Why Anchor Text Does Not Matter

GREAT post as always lightningblitz.
Being a noob myself and a non-native english speaker, I have questions again

You saw how I prep my own domains.
- Niche relevant contextual content without anchors on high powered domains.
- Quality links pointing to these contextual properties.
- Some indexing links.

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1.You mean you have a contextual link(naked urls anchor) on a high power domain--> this one point to your money web
And you have another good quality links pointing to that high power domain, right?

2.This is what I don't understand. Doesn't it more powerful to just point all the links to your money site?
Why pointing links -> PBNs -> money site is more powerful than pointing all links -> money site

If pointing links -> PBNs -> money site is what I should do then the money needed for link building is a lot more than I expected.....wait just when I typed this, I just realize if it is more powerful then maybe less money needed.

I always build mixed anchor text & naket links.

Bookmarked your threads & utilize it.

Thanks OP.

Hmm...I always get the best results when I use keyword anchors :/

Doesn't surprise me but it's good to see that it's been tested and confirmed. Thanks for sharing.

Leith said:

Branded anchors + naked URLs are the way forward. Typically when I create a new site, they're the very first type of anchors I use for link building.

To back up what I'm saying:

Brand new domain. Affiliate site but it's designed for a churn/burn purpose. All I did to the site was add about 5000 words of unique content. Moderate competition keywords. I created this site on Jan 8 and began working on the SEO the very next day. All I did was build various links targeting ONLY brand anchors/naked URLs + I also bought some social signals. I dripped everything out for about a week.

Over a week later and I'm ranking. Take in mind I ONLY built brand anchor/naked URL links + social signals so I never built any links to any of the above keywords. All I did was make sure those keywords were naturally but effectively added into the content. And plus, the above keywords are just a few of what I'm tracking in Serpbook. I'm probably ranking for others too that I haven't yet had a chance to analyze (+ it's made a few small sales already which is always a bonus ).

Jan 9 - Jan 16. Only a week. Next I'll increase the velocity of social signals + also increase the number of links being built with brand anchors/naked URLs. I'll give that a week to kick in and then I'll bring out the PBN bad boys and target the main keywords over a 2 week drip. Rinse and repeat

lightningblitz is spot on 100%. Don't waste all your time and energy focussing on your main money keywords. Focus on them afterwards. Put more attention to detail on your other anchors!

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Just wondering, how many links is "various links"?

As for Micky and the sandbox, I don't see a sandbox BUT I add links one by one over a very extended period. I notice that once the link is indexed I see the results of that link a couple of weeks later (AFTER it's indexed) rather than immediately. I remember people discussing a "waiting period" some time ago. Well it's likely negated by high volumes of links as the engine thinks the post is viral or something? But one at a time I think you will see a small delay unless the site linking to you is a huge authority.

Having said that I recently got a link from the biggest authority in my niche to one of my pages, it's branded and DF, still not seen an increase for that term which is strange. Their entire article is about the exact same keyword then they list me as a source amongst two other huge brands. I'd expect big things. It's not a subdomain either it's the main site.

It's about a good mix. Anchor Text for ranking and the rest to appear "natural"...

Thanks for sharing awesome testing and experience! I will start to implement your tips in my sites right away.
Hope you will share more studies like this in future so that newbie like me can improve our SEO insight!

nimdekvan said:

GREAT post as always lightningblitz.
Being a noob myself and a non-native english speaker, I have questions again



1.You mean you have a contextual link(naked urls anchor) on a high power domain--> this one point to your money web
And you have another good quality links pointing to that high power domain, right?

2.This is what I don't understand. Doesn't it more powerful to just point all the links to your money site?
Why pointing links -> PBNs -> money site is more powerful than pointing all links -> money site

If pointing links -> PBNs -> money site is what I should do then the money needed for link building is a lot more than I expected.....wait just when I typed this, I just realize if it is more powerful then maybe less money needed.

Click to expand...

I will just explain what domain prepping is:

Before I launch a site, I build some links to it in order to make it stronger. I do this for PBN domains and money site domains. For a PBN, the higher number of quality referring domains you have the stronger it is, so I give my PBN domain some more.

For a money site domain, I do this to make it stronger and to kick crawlers to get it indexed.

I build free links that just take some effort to pump them up, and a Press Release.

I use:

Quality blog comments
Some Social Bookmarks
Some Social Signals
Web 2.0s
Edu Posts

Then I send some tier links to power them up and get them indexed.

I also do a cheap Press Release because a Press Release does its job well and will get my site indexed fast.

I do this to each site. Domain prepping is one of the things which I do differently than most but allows me to be successful faster.

This is for regular old long term websites. For churn and burn I am a lot more aggressive, but that is a different subject entirely.

Jack Torrance said:

Just wondering, how many links is "various links"?

As for Micky and the sandbox, I don't see a sandbox BUT I add links one by one over a very extended period. I notice that once the link is indexed I see the results of that link a couple of weeks later (AFTER it's indexed) rather than immediately. I remember people discussing a "waiting period" some time ago. Well it's likely negated by high volumes of links as the engine thinks the post is viral or something? But one at a time I think you will see a small delay unless the site linking to you is a huge authority.

