Anchor Text
I have many people asking the same question over and over so I thought I'd post it here.You see... this site has many members that log on every day and spend hours at a time working hard to build up their reciprocal links. As everyone doing this knows... it is tough and tedious work! It's not that easy to sit there day in and day out trading links but it's all worth it right?
YES! Absolutely worth the time but there is one thing that many webmasters overlook. One of the main contributors to ranking well for a specific keyword(s) is the anchor text. In other words, you have many links pointing to your site but, what do they say?
You should use your keywords in the link pointing to your site. Many webmasters still don't realize the weight this carries with the search engines. We have many customers that pay us to build up their link popularity and others that pay us for text links in our footer (which builds up close to 10k links to your site) and they request the craziest ads.
For instance if your keywords are "ice cream" then the text ad shoud be ice cream
Now the search engines find the words "ice cream" pointing to your site it will give it the impression that your site is about... ICE CREAM.
Even after giving that advice webmasters still request links like "Joe's is the best ice cream and sandwiches in the world!" They've added more words hoping of ranking well for key words "sandwiches" as well as "ice cream". It doesn't work this way. Choosing an anchor text that is very targeted and explains your site better.
I posted an article about a week or so ago explaining a little bit about reciprocal links and this is what I'm saying. The site I mentioned in that post ranked in the top 10 of almost every search engine for the word "condo". This site has over 3 million links pointing to it. ALL of them come from a page about "weather" so you would think (according to the belief of many webmasters and so-called SEO experts) that this would hurt the efforts that they've made to rank well for "condo" related words since the links are not the same "theme".
This is true but the anchor text used was simply "condos". Now you have an anchor text like that pointing from over 3 million websites you are almost GUARANTEED good placement. Of course it doesn't take 3 million links in most industries but you get the idea.
Here is 3rd place on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-35,GGLD:en&q=condo
On Yahoo!
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=condos&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt ^ TOP
Just a small test I've performed.
Well just to prove my theory (from the prior post) I decided to try something. I have a client that manufactures certain products. I took on the SEO for this company and needed to build out several different web sites that I would then market for each individual category/product.The first site I created and optimized was an incredile success within 2 weeks!!! I could not believe it. The site was new and had never been indexed by the search engines. I finished the site and simply put a link on our footer network here and within 2-5 days he was indexed by most ofthe major search engines. The crazy part is that I used this particular sites key words (2 words) forthe anchor text and blam! he started ranking highly for this key phrase. I started seeing his links grow withing 2 weeks to ver 1500 by using our network but the increase of his rankings were even more exciting.
He now ranks #1 AND #2 on msn.com and #8 thru 15 on yahoo,Alta Vista, Hotbot, Lycos and even Google! Needless to say this customer is extremely happy with his results. The point is that by putting simple text link across a network of sites that are "completely" different from 'his' site I was able to acheive top ranking even though the sites were not in "any" way relevant to his content. ^ TOP
Reciprocal Linking and Dynamic URLs
OK. I'm going to say this one last time... DYNAMIC URLS DO GET SPIDERED. I keep getting webmaster emails asking me about dynamic URLs and how they do with the search engines. "I've heard I can't use dynamic URLs or the search engines won't spider my site" they say. The simple truth is that at one point this may have been the case but not any longer. Search engines realize that many of todays sites are now dynamic and the mumbers are increasing everyday. If they were to keep ignoring sites that are dynamic they would eventually have NO sites in their index :)Maybe I'm stretching it a bit but not by much. I believe that eventually there will be just as many dynamic websites as static HTML websites and the same search engines that at one point could not properly spider and index a dynamic site are doing so with no major problems now.
The problems that occur is when the dynamic site passes along multiple variables (more than two) and have super long strings in the URL. This WILL cause problems and may in fact hinder your efforts abit (I just contradicted myself some I know but you get the idea). As long as you keep the string small e.g.(http://www.yoursite.com/page.php?link=12&site=34) you should not have any real problems. ^ TOP
Do you Yahoo!?
What's your latest experience with Yahoo!? Are they treating you well? I find that Yahoo! send excellent traffic and is much easier to optimize for. Now combine that with the fact that they have much better search results it's a wonder that people carry one the way they do about Google. Don't get me wrong Google is king that I know... but should ALL your SEO efforts be focused 'strictly' on what Google wants? It seems to me that is how most webmasters look at SEO. They optimize their site according to what Google wants and 'only' what Google wants. ^ TOPReciprocal Linking Resources
Have some useful information you'd like to share with our users? Reciprocal linking is by far one of the best ways to increase your search engine rankings and they work great for various other reasons. Keep in mind that reciprocal links also send valuable traffic to your site and should be considered a great way to advertise. If you have an opinion, idea or information regarding reciprocal linking please share :) ^ TOPWho the heck knows!
Everyone has so many different views on what Google is upto but the truth is NO ONE KNOWS. I am so sick and tired of 'so called' web marketing experts who make guesses based on stuff that they've read somewhere in someone else's forums or web site. One thing I advise is DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ! The first year I started learning about SEO and Internet Marketing (about 8-9 years ago now) there wasn't much to go on so I had a lot of trial and error experiences but I eventually learned (more or less) how search engines work and how to acheive high rankings on my own. Now EVERYONE is an expert.I think it is so silly the way people carry on about reciprocal linking techniques, what works... what doesn't... who should link to whom... the fact is reciprocal links help you dramatically and even though Google DOES favor links from sites with high PR it doesn't mean that sites with lower PR aren't helpful! When we first started infowizards.com we had a low PR and many would'nt trade links with us because of it. Now that we're gaining PR and have over forty thousand links pointing to us those same people want to be our best friends. It's a ridiculous situation especially when no one really knows for sure what it is that Google and the other SEs really want!
Another thing that people seem to overlook is that THERE ARE MANY OTHER SEARCH ENGINES besides Google. I know... "but Google sends the most traffic" (you say). SO WHAT?!? That doesn't mean the others don't send great traffic too. Link popularity is king with ALL search engines and links of ALL types help you (well maybe not casinos, porn etc) and you should take advantage of all link trades that are requested from you. Stop being so narrow minded and trade links with ANYONE who you think would make for a good link partner REGARDLESS of what the 'so called' experts tell you. ALMOST RECIPROCAL LINKS HELP!
Here is a good example of what I mean:
Goto Yahoo or Google and type in 'condo' . Now look at #3 on Google and #2 on Yahoo. Then take a look at who's linking to them. These guys (Condocompany) have bought 3 million links from ONE site. The site they bought these from has NOTHING to do with condos. THEY'RE a WEATHER site LOL. The anchor text is there... the links are there... thats ALL it took to make them rank high for their phrase!
You wouldn't think that is possible since you should ONLY link to sites similar to yours right? You tell me :) ^ TOP
