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Christian InTech Articles - Link Popularity
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Engines and Spiders and Surfers, Oh My!
(Why search engine optimization is alive, well, and kicking – and as crucial as ever to the success and profitability of your business) By Aimee Cremasco, President, Word Associates “If you build it, they will come…” “If you build it, they will...
Hansel & Gretel Left a Breadcrumb Trail.....So do Your Website Guests!
So, who's been visiting your website lately? What do you mean you don't know? How can you tell what's working if you don't have some sort of tracking in place? Measuring website traffic, also known as "stats," is how you know who's visiting your...
Pay-Per-Clicks . . . One Way to Boost Traffic to Your Web Site
One of the ways to boost traffic to your Web site is by purchasing keywords from one of the pay-per-click search engines or directories. But with literally hundreds of choices, how do you pick the pay- per-click engine with the best visibility...
Say More Than "Thank You"
Most Websites are gathering e-mail addresses. When you submit your e-mail address, you will be redirected to a thank you page. There is nothing wrong with it, but that page can do more than saying "thank you." --The Result-- A while ago, I added...
The Search Engine Optimization Game Is Getting Tricky
For more than 4 years now I have been modifying my work from home based web sites trying to optimize for the major search engines, Especially Goggle. Today with much disappointment I have come to the realization that search engine traffic alone...
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LSI and Link Popularity
When Paypal's official Web site no longer ranked #1 in Google
on a search for "paypal," it was obvious that Google had become
more aggressive in penalizing sites with "unnatural" backlink
anchor text. Although the high-profile Paypal example has since
been rectified, thousands of webmasters are suffering the
consequences of not ranking for even their official company
name, let alone their top keywords. It is important for search
engine optimizers to understand both how anchor text penalties
are being applied and how LSI ensures that anchor text variance
will not dilute a link popularity building campaign.
Anchor Text Penalties
In the past year, webmasters have found that the aggressive link
popularity building tactics that work well in search engines
such as Yahoo! do not fare well in Google. Google has
implemented several features to filter out sites that appear to
have an unnatural backlink structure; one of these features
seems to be specifically penalizing sites with unnatural
backlink anchor text.
It has always been an SEO best practice to use descriptive
anchor text in both external and internal links. But search
engine optimizers have often focused on a single keyword phrase
when choosing anchor text, especially if their topic has one
keyword that receives vastly more traffic than any secondary
keywords. Since good links are hard to come by, they do not want
to "waste" any of those backlinks with anchor text that does not
contain their main keyword.
The drawback to this approach is that it can be interpreted as
unnatural by a search engine. A site with organic,
passively-obtained backlinks will have a wide variety of
backlink anchor text variations such as: "official site title,"
"keyword," "keyword synonym," "www.thesite.com" and even "click
here." If the vast majority of a site's backlink anchor text is
simply "keyword," it is obvious to an algorithm that the link
popularity was not obtained organically.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Basics
Let's now touch upon the myth I mentioned before, that if a
backlink's anchor text does not contain your Web site's main
keyword, its power is wasted. The concept of latent semantic
indexing, which
may be more fully implemented by major search
engines in the near future, will prove this myth to be false.
Latent semantic indexing can help overcome the "vocabulary
mismatch" problem when a human uses a search engine. Individual
words do not always provide reliable evidence about the
conceptual meaning of a document. For instance, a Web page that
is highly relevant to the term "laptop" may never use the term
"notebook," however it is clear to a human being that "notebook"
is often used as a synonym for "laptop."
While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the
mathematics behind LSI, its implications for search algorithms
are simple. LSI can use statistical techniques to create a
semantic analysis for any given query topic. In practice, this
means that a page can be considered relevant for a particular
keyword, even if it does not contain that keyword. For instance,
a page that is considered relevant for "laptop" can also be
considered relevant for "notebook" even if it does not contain
the word "notebook," if LSI determines that "notebook" is
semantically related to "laptop."
The principle can be applied to backlinks as well. Backlinks
with anchor text that do not contain your Web site's main
keyword, but instead contain a synonym or related word, may
still be giving your site a bonus for the main keyword.
Link Popularity Building Best Practice: Vary Your Anchor Text
The recent increase in penalties given to sites with unnatural
backlink anchor text, along with the possible implementation of
LSI, should give webmasters motivation to vary their backlink
anchor text heavily. Rather than seeking to only obtain links
using their main keyword, webmasters should include synonyms,
variations and related words. Certainly no single keyword
variation should be used the majority of the time; rather, the
text of all links should vary widely, just as they would if the
links were obtained passively. This will ensure a site's
improvement in the SERPs, without drawing a penalty flag.
About the author:
My name is Akash Kumar popularly known as Max Hammer. I run
http://thefreesite.co.nr please visit to read more and get
freebies
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