3 Advanced Search Engine Optimization Tips

Updated October 6, 2023
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SEO can be a very complicated venture. With over 200 different ranking factors to contend with, it can be overwhelming trying to make your SEO perfect. I tend to follow the 80/20 rule when it comes to SEO. I spend most of my time on the 20% of things that make up 80% of my success. Here a few tips that I have found very effective for SEO.

1. Use the ‘#’ in nav menus

As you probably know, if two links exist on the same page pointing to the same destination page, only one of the anchor texts will be counted. Most often the first link’s anchor text is counted and the second is disregarded. This is a problem if you want to link to your home page or other important pages that exist in the nav menu with descriptive anchor text within your other content. One way to overcome this is to use the ‘#’ and an anchor on the destination page for one of the links. Since the links are not identical, Google will count both anchor texts.

anchor-text

Anchor Text Distribution In the example above, both links are pointing to the same page. However, the navigation link uses the ‘#’ to indicate it is pointing to a specific point in the destination page. The anchor text is counted for both links even though they both point to the same page. I like to include the anchor on the destination page as well so that it is a legitimate link. Link: Anchor Text Anchor:

2. How to set a PageRank trap

The most important pages on a site usually contain sales copy or product information and needs the most PageRank. However, it is difficult to get external links for these pages. That is where the PageRank trap comes in to play There is much debate about how PageRank flows around a Web site. However, one thing is clear, the more links on a page the less PageRank is passed to each link. Not to long ago, one could PageRank sculpt with Nofollow and send PageRank to relatively few links. However, nofollow does not work in that manner anymore. So links have to be hidden in other ways. This is what a PageRank trap looks like:

pagerank-trap

3. Creating a natural backlink profile

Google is extremely efficient at discerning unnatural linking patterns on the Web. They have years of historical data and are constantly comparing link graphs to determine how the Web interacts. One of the biggest mistakes that many webmasters make is overusing a certain anchor text keyword phrase. This sends up a red flag to Google and they may start discrediting links. Natural links are as diverse as the ones who code them, so you have to add some creativity to your link building. Based upon my research, I believe that one specific anchor text should not be used more than 5% of the time to a certain page, especially if gray or black hat tactics are being used to acquire the links and you do not want any scrutiny from Google. There are exceptions to this rule, specifically when a post goes hot somewhere like Digg or Reddit and there is a popular meme used to describe the post. However, this usually happens very quickly and is almost impossible to replicate manually. If you find that a page’s ranking is extremely volatile, it may be that an unbalanced anchor text distribution is causing your domain to lose on Google’s trust metric. The way you fix it is to create a list of 100 or more keyword variations. Only use your money anchor text once every 20 links on the most authoritative sites. Make the other 19 backlink’s anchor text unique.

Author:- Jason Capshaw is an SEO consultant located in the Atlanta area. He founded MyWebTronics in 2007.

2 comments

  • Trisha Agarwal

    Many people are not aware of techniques to optimize a blog to attract relevant traffic to a website. Thanks for sharing this useful post on optimizing a blog.

  • Fayaz Ahmad

    Anchor text is important for search engine optimization . It gives about 20% seo importance by search engines

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