I know it is suggested that one has variety in their anchor text when looking for backlinks. My question is how many? For instance: Out of 100 backlinks, would I be better off getting 50 for hip hop music and 50 for hip hop videos (both of which are two of the more competitive terms in my niche), or would I be better off with this formula: 5 for hip hop music, 5 for hip hop videos, 5 for rap music, 5 for rap videos, 5 for underground hip hop, etc. I've been focusing on listen to hip hop music, hip hop music, hip hop videos, rap music, and rap videos now for the most part, and while I'm barely in the top ten for listen to hip hop music, I haven't been showing any progress whatsoever for the others, and thus, I'm wondering if a more diverse formula is better?
You can go about it either way. What you are doing is either trying to gain ranking in all the keywords of your site at once, or only for a few keywords. I would say split it between 3 or 4 anchor texts, and then modify your formula according to which keywords you're doing good in.
Hard to tell, what is the competition for that niche like? How many backlinks do your competitors have? Are you ranking a top level doman? Is the domain name relevant? Have you done proper onpage SEO? lol There are so many reasons why you may not be ranking yet or ever.
I appreciate the responses. I'm gonna continue to do research as to what keywords I want to target aside from what I'm already doing. Pagan, the competition is pretty solid, though its penetrable I feel. I've been focusing on on-page SEO and have been doing well with it so far. In fact, on-page SEO alone has got me to page 3 of underground hip hop. By working on some backlinks for that keyword, I should break into the top ten. My site is a PR3. It's tough because I'm competing with sites that have hiphopmusic in their domain name, but I wanted to help establish a brand, as I'm also using the site to promote other ventures that I have in the music industry.
I think if you are already on page 3 and you are done with onpage seo. The next thing you should concentrate on is RSS feed submission along with digg and stumbleupon. It will again help you to rank higher.. Having a keyword in domain is always beneficial but not a must thing.
Yep, if you use variety in a very narrowly competitive niche, you are probably not going to be able to achieve good rankings. Its very necessary that you determine the variety based on the competition and competitor backlink analysis.
I would say add variety in - definitely. I didn't add enough in (I did a lot of keyword county 1, keyword county 2, keyword county 3) etc and now Google's stuck some form of penalty on the keyword - my keyword is at the bottom of page 3 whilst a keyword I haven't coded for or used is higher!