangozoom

13 years ago

Originally Posted by graham23s

Nice post mate

Would you say a mixture of anchor text links (with your main keyword in it) e.g. "something something main keyword something" aswell as "main keyword" is the way to go?

cheers

Graham

This is what I am thinking ... guess as always Google are looking to spot anything unatural. If someone has thousands of anchor text links with exactly the same keywords this might be considered as unnatural.

All that I said I am just learning to back link and am open to learning.

John

Thanks

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seowizz

13 years ago

Hi Jhonsean,

I can't post links at the minute, however if you check out the SEOwizz blog and read the brand links post, also check out blogstorm.co.uk where it discusses this same is in October posts

Thanks

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graham23s

13 years ago

Ah i see, Thanks Tim!

Graham

Thanks

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Jordan Kovats

13 years ago

So Google removed one of the pieces of the foundation of their algorithm? LOL

Thanks
1 reply

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seowizz 13 years ago

Not removed, tweaked
- Thanks
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iloveseo

13 years ago

Anchor text is one of the main factors to be considered in Google.You should have a mix of anchor texts and that should work well in Google.It has not lost its edge but it continues to be a good ranking factor on Google.

Thanks
1 reply

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seowizz

13 years ago

Originally Posted by iloveseo

It has not lost its edge but it continues to be a good ranking factor on Google.

In terms of rankings for terms like 'car insurance' and 'credit cards' etc.... Google is taking a very aggressive stance and filters out websites that over optimise for a term. In the UK position 1 for car insurance has only a handful of exact anchor text the rest are on brand.

We all know anchor text is a factor but in the last 3 - 6 months Google has changed the way it ranks sites based on how natural a link profile looks. You have to have plenty of brand links to protect yourself from filters.

Just pull all the back links from the top ten for 'car insurance' you might be surprised to see those with the least amount of optimised anchor text ranking at the top.

Thanks
2 replies

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dburk 13 years ago

Hi seowizz,

It seems that you are treating links with equal weight, which is not how Google's algorithm works. If you study the original Backrub document you will discover that PageRank is a weighting factor. Therefore, a small number of links may often pass a great deal more influence on relevancy scores than a larger number. Then there are Trust factors which also appear to weight the value of anchortext.

I don't see in your article where you discuss the methodology you used to isolate these factors and normalize the data. If you have not normalized the data you may have drawn an incorrect conclusion about anchortext value. I see no reason to believe there is any change in anchortext value based on your analysis as presented.

Signals of relevance cannot be separated from their weighting factors to determine their overall value in ranking. Web pages are ranked based on a formula that combines multiple signals of relevance weighted by factors such as PR and Trust. When you try to look at raw data from an individual signal and exclude the weighting influence of other factors it can lead to all sorts of erroneous conclusions.

I believe that if you were to repeat your analysis on a number of smaller subsets of data you will see wildly varying results. If you cannot consistently repeat the experiment and achieve the same results how can you claim your conclusion is valid?
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- seowizz 13 years ago
  
  Hi dburk,
  
  The research wasn't conclusive and far from thorough, the conclusion I came to was based on research into the anchor text profiles of the top ten sites across 10 keywords including such terms as car insurance, perfume, seo, loans, flowers etc......
  
  I didn't break down trust and authority signals as the research was simply highlighting 1 piece of 'correlation' and that was the websites ranking in the top five of google for all these terms had a greater percentage of natural or brand anchor text in comparison to those ranking lower.
  
  This isn't conclusive because as you say it doesn't take into account the other factors we know to exist. But one thing it does show is that you don't need a million anchor text links to rank for a term, just the right amount of authority and on page optimisation.
  
  Thanks
  
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JoeMbulu

13 years ago

Originally Posted by seowizz

In terms of rankings for terms like 'car insurance' and 'credit cards' etc.... Google is taking a very aggressive stance and filters out websites that over optimise for a term. In the UK position 1 for car insurance has only a handful of exact anchor text the rest are on brand.

We all know anchor text is a factor but in the last 3 - 6 months Google has changed the way it ranks sites based on how natural a link profile looks. You have to have plenty of brand links to protect yourself from filters.

Just pull all the back links from the top ten for 'car insurance' you might be surprised to see those with the least amount of optimized anchor text ranking at the top.

I somewhat disagree. If you're only targeting the term car insurance or credit cards and all of your links had that one anchortext, yes I can see how that might be a problem. Since most people are probably targetting a wide range of keywords, there is going to be enough diversity in my opinion. Since there are so many factors involved in ranking, we can't always assume that because the number 1 ranked site is not using the same anchortext for targeting car insurance, that is the reason why they're up at the top.

For many competitive keywords, most sites will need thousands of backlinks to stay competitive. I could be wrong, but the best tools for analyzing backlinks may show you a small slice of a site's total link profile.

Thanks
1 reply

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seowizz 13 years ago

Hi jnm007a,

The little bit of research was based on clients we work with and we have full access to their WMT's which shows a great amount of backlinks.

The fact is that No.1 for car insurance in the UK has around 70% less links than it's competitors and 80% of its links are on brand, either the url, domain name or brand. In comparison it has only 4 links with any kind of 'car insurance' variations.

I never concluded anchor text wasn't a factor, just that other factors seem to play a greater degree of importance compared to 2009.
- Thanks
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JoeMbulu

13 years ago

Originally Posted by cheaterscode

Want to share it here and here your opinion.

seowizz.net/2010/09/anchortext-not-as-powerful-new-techniques-2010.html

I guess misinformation will always be apart of the SEO community. I'm not claiming to be the Oracle of SEO, but trust me when I say anchortext matters. It's pretty high on my list of factors that drive rankings. There are plenty of guys and gals in the warrior forum that would agree.

Thanks

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perfect

13 years ago

This appears to be a breaking news but let see how it goes.

Thanks

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digidoodles

13 years ago

Disagree.

Do y'all ever consider that anything in SEO is a red herring?

Warmly,

Brandi

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seowizz

13 years ago

Hi Digidoodles,

I am not trying to divert anyone away from the fact anchor text is still a ranking factor, the post was just to illustrate that you can't simply get a shed load of anchor text links anymore, your strategy needs to be much better thought out.

Thanks

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