There has been a lot of speculation since Panda 3.3 as to what exactly Google “turned off” in it’s algorithms.
Most of us suspected it was something to do with anchor text but we weren’t exactly sure what it was.
This month Google officially announced what it was. Here is the exerpt:
“Tweaks to handling of anchor text. [launch codename "PC"] This month we turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Our experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made our scoring cleaner and more robust.”
So a classifier related to anchor text was indeed turned off. But what exactly does that mean?
Nobody except those at the top of Google’s food chain will ever be able to say with 100% certainty but I can tell you this…
Anchor Text is still VERY important.
Adobe still ranks #1 for the search phrase “click here”. Until that changes, anchor text is a major player in SEO.
However, I do believe some things have changed and for the better.
This is just my personal opinion!
Instead of focusing so much on the anchor text itself, I believe the “tweak” was to focus on the immediate keywords surrounding the anchor text. Which make sense.
If I say something like “check out my personal SEO Training Course by clicking here.”
It is my belief that Google will pick up on “SEO Training Course” as important factors in relation to the link.
When analyzing text, Google already has “stop words” and it also picks up on specific keywords throughout the body of text, so an update of this kind would be a pretty simple process.
So what’s the moral of this story?
When building backlinks you should be using a lot of generic anchor text now because it’s natural. In fact, I recommend about 50%.
In addition to that, you should also be making sure you surround your generic anchor text with the keywords you want to rank for so that Google knows exactly what’s most important.
Stay Positive, Stay Focused!
Robert
Robert Clark
Stepping out of my comfort zone!
Fascinating take Robert. Thanks!
Thanks Johnny
I think that’s very logical interpretation of the few lines that Google gave us and basically in-context with the whole agenda of making a somewhat natural link diversity in order to solidify your ranking.
I appreciate that Joseph. Indeed Google does give you little to work with so you have to make educated guesses based off a lot of various factors when determining this stuff.