Keeping Up With Penguin 4.0

Nice Add On! Thanks....

Nargil said:

I for instance, wouldn't touch disavow tool no matter what. Unless it was about negative SEO, but that tool is a huge NO to me.

Better than screwing with disavow tool and praying that it works, don't build crap links. I honestly doubt, that someon can tell for sure, that disavow tool really works and the disavowed links are really not counted in any way whatsoever.

But that's just me.

Also, the only 2 practices that has to be implemented here are:
1. Don't get shit links
2. Don't rape your anchor ratio, especially the exact one. And no, 10%, or 5% exact match ration are not fine. Unless you are churning and burning.

Avoid these two and Penguin won't touch you. If yes, then it's most likely not Penguin.

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I don't know why people go on about the fact that your exact match ratio has to be low. All the top sites in my niche have high exact match anchor text (20%+) and have been ranking for at least a year. Ahrefs did a study that showed that top sites have higher % of exact match anchor text. 10% exact match is perfectly fine.

From my experience you need to have either:

High exact match anchor text + low keyword density OR low exact match anchor text + high keyword density.

And what is your niche? I presume it will be something spammy.

And 10% exact match ratio in non-spammy niches is certainly not fine.

This is interesting, How's the SERP post update? Any minor unusual dips noticed?

kasabian21 said:

I don't know why people go on about the fact that your exact match ratio has to be low. All the top sites in my niche have high exact match anchor text (20%+) and have been ranking for at least a year. Ahrefs did a study that showed that top sites have higher % of exact match anchor text. 10% exact match is perfectly fine.

From my experience you need to have either:

High exact match anchor text + low keyword density OR low exact match anchor text + high keyword density.

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kabe said:

This is interesting, How's the SERP post update? Any minor unusual dips noticed?

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Pretty much the same. One of the sites that has been ranking for the last year (and is only about 18 months old) has 4-5% keyword density, at least 20% exact match keyword on all its pages (all of which rank in the top five for the given term) and it has a shit ton of spammy links (someone obviously tried to negative SEO them).

I have recently been testing stuff out and a page of mine that is 5,000 words in length, has 1% keyword density and 35% exact match anchor went from nowhere to 17 for a one word term (has around 30,000 search per month) and has been there for a month or so now. Other pages of a similar length for search terms of about an equal difficulty, but have less exact match anchor text aren't ranking quite as well (in the late 20's).

Obviously my experiment is in its early days, but the sites ranking in my niche make a mockery of all the so called 'rules' harped on about by most people.

Nargil said:

And what is your niche? I presume it will be something spammy.

And 10% exact match ratio in non-spammy niches is certainly not fine.

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That depends on your definition of spammy as I wouldn't really know what is 'spammy' or what isn't. Give me some examples.

It is a perfectly legitimate niche that sells legitimate products. You say it's not fine, but what are you basing this on? I've seen it across several niches.

That's a first, great work . Mind if you share us the niche information ?

kasabian21 said:

Pretty much the same. One of the sites that has been ranking for the last year (and is only about 18 months old) has 4-5% keyword density, at least 20% exact match keyword on all its pages (all of which rank in the top five for the given term) and it has a shit ton of spammy links (someone obviously tried to negative SEO them).

I have recently been testing stuff out and a page of mine that is 5,000 words in length, has 1% keyword density and 35% exact match anchor went from nowhere to 17 for a one word term (has around 30,000 search per month) and has been there for a month or so now. Other pages of a similar length for search terms of about an equal difficulty, but have less exact match anchor text aren't ranking quite as well (in the late 20's).

Obviously my experiment is in its early days, but the sites ranking in my niche make a mockery of all the so called 'rules' harped on about by most people.

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Ahrefs analysis of 16,000 keywords (looking at the top 20 results):

kasabian21 said:

That depends on your definition of spammy as I wouldn't really know what is 'spammy' or what isn't. Give me some examples.

It is a perfectly legitimate niche that sells legitimate products. You say it's not fine, but what are you basing this on? I've seen it across several niches.

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Health products, weight loss products etc. Basically most of the CPA stuff, especially in health and beauty niche has a higher tolerance regarding anchor texts.

I could see it on multiple sites of mine, that they experience a drop after the last Penguin. After I dilluted my exact match anchors, they are slowly climbing back. At least dozen people I talked to privately, experienced literally the same thing. This is not a rule of thumb and it really comes down to niches. Whether you are working with Adsense, Amazon, CPA, CB, own product, etc, all these niches have different anchor ratio requirements. However, on a significant majority of them, 10% is simply too much.

The importance of anchor texts is becoming lower and lower with each update. A year or two ago I stopped paying too much attention to these. Google semantic updates, which can work with synonyms and basically everything, know very well what the website is about. No need to stick with some 1 - 1.5% keyword density or anything like that. Synonyms give the same results for example. There is really almost no point telling Google what the site is about via anchor texts. The benefit there is minimal and risk is high. I haven't used an exact match anchor for months and I am doing just fine. URL + brand = 90%, rest is generic, LSI and a few partials here and there and I am doing just fine.

And regarding that Ahrefs analysis. It's from July of this year, so things have changed quite significantly since then.

Also, saying that people don't know what they are talking about, if they say that the anchor text has to be lower and then taking 6 months old Ahrefs analysis for granted... well...

Nargil said:

And regarding that Ahrefs analysis. It's from July of this year, so things have changed quite significantly since then.

Also, saying that people don't know what they are talking about, if they say that the anchor text has to be lower and then taking 6 months old Ahrefs analysis for granted... well...

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I didn't say people didn't know what they are talking about, I simply said that from my experience over several niches, the 'rules' that get spouted most often don't fit with the reality. Is this the case across the board? I have no idea. I am just trying to perhaps make people think beyond what they read, think outside the box and do a little research. I guess I'm not a fan of so called 'gurus' telling people there are exact rules for SEO, when in reality (although there are of course guidelines that must adhered to), there is plenty of scope for experiment and doing things differently.

There's never going to be a right or wrong answer. Just a nice healthy discussion

kasabian21 said:

I didn't say people didn't know what they are talking about, I simply said that from my experience over several niches, the 'rules' that get spouted most often don't fit with the reality. Is this the case across the board? I have no idea. I am just trying to perhaps make people think beyond what they read, think outside the box and do a little research. I guess I'm not a fan of so called 'gurus' telling people there are exact rules for SEO, when in reality (although there are of course guidelines that must adhered to), there is plenty of scope for experiment and doing things differently.

There's never going to be a right or wrong answer. Just a nice healthy discussion

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I can only agree with all that

Do Guest post from high authority site and niche based real site which is good one for backlinks

Right said! Do niche relevant REAL GUEST POST , rest happens with time

We Bring Rank said:

Do Guest post from high authority site and niche based real site which is good one for backlinks

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bekemew said:

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LOL