Question regarding use of anchor text

[TheVigilante]

A question that I have been pondering for a long time so thought I would ask my BHW peeps as they have been there done that...

Say I want to target a keyword "Plumber in California" now all I have been doing is using the anchor text "Plumber in California" just because I want to rank for that specific term but I also know I am in danger of overuse of the same anchor text everywhere I post whether it be an web 2.0, slides etc. but what if I use a variation of the keyword "Plumber in California" as "plumbers available in California" or "plumbers working in california" do you think I would still end up ranking for "plumber in california" ?

@BassTrackerBoats @Holzr @davids355 @cynicalSEO @Finn @710fla @vishyjames @Geasy @BBulldog

 

[cynicalSEO]

The short answer is: The exact phrase is decreasingly important. Google understands context and concepts now.

Longer answer: Variations of the anchor text are certainly worth using to some degree, but RankBrain is much smarter than that.

Every year, and to greater and greater extent, Google is "understanding" the content of pages. It uses semantic analysis to tag each piece of content into relevant concepts, people, places, phrases, products, dates, etc.

While we can't see pages the way RankBrain sees them, we can play with other semantic analysis packages to get an idea of what they're doing: eg: https://permid.org/onecalaisViewer (no affiliation btw... just paste any article in there to see how machines 'understand' it). TextRazor is another one worth playing with. (Neither one of those is useful in SEO, really, but they do show you how machines see content nowadays).

So the upshot from an SEO perspective is: It's not just about permutations of "Plumber in California". It's about relevant concepts that are *contextually related to that term*.

eg: (I'm just guessing at these)

* leaking pipe
* fast service
* broken toilet

etc.

Of course, just guessing at which related concepts Google likely finds 'most important' is pretty tough for a human to do. (My 3 guesses above are probably crap). Which is why if you want to nail your contextual relevance you should use Clearscope, Wordmetrics, Content Experience or one of the next gen (but pricey AF) AI packages that calculates the statistical relevance of semantic terms to search terms.

If you want to do a "poor man's" version of that you can include Google's "related searches" from the bottom of the search page. That works too, just not as well. You can also use AnswerThePublic (free) to get an idea of what context people are looking for.

My 2 cents of course.

 

[Holzr]

As long as your on page is optimised then you'll rank. Google understands what you're trying to rank for pretty well these days without needing to be so obvious. I don't think I have any exact anchor text on my site. I don't like the risk of using exact match. When doing guest post I let the writer link naturally to my article with whatever anchor text looks the most natural. It's the relevance and authority of the link that counts.

@vishyjames wrote a good guide on anchor text earlier this year.

 

[TheVigilante]

The short answer is: The exact phrase is decreasingly important. Google understands context and concepts now.

Longer answer: Variations of the anchor text are certainly worth using to some degree, but RankBrain is much smarter than that.

Every year, and to greater and greater extent, Google is "understanding" the content of pages. It uses semantic analysis to tag each piece of content into relevant concepts, people, places, phrases, products, dates, etc.

While we can't see pages the way RankBrain sees them, we can play with other semantic analysis packages to get an idea of what they're doing: eg: https://permid.org/onecalaisViewer (no affiliation btw... just paste any article in there to see how machines 'understand' it). TextRazor is another one worth playing with. (Neither one of those is useful in SEO, really, but they do show you how machines see content nowadays).

So the upshot from an SEO perspective is: It's not just about permutations of "Plumber in California". It's about relevant concepts that are *contextually related to that term*.

eg: (I'm just guessing at these)

* leaking pipe
* fast service
* broken toilet

etc.

Of course, just guessing at which related concepts Google likely finds 'most important' is pretty tough for a human to do. (My 3 guesses above are probably crap). Which is why if you want to nail your contextual relevance you should use Clearscope, Wordmetrics, Content Experience or one of the next gen (but pricey AF) AI packages that calculates the statistical relevance of semantic terms to search terms.

If you want to do a "poor man's" version of that you can include Google's "related searches" from the bottom of the search page. That works too, just not as well. You can also use AnswerThePublic (free) to get an idea of what context people are looking for.

My 2 cents of course.

Or maybe just follow the competitors anchor text profile and just replicate what they do...what say?

 

[cynicalSEO]

Or maybe just follow the competitors anchor text profile and just replicate what they do...what say?

That'll get you part of the way there, sure. It won't hurt.

A couple years back all that mattered were exact match keywords with a few longtails sprinkled in. Anchor text is just more thinking along those lines. The problem is that we never know what text 'matters most' from a contextual relevance standpoint. So I'd say that's a decent strategy from 2017 -- and will still be helpful. And it may or may not win today -- depending on how competitive your keywords are. IMHO if you're in a highly competitive niche, it probably won't. (Keeping in mind, that page content is just one ranking factor of many. Everything else still matters. A page with crap content and backlinks from high DA sites can still crush the best content in the world).

Newer Google algos use AI to understand the conceptual differences between two different pages with the same exact-match keyword profile. So just matching that aspect may or may not get you a page with the same conceptual relevance. For example if you have two pages about California Plumbers and they both have the same exact-match keywords, Google will "know" which page is better suited to match a user's search intent. That differentiation is largely based on additional semantic clues (other exact match keywords) within the pages which determine the purpose of the page and what questions it answers best.

 

[cynicalSEO]

Google understands what you're trying to rank for pretty well these days without needing to be so obvious

This. Google's AI doesn't need exact matches anymore.