I know someone has asked recently about allinanchor's meaning but I didn't want to hijack his thread. The site in my sig is top 20 in google using allinanchor:vacation rentals but for a regular search barely comes in the top 500. I asked this a while ago and someone mentioned on page SEO is probably somehting to do with it so I added the phrase in a few more places on the page. Take into account I am by no means an SEO professional so I didn't really know what I was doing, but adding the phrase a few more times did help. Like I said I am now ~500 where as I used to not be in the top 1000. With such a discrepency between the all inanchor result and the regular google results, are there any other major factors, is my on page SEO crap or is it to do with teh quality of links? If I could get anywhere near the allinanchor result for a regular search I would be a very happy ameteur SEO'er. Any advice appreciated.
Good job getting that high with allinanchor on a competitive term. Now here is what you have to do... WAIT ok done that? ready... WAIT some more. Unfortunately, link/site age is a big factor now with Google. Also known as being in the "sandbox" -- do a search on that term.
Believe me, I know all about the sandbox!! The site is 14 months old, has 45k indexed pages in G, shows about 500backlinks. Didn't show anything for about 6 months, thats why I thought I was out of the sandbox. bout 75% of my traffic comes from G too. Suppose all I can do then is wait! Of course, the problem with tht is what if I m waiting for something that isn't going to happen, but I guess thats the problem every webmaster faces!
Man there is a massive amount of information that could be given in reply to your question. Firstly you are comparing apples with oranges in your methodology. 1) You are running a check for anchor text that contains both the words 'vacation' & 'rentlas' 2) You are searching for a PHRASE 'vacation rentals' You cant really compare these two things, as you need to know where you stand in the results for anchors containing that Phrase. On page SEO makes it easier to rank, ie. you need a hell of a lot less links to rank for a phrase.
Not sure I follow - the phrase I am trying to rank for is vacation rentals, rather than "vacation rentals". From my experience people tend to search without quotation marks. Is that what you mean? Edit - I have just checked - I rank the same for allinanchor:"vacation rentals" as I do for allinanchor:"vacation rentals" and marginally better for "vacation rentals" than for vcation rentals. Either way, I still have the same problem!
Sorry for telling you something you already knew One thing to consider is that the sandbox may be different sizes for different niches. Yours is deep and very competitive so the box may be large and may even have multiple stages. Also, if link age is a big factor, the sites above you may have been around for years longer and have a big jump on you in that area. In my experience, you won't get a huge jump in Google from #500 to the top #20 just by doing on-page SEO.
Thats what I thought, hence my problem Is there any evidence to suggest either that there is a varying sandbox affect, or anything that proves the extent that age has in G? thanks for your replies though
Nothing but anecdotal experience.. I think that is the best you can get when dealing with the mystery that is G. I was allinanchor top 10 for "vbulletin" for about 6 months before it made the move... the site jumped from 70 to top 5 in one hop. Same with an adult one word keyword but the move took about a year. No change was made before the jumps happened.
Please dont listen to all those guys saying that you are in the Sandbox. You are not. And if you are, you should get out with the same ways as the ways you should walk when you werent in it. Top500 is okay for your keyword though, so I bet you are not. Your keyword is just competitive. Thats all. You need links and a big good well established website. Since you cannot do much to get it established, try to spread your time 50% on content, and 50% on gaining links. 500 links is peanuts, you should get at least 10 times more on good relevant pages with less than 30 links on those pages. So not only directories or free-for-all links but 4500 more quality links. Yes that takes a few months, but thats what it takes to get high on relevant keywords. So DONT take the advice to wait. If you wait, you might be too late. Start getting links and quality content NOW. Make at least a new unique page a day, and get at least a quality link a day. Thats my basic advice. Always helps.
You should be doing that anyway, regardless of current positioning, right? I'm curious how you explain such a huge discrepancy between allinanchor and actual SERPs if not for some Google-applied factor? Wouldn't you agree that for most SERPs, allinanchor and actual results are very closely related? So why not for Tiptop? Look at the McDar results attached below: Actual SERP - Allinanchor #1 - #2 #2 - #1 #3 - #3 #4 - #4 #5 - #5 And so on... and for tiptop: #436 - #17 Whether you want to use the common buzzword of sandbox or not... there is some sort of filter applied to his site so it is not doing as well as the IBLs say it should.
When I say I have 500 links, thats teh 500 that G shows - using linkdomain in Y I have ~45k and link: I have ~18k. Saying that though I am constantly link building AND adding content regularly. The main thing I couldnt figure out is allinanchor refers to... well.. exactly what it says - keywords in anchor text. I rank quite well using that but not in the actual results proper. That is what made me think it could be something more than links
VB - do you have the link to that tool on mcdar - it looks really handy and I can never find what I want on that site!! Thanks for checking that out btw...
I only put the ' ' there to indicate the search terms. All in anchor returns ALL instances of those two words ANYWHERE within the anchor text. You are targetting the phrase, two words after each other. vacation & rentals as people search for it. Or do they? People don't have to search using ' ' on google anyhow, as it automatically applies the boolean operator (this was one of the reasons for its initial success when it came along). A step further along is that you are comparing sheer numbers of anchor text, when it is the value of the site that can make all the difference. Google runs clustering technology, it builds neghbourhoods of sites, and grades these groups. Within these groups there will be certain sites that are seen as 'special' (that is special with or without quotation marks lol) <joke> These sites are known as Hub & Authority sites. Typically a hub site will link out to many specialist quality on topic sites, while authority sites, tend to have many links from other high quality sites. It is perfectly possibl, and regular for a site to be a hub and an authority at the same time. Google knows that all sites are not equal, and because of this, a link to your site from a special site will be worth many many normal links from johns holiday blog etc. As an example, a link from the BBC travel section is going to be a valuable link, far more valuable than a link from a normal site. Google knows full well that the BBc are very fussy who they link to. Hopefully this is better explained than my first set of points.
Thanks OWG, so you are basically saying that number of links is only half the story - quality of links is the other half?
Which is EXACTLY what I said in my first post, there is a MASSIVE Range of elements for ranking (google admit to there being 100 elements on a base 5 sliding log scale giving 5 BILLION combinations), and moreso with a competitive phrase like 'vacation rentals'. You MUST get all the elements right or your simply trying to googlebomb your site to the top. This is fine, but it is one hell of a shaky business model, especially as Google is waging war on false linking patterns.
That was what I was saying originally - I have no prior experience of SEO so I wasn't sure if the simple things like on page optimisation were right. When you say googlebombing, do you mean just throwing thousands of links at it to boost rankings? How can they crack down on things like that when RSS and the like are developing so rapidly?