Having said that I recently got a link from the biggest authority in my niche to one of my pages, it's branded and DF, still not seen an increase for that term which is strange. Their entire article is about the exact same keyword then they list me as a source amongst two other huge brands. I'd expect big things. It's not a subdomain either it's the main site.

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Sandbox or 'Oh shoot, I built 100 exact match anchor links from a PBN in 24 hours!' I have never seen a sandbox, but have seen number two where my KW will not shoot up for a bit because I had a clear case of spam.

As far as your link not giving you a boost, it does take longer not using exact match. Google takes longer to do everything now, from indexing to showing you that you did a good job. I would suggest you build a couple good links to this great link which are exact match. Make googles job easier.

Either way it will have a benefit, it just takes time.

All in all this is a quality thread. Great info from OP and from some of the replies. Another one for my bookmarks.

Awesome testing OP.

I'm not huge on SEO but what are the avg lengths of your articles and does that have a big effect on ranking? From what I have read I keep seeing roughly 500 words. When I make articles I usually do them for updates for our users. Not really for SEO or keywords so they are usually relatively short.

Article length does matter, but not like people think.

Longer content can target more KWs and LSIs.
More text makes it easier to determine what KWs the content should rank for.
SEOs use 300 or 500 words as standard.

For number three, don't you think it looks suspicious that all of your articles are 500 words exactly or close to it?

Industry standard is what causes foot prints. Include enough words to cover your topic and hit all the KWs you want to rank for.

Anchor text are important, but not as much as they used to be. I usually keep my major keywords in 1%-3% mark which is more than enough... Rest of them are brand keywords which works like a charm. I started working on it in late April and was seeing some good results. Since then, this is the rule that i follow..

Although 2016 is coming with a couple of interesting changes as well...Well Nice thread OP!!!

Cheers!!

Digging the exchange of real SEOs here guys. Seriously valuable information acquired by simply being a member. Can't thank you enough for your recent contributions lightningblitz!

I do this with my new sites now... I hit it with blog comments, bookmarks and other to the brand or just variations of the URL till it is in the top 20-30 then hit it with some PBN links to the main keywords and it works wonders. Only need about 10 good PBN links to get it to page 1 after that.

Great post...

Nkhades said:

Anchor text are important, but not as much as they used to be. I usually keep my major keywords in 1%-3% mark which is more than enough... Rest of them are brand keywords which works like a charm. I started working on it in late April and was seeing some good results. Since then, this is the rule that i follow..View attachment 75139

Although 2016 is coming with a couple of interesting changes as well...Well Nice thread OP!!!

Cheers!!

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You are right.

The problem is most information you find on SEO is either from 2011 (Not exactly quality now) or from White Hat 'Gurus'.

Anchor text is bad!
No link building!
Content is King!

Yeah, yeah.

Mean while those who test know a few of their best links can be exact match. The rest LSI, naked, related KWs, and branded and rank like kings and make money.

This thread is just an eye opener. Hopefully someone reads my ramblings, notices it disagrees with the 'Gurus' and they go test and discover there own truth in SEO.

davers said:

Digging the exchange of real SEOs here guys. Seriously valuable information acquired by simply being a member. Can't thank you enough for your recent contributions lightningblitz!

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Many thanks.

Honestly, when I did my first big 'share' of 'How to Rank - Quick Guide for Newbies' I just wanted to stop getting PMs asking how to rank, and I was sick of all of the threads.

I got some hate, a lot of thanks, and got some helpful more successful members to PM me and offer help and say 'good post'. That made me feel good and stopped the pointless PMs for a while.

Then I started sharing recently and got some members like Leith, fc - dh, wowhaxor, t0mmy, etc...etc, just a LOT of guys and gals I know know there stuff chiming in to disagree with me or give me tips.

Stuff I thought I had down, like building a PBN, quickly changed my personal process by getting some feedback. Not huge changes, but a slight tip is all I needed to refine my process.

The best advice I ever got on BHW was by me testing, figuring it out, posting how I do something and people disagreeing or giving me pointers.

More people need to share. It actually helps you to discuss your process. I am not exactly giving out industry secrets like my niche, but I do get someone who has as much or more experience looking at my process which is worth its weight in gold.

Very true, OP, but trying to convince clients of this is another matter. Nevertheless, I always start new SEO campaigns by building up the brand, rather than the anchors.

Hm interesting, I usually build naked links with brand new sites, but with aged domains (for clients) I tend to use keyword anchors. Ahrefs did a case study and there was a correlation between anchors and ranking:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/anchor-text-study/

Just curious.

Has anyone ever clicked through to your site via your signature and bought something?

christianbed said:

Very true, OP, but trying to convince clients of this is another matter. Nevertheless, I always start new SEO campaigns by building up the brand, rather than the anchors.

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Thank you for this post, I will implement it in my next blasts

I still think anchor is needed.

Some high pr web mentioning about my website. I goes page1. After few weeks he/she removed the anchor and bang! My rank dropped.