Vary Your LINK TEXT (and eat your vegetables or
else!)
Text links are a great way to help boost your search engine rankings - especially
when they have YOUR keywords in the LINKS!
Search engines love this stuff… ummm… in moderation…
Just like in the real world where you need to be careful NOT to over do some
things… such as overeating that funky chunk sweet fatty ice cream stuff
which may taste good… so good it’s hard to stop eating it once
you get started… but don’t eat too much of that sugar filled crap
because you might just get a tummy ache… at the very least you’ll
gain some weight and a zit or two (a real world penalty by the way!)
Just like in the real world - there are penalties for excessive behavior in
SEO! The days of hammering a SPECIFIC KEYWORD PHRASE in the link text for a
page are long gone.
I just got a question about ‘varying link text”.
I’ll share some of the background info and the question so you guys
can benefit as well.
The guy just outsourced a job on elance to get backlinks and he had them use
3 articles in the hopes of gaining 400 backlinks.
He is now concerned because the outsourcer used the same exact single keyword
in all of the link text. Apparently it was a one word phrase. He now wanted
to know if this would trigger a penalty for having a lot of links in a short
period show up with the same link text.
Uhhhhh…. let me think about this….
The short answer is YES.
400 backlinks in a couple of weeks with the same SINGLE WORD is a pattern
they will notice. I’m sure there is more to what the outsourcer did
than simply the SAME LINK TEXT.
Now, what they’ll do is unkonwn. It may be a simple penalty where the
links don’t count or count for very little.
Unfortunately, people that work FOR US tend to want to do things quiicly and
as painlessly as possible. Outsourcers are notorious for not doing much thinking
about the work they do for us - they just do it - and as fast as they can!
This is not a ood thing!
Too fast and without thought is what gets us in trouble. Maybe not every
time but eventually the man catches up with us! And so do the calories! So
make sure you you eat your vegetables too! Sorry… could not resist.
In general - you want all of your backlinks to work for you. Not against you.
The idea is to vary the link text and make sure that the links pointing at
your web pages have some unique characteristics, just like in the “real
world”.
In the world of SEO - TOO MUCH of a good thing usually turns into trouble… especially
when it comes to backlinks.
When people link to you in the real world, they don’t always link to
your page the right way or with the best words. The links are NEVER PERFECT!
A lot of them are crap! HAve you ever noticed that???
So when YOU or your outsourced workers do linking campaigns for you make sure
that the links pointing at your pages are NOT ALL PERFECT!
There are a few ways to look at this “Vary Your Link Text” mantra
I have… and it’s not science by the way - it’s all opinion
based theory since search engines do not tell us what triggers their ALGORHYTMS
or how they decide to penalize a page or site :’>
BUT that said - it’s very obvious that TARGETED LINK TEXT has a huge
impact on geting a web page top rankings… It works! UNTIL you start
to shoot yourself in the foot by doing the same good things too often.
VARY your LINK TEXT - it’s the law!
Each URL that you link to should have more than 2 or 3 VARIATIONS in the
LINK TEXT if you want it to look like a normal web page linked by real people
out there in the real world - more variation is better and more natural -
5 or more variations is ideal - beacuse in the real world a popular web page
may have 100’s or more different keyword phrases used in the LINK TEXT
pointing at the URL. Some of them are pure crap!
Have you ever seen someone link to you with “Click Here” as the
link text???
YOU should be thanking them instead of trying to get them to change it!
It’s the variations in link text that will help make your linking campaigns
satisfy the search engines!
But what about other PATTERNS and EXCESES???
Now, we need to considermore than just the LINK TEXT itself - you also need
to be concerned with the surrounding words on the web pages that link to you.
If a LARGE percentage of the web pages that link to you share the SAME or
SIMILAR QUALITIES - ie same link text - the same exact surrounding words
- the same identical titles - same file names etc. it will tell Google your
page is linked by a robot…. or at the very least by someone working like a robot. They
don’t like this! In fact, if Google had their way you would NVERE link
to your own web pages. They’d prefer you did not have that power or
capability - because that is what they believe is MANIPULATION.
Right or wrong - what they think is not negotiable. They don’t want us
to link to our own pages and they’ll do what they can to make sure
that the LINKS they rank us on are NOT from automation or manipulation.
Does that mean we should roll over and NOT be concerned about backlinks???
Hell no!
