From all (small and big) of my SEO clients I can see that they don't use they brain at all when setting linking campaigns. They learned basic SEO theory that is written everywhere and that tells you to make keyword reach titles, H tags, anchor texts. Then they just try to follow all those steps without thinking or doing any experiments. Here I want to talk about Natural Link Building. But mostly about anchor text - one of important SEO elements that can give you negative SEO score if is not done properly. In one sentence - anchor text need to look natural! You can not have 99% of links coming to your site with your keyword as that is not natural. I'm not talking here about some long tail keywords with low competition where you could easily rank with few links here and there and few months domain age, but about top terms that are making big money. Game is a little bit different in this case. What I see when small clients are submitting project to us is that they submit just main and/or long tail keywords. Big clients did the same in past when were using cheap outsourced link building, then we need to fix all that in our monthly SEO service. Sit down and think how would your anchors look like if you have really good site, with top quality content written by top expert in your field. Look around how others on internet link to some sites when they mention it on their sites, on forums, on social sites. Analyze first page of google for your competitors and what they use in anchor and in what percentage (use majesticseo,ahrefs or opensiteexplorer). You will see big number of anchors like: - this page - here - this - visit here - full URL as anchor - domain name as anchor - company name - misspelled company name! Think about this next time when you are ordering some link building service. Build property with main keyword in title, high keyword density article with over 700 words, few images that have name of image file with keyword (keyword-here.jpg, keywordhere.jpg)...linking from such page with anchor "here" or any other random (non keyword text) is passing link from relative content and looks very natural in eyes of google. Your site mentioned on other sites without link (just domain name or url without link) is also important factor. Look how many times Facebeook, Amazon, Youtube are mentioned without linking to it. What about your site name? This is just small part of big SEO puzzle. Still you need to think, analyze and do experiments about onpage SEO, how frequently to build links and in what volume, links from main site language sites vs foreign languages sites and anchors...etc...etc. Hope this will help to those of you who are selling SEO services or promoting your personal sites. Cheers, Nikola
Thank you for sharing such a useful information for SEO guys because i saw many times that peoples doesn't optimize anchor text in their website. They generally use different term(read more, click here) which are completely waste by SEO point of view. Thank you once again....!!!
I always knew to use keywords in your anchor text or link text but I don't think it is so important factor for SEO. It is as much important as proper using of keywords or other element of SEO. Nobody knows what is exactly the most important for SEO because google use secret formulas preventing artificial increasing your PR by everyone.
I think a pair of my sites are struggling due to over optimization of anchors. What percentage breakdowns do you suggest for splitting between exact match target keyword anchors, long tail variations, brand keywords and garbage (click here, www.site.com) anchors? This didn't seem to be a major factor until Panda 3.2 and 3.3, at which point it's looking like it's playing a substantial role. I've been hitting my sites heavily with social bookmarks and wikis with garbage anchors in the hopes of tipping the scales to get rid of an over optimization penalty, but it's really a crap shoot at this point
Yes.. I would advice anybody to do this: Build backlinks using about 5+ of your top keywords you want to rank for.. This way your anchor text will be natural according to Google, because you use different keywords
I wholeheartedly agree. Anchor text is very important. Unsurprisingly, I see a lot of SEO newbies using "here" and "source" as anchors back to their site. This is ineffective. Also, don't use anchor text when the link attribute is set to NoFollow. It's just useless.
I don't know the answer, but you'll need considerably more than 5 keywords to look natural. I'm really thinking that junk and brand anchors are starting to play a major role
That's actually a decent point, and part of why I've just started trying using Wikis to diversify and add junk anchors, since most wikis nofollow links. A 'natural' link profile these days will have a lot of nofollow links, given how prevalent the use of the tag has become, while most using paid links are going to have 95%+ dofollow links
Anchor text are useful but when used proper way otherwise no use of the. But if done properly it may help your site to rank well with that keyword.
I think your missing the point albert_w. what nikolaa is saying that you should throw in the natural anchors text variations like, 'click here', 'view more'. Think about this, why do you need to tell Google by using a keyword 'anchor text' all the time, when Google already knows that the source site is relevant to yours. This is why you should always have some on topic relevant back links. I have studied top performers for keywords for many years, and the number of times I have seen websites rank number 1 for a competitive keyword, that have not used keyword anchor text once in their back link profile. The reason is that all there links are on topic and related to there site. Now this doesn't work for every site/niche, because some niches are so narrow and obscure, so garnering backlinsk that are directly related to your is hard. All in all, you need to look at your competitors. If the site rankign numbero uno has a really natural link profile, then you will need the same + more to out rank them, otherwise you will have to make do with 2nd best! All my SEo campagns are geared to getting my clients in the top 3, hence why we link build in the above manner. I have many examples to prove this concept.