Good Day bluelake-ga,
The most valuable source for a good listing today appears to be the
anchor text of backlinks. Before I explain the meaning, let me explain
the wording:
I say today, because the algorithm used by Google when deciding on who
gets listed how high is an ever-changing entity. It is always being
tweaked and changed in an effort to improve results returned to the
user.
I say appears, because there are very few people in this world that
know the exact algorithm in use. It is a pretty big secret, in an
effort to keep the spammers and abusers at bay.
"Anchor text of backlinks" refers to the text used in links that
connect to your web site. As you might imagine, this means that images
are a pretty useless backlink, and so is a link of "Click Here".
"Click Here" to visit the Cardiff Hotel website.
The above link will give you bonus points for search terms of "Click
Here". Yep, not very useful. You still get a little credit for ANY
backlink, but if you compare the value of linking with the text of
"Click Here" vs. "Cardiff Hotel", the latter will give you much better
results.
So just how powerful is the anchor text of backlinks?
"It is entirely possible to achieve top ranking for extremely
competitive keywords without any hint of on-page-elements SEO.
Monster.com currently sits in the #1 spot for the search term Jobs.
The word "jobs" does not even appear on that page in text form; the
only occurrence is once in the form of ALT text.
Search Google for Computers. At this time, six of the top ten pages do
not contain the word Computers in the page copy. They are there due
solely to anchor text of inbound links."
This is from an excerpt of an article:
WEBSITE: Inbound Links & Anchor Text: The Power Of Anchor Text
URL: http://www.internet-marketing-research.net/anchor_text_inbound_links.php
I am not sure how much I can say that is not covered by the above
article. It is an eye opener with great backup for proof. I have found
the article while going through a forum thread at:
WEBSITE: Webmaster Forum
URL: http://www.webmaster-forum.net/viewtopic.php?p=47500&highlight=#47500
Because I think the above two links will answer your question very
well, I will hold back from repeating what was already covered in the
article and the forum thread. However, if you feel that neither the
article nor I covered what you consider a complete answer, please ask
for a clarification before rating my answer.
As a side note, I have answered two other questions dealing with
Search Engine Optimisation. They might be of interest to you.
Question: Google Page Rank
URL: http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=238877
Question: Google Search Engine Placement
URL: http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=248512
I have learned about all the provided information while searching the
Internet on methods for improving my own website's ranking in search
engine results.
Regards,
slawek-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
slawek-ga
on
28 Aug 2003 11:04 PDT
Good Day bluelake-ga,
Outside backward links are more valuable than internals, and there is
rumours in the SEO community that in the very near future internal
links will be devalued even further. Too many people are abusing the
system through mirror sites, and "doorway" pages (pages designed with
nothing more in mind than a backlink). It would appear that in the
near future, two pages on the same IP address will carry very little
weight in backlinks.
Higher PR websites linking to you do carry more weight on their own. I
say on their own because there are many other factors like PR
dilution: if I have a website with a PR10, and link to you and a
hundred other people, my PR10 has to be split 100 ways. On the other
hand if Jim has a website with a PR5, and you are the sole external
link on his page, Jim's link will benefit you more.
If you do a search for any term and look at the backlinks for the
first 10 results, you will often see that pages with less backlinks
are listed higher than those with more. PR dilution is a big factor
when it comes to backlinks. This is why I don't run around the net
signing guest books. :) It might give me some PR, but probably not
worth the trouble. One is much better off trying to find a potential
new client then trying to boost the PR at that point. After all, PR
might give you more hits, but hits alone do not pay the bills.
Sorry I cannot be more specific on the second question, and I hope
this gives you some good starting ground to achieve a PR5 and up, up,
up. :)
Regards,
slawek-ga
|
,
0 Comments
)