I was reading Loren’s article today, which referenced a forum thread on SE RoundTable.
In that thread Benjamin Pfeiffer was quoted as saying:
The best approach I think is rather instead of a site wide link a webmaster should approach a website by targeting individual pages and taking a slower more covert approach to obtaining links. I don’t mean hide links, but do your linking in a way that appears more natural. Place links here and there. This would thus make it more difficult to determine patterns in your approach.
This got me to thinking about "linking in a way that appears more natural", and blended with what Aaron was saying today…
Seems like Yahoo!’s related phrases / seo also section is based at least partially upon co-occurance of words in close proximity of one another across various web pages.
I’d bet my favorite cat, that Google looks at link text "co-occurance of words in close proximity of one another across various web pages"
…ok…let’s think about this for a second. If you have 100 baclinks where each of those looks like this:
Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog
This is Jim’s soapbox where he rambles on about SEO and Internet
Marketing related stuff. Jim is also the CEO of We Build Pages.
Where the link text was always the same…and the next 4 words after the link text were always "This is Jim’s soapbox…" do you believe Google thinks this is a real "vote"? Do you think this looks natural?
Do you ever fill out one Form for submitting to 50 directories (same link text, same description?).
Do you do Link trading where your link and description after it is always the same? (allow me to put another nail in the "link pages" coffin).
The words surrounding your link matter….this has been known for years…but rarely utulized by SEO’s.
What looks like a real vote…my listing example above done the same 100 times, or something like what is below?
….and Jim Boykin said "SEO Rules" bla bla….
….I was reading what Jim (an SEO) said about….
….quoting Jim (a self proclaimed SEO specialist)….
…that crazy Jim guy (he’s a SEO) link pages…
..an SEO named Jim said link pages suck….
Now, not one of those links above are for "SEO", but notice how the word SEO is near all the links. I’ll ask you again, which is more natural? Think I can rank for SEO this way? (I do).
Isn’t it kinda funny how SEO has evolved…in the past we’d find one "trick" and do it over and over again…the SEO of 2006-2007 has shifted to "how can I make this all look "natural" and not "tricky"?
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[tags]seo, sem, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, links, link building, internet marketing, link popularity[/tags]
6 Responses
Heh, really it doesn’t help to rank even for SEO Jim 🙂
Well I’m sure that’s true but just how much will Google ignore identical anhor text? I just ran a job for a guy who ranks #1 for “internet marketing consultant”. He had a hundreds of links with that term as the anchor text. I’m sure Google knows this and I’m sure they are not penalizing him either.
On the other hand, I believe we have to develop better links or sources pages that offer value to both parties involved…maybe mix related links with topical articles and even an affiliate program or two in the same catagory.
goodbye roboform….it was nice working with ya!
Thanks Jim,
I agree but I don’t see too many websites in my area being penalized for identical anchor text right now. It might be happening, I don’t know for sure. If it’s not, then it’s just a matter of time. Hundreds of links with identical anchor and surrounding text seems like an obvious red flag that can be easily filtered. It might also help reduce press release abuse as well.
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