But we need to be sensible about how we do it. We need to be smarter than all
the other guys out there trying to cut corners and get the job done as soon
as possible without considering the tracks they are leaving.
We simply need to throw in a few monkey wrenches and back off a hair. That
alone will help you get past the big brother censors who want to BAN your sites
and penalize you for linking.
All we need to do is employ simple variation and do some things in a slower
more sensible way.
Otherwise if you blast 3 articles out over 400 different web sites and they
all have the same link text - the same page titles - the same keyword density
n the pages - the same bio boxes etc… it’ll bite you in the
booty!
That is why ARTICLE SUBMISSION can kill you if you go about it in the worng
way.
It’s not good for 100 or 200 or 300 or 400 article directories to link
to you with the SAME IDENTICAL WORDS on the PAGES. Too many patterns can
be revealed that will set off red flags.
So - back to the question and the fact that one keyword was used in the text
of 400 backlinks…
As for one word being linked too much…. You can still vary it by adding
other words to links pointing at the same page.
While it is NOT possible to VARY a single word - by nature it is not a phrase
- too many that are simply a ONE WORD link - will be noticeable
You can still help that URL look more natural by having more links than that
single word - try using different keywords and keyword phrases that point
at the same URL. I’d hurry up and get more links pointing at that URL
you are linking and make sure the text is different with lots of variations!
Sometimes when you MIX IN a bunch of variations it may be enough to STOP the
filters from flagging you or removing the penalty when they see things equalize
over time.
In the future make sure you don’t go nuts wit one keyword phrase hammered
too may times in the same way.
The biggest RED FLAG is when some OVER ZEALOUS and ANXIOUS people in a hurry
try to MANIPULATE RANKINGS by showing Google a web page that gets MANY TARGETED
TEXT LINKS that are ALL the same or very similar - it tells Google something
UN-NATURAL is happening and they catch it pretty easy.
The simple solution is to not over do it on one or two phrases - add VARIETY
- make sure each of your web page URLS have at least 2 or 3 primary phrases
and ideally more. Also have a few secondary phrases. Get some links with those
too! Make sure the words are actually on your page though! Also have some wildcards
thorwn in - change the word order - add an extra word to a phrase etc.
Those things should help prevent a URL from getting hit with a massive penalty.
Just try to be real! Don’t do things like a machine! Machines and automation
can lack the nuances that reality provides.
Automation can be a great thing, but if you do things reptitively just like
robots, it may hurt you more than help you.
Just be sensible and you’ll be fine. So make sure you eat your vegetables,
ok???
Join http://www.link-vault.com so you can be in control
of your own link text. Here is the Link Vault thread which has a link to
the Link Vault tutorial video.
My new video shows you how to set up a Link Vault account so you can get
some free links pointing at your sites with little effort
My link vault tutorial
Most webmasters out there NEGLECT getting relevant text links to their deep inside
pages. Sure, it's easy to get some links pointing to your home pages, but did
you know that by getting links pointing at your deep inside article web pages
that you will easily get more top ten rankings and loads more free search engine
traffic? It's true!
The more text laden links pointing at your article web pages, the easier it will
be to get top tens that bring you loads of traffic!
As an Article Underground member you have 22 article announcements blogs at your
disposal to get TEXT TARGETED links fast when you need them! BUT as easy as that
may be, don't just settle on getting links to your pages from ONLY the AU announcements
blogs - ideally YOU NEED real world NATURAL LINKS coming in at your web pages
from all over the globe! NOT just to your HOME PAGES but your article web pages
need BACKLINKS TOO!
Link Vault is a great solution and it's free. It's a new spin on link exchanges.
In this video I will show you step by step how to set up a site to SHOW Link
Vault text ads so you can gain credits to show your web page text links on other
sites! What a great concept!
All you need are web pages that are indexed by Google and you can start having
your pages linked with your choice of LINK TEXT on other sites that are indexed
by Google! Link Vault makes it easy to get a diverse influx of links from web
sites all over the globe!
Signing up is free and easy, but some AU members have expressed frustration setting
up their web pages to show the link vault code, so I decided to show you step
by step how I add a new site to INVENTORY and also how I add a PAGE from my site
with the link text of my choice by using the AUKDAT tool (Article Underground
Keyword Density Tool).
It's really not that hard! Watch me do it!
Video Highlights
* Set up a new site and upload files and set permissions
* Add a web page and select link text
http://www.articleunderground.com/multimedia/link-vault-tutorial.html
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