Optimizing Anchor Text to rank well for 2 phrases - Discussion

[addaminsane]

i think there is some great info in this thread, thanks guys.

[doovde]

The more competitive the expression, the more complex the formula for success becomes. Most people will compete through links, but as the number of relevant documents piles up the search engines will try to bring in other factors (this is why link-poor sites often outrank link-rich sites).

As webmasters how do you suggest we counter this and avoid competing through links? What other factors apart from links and on page seo should we focus on?

[Michael Martinez]

I'm not sure you can avoid competing through links. Once a query space goes competitive, you pretty much have to bring in your own links.

However, if you can find a way to repeat the keyword a few hundred times on your own page without looking like you're stuffing the keyword, you usually don't need as many links.

Pages that do this successfully tend to take the form of long Q and A sessions, long blog or forum discussions, long fact sheets, etc.

If you paginate the content, you won't get the keyword repetition.

I'm not saying everyone should go out and create fact sheets and question and answer articles -- in fact, if you all did that, nothing would change. What I am saying is that if you write naturally long content that stays focused on a particular topic, you should need fewer links to help promote that particular article.

Think in terms of 3-10,000 words of natural ("unoptimized") language per article/page.

[doovde]

I'm not sure you can avoid competing through links. Once a query space goes competitive, you pretty much have to bring in your own links.

However, if you can find a way to repeat the keyword a few hundred times on your own page without looking like you're stuffing the keyword, you usually don't need as many links.

Pages that do this successfully tend to take the form of long Q and A sessions, long blog or forum discussions, long fact sheets, etc.

If you paginate the content, you won't get the keyword repetition.

I'm not saying everyone should go out and create fact sheets and question and answer articles -- in fact, if you all did that, nothing would change. What I am saying is that if you write naturally long content that stays focused on a particular topic, you should need fewer links to help promote that particular article.

Think in terms of 3-10,000 words of natural ("unoptimized") language per article/page.

The seriously long page option isn't something I've tried before my articles are usually around 600 - 1,500 words depending on what the topic is.

I'm tempted to create a sick long page and just see how well it ranks, maybe re vamp a page I already know is ranking well but one I want to push to the top.

[Michael Martinez]

Understand that in highly competitive expressions, really good optimizers find creative ways to embed a keyword on a page up to 100 times in a relatively small amount of text. Whether this works with search engines is a matter of opinion -- an experienced copywriter will have a feel for how much tight copy is tolerated.

Everything indexable may be counted: navigational anchor text, image file names, image alt= text, page boilerplate copy, main page copy, advertising copy, etc.

Everything indexable may be ignored, too.

The more trust your site has earned (through past behavior as well as through inbound links from trusted sites), the more likely its indexable text will be counted toward relevance scoring.

The less internal (not Toolbar) PageRank your page has accumulated, the less likely that everything indexable will be indexed.

There are a LOT of factors that could come into play.

[Hazo]

What is page boilerplate copy?

[Michael Martinez]

Boilerplate copy or boilerplate text is the standard text that is automatically included on every page of a Website, usually because it's hard-coded into a page template used by a CMS. Search engines claim they don't like to index boilerplate text but I have found that they will sometimes index rare words and expressions in boilerplate from at least some pages.

[Turtleknife]

Mixing up is good. I agree with previous statements here. One of the ways I do this is having a different swipe file for my author's information when I submit an article to EzineArticles.com. I (roughly) target my exact keyword 50% of the time and then mix it up the rest of the time in those profiles.

I even like to incorporate links that people might do, who may not really know how to link properly such as:

"the texas holdem game"
"more texas holdem"
"is texas holdem hard"

I feel this adds that element of natural linking Google loves so much.

[addaminsane]

I even like to incorporate links that people might do, who may not really know how to link properly such as:

"the texas holdem game"
"more texas holdem"
"is texas holdem hard"

I feel this adds that element of natural linking Google loves so much.

i additionally think thats a great idea for article submission sites which i have almost no experience with. I'm sure moderated content will be approved more and less likely to be completely viewed and potentially rejected as an seo article.

The one time i messed with a few article submissions several months ago, none of the articles were ever published...i'm assuming it takes alot more effort nowadays to get some types of articles published than it used to...