This is one of the topics I get asked many times on forums and via email. I have had good SEO success in the past in most niches. It actually comes down to one simple rule – Get links, good quality links!
Now when links are built naturally all is okay, anchor text is varied (obviously), and people from all over the globe are linking to you because of the great value you are providing. However, looking at things from the SEO perspective, we all want to build good quality links (ourselves) to our sites. These may be from Web 2.0 sites, Directories, Blogs, etc.
Why is the anchor text we choose for our link building campaign important?
Say you are trying to rank your website for the keyword – “black leather bags”, now this is not a very competitive niche, and you can rank for the keyword with a small but good quality link building campaign. “Black leather bags” is our main keywords, however, If I focus my entire link building efforts on getting links with anchor text “black leather bags”, Google WILL detect a pattern and sandbox the site (if the site is new, and link building is not consistent). Hence variation in the anchor text is NECESSARY.
Clarification: The above argument does not stand good if the links you are getting are natural/ from different quality webpages – high PR, low PR, trusted sites, new sites, etc. The best example is Digg.com or a site like Facebook.com . About 90% of the incoming links they have is from a single keyword like “Digg” or “Facebook”, but because many of these links are from authority sites and trusted old domains, it works in their favor instead of becoming a negative aspect.
An experiment I conducted 6 months back:
I purchase 2 domains in a specific niche 6 months back. For the purpose of discussion; let us call it “bluebagsreview.net” and “bluebagsreview.com” – both targeting the same keyword – “blue bags”.
BlueBagsReview.com: I built links by hand and using some tools, varying the keywords, in the ratio – 6:3:1 [6 times Main Anchor Text, 4 times related anchor text, i.e. “blue leather bags”, “buy blue carrybags”, etc., and 1 time a completely unrelated keyword - such as “Click Here to visit the site”]. I also stopped building links to this site after a short period of 1 month.
BlueBagsReview.net: The number of links I built for this site was tripe of that for the .Com site – using just some automated tools (will talk about it in a later post). I continued doing this for 3 months. ALL links were built the SAME anchor text, i.e. “Blue Bags”.
Results of the Experiment:
- 2nd month: I held top two positions in Google: .Net at No.2 and .Com at No.1
- 3rd Month: .Net at No.1 and .Com at No.2
- 4th Month: .Net at No.1 and .Com at No.3
- 5th Month: .Net is SANDBOXED (Not even on the 100th page) and .Com at No.1
What I learnt:
The best thing to do is have a little variation in your anchor text so that it looks normal and also the MOST important part is CONSISTENCY while building links. I am pretty sure if I had continued link building for the .Net site for a few more months, I would have retained the position (calls for another experiment!?).
So what is the optimum Anchor Text ratio to maintain?
I generally follow the ratio – 6:3:1 (Targeted: Related: Unrelated) – Example (“blue bags”: “cheap blue purses”: “click here”).
However, I should mention that this is NOT a set rule, always TWEAK your strategy and campaigns according to your site profile, link profile, and rankings in search engines.
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