Anchor Text Density

Sometimes I really need to bookmark my bookmarks, I bookmark so many great things, I forget what I bookmarked. Anyways I wanted to post about anchor text density today. This article on Linking Strategy jogged my memory. While anchor text density is not too widely delved into or talked about, it does make sense from a "natural" look of link building. I have mentioned many times that one should rotate the anchor text of backlinks to the sites home page with the majority being the branded name if your site is developing one. Also you should in my opinion really rotate heavily your internal pages anchor text as well. We do not live in a perfect linking society of gaining natural backlinks of the EXACT anchor text we want. Google knows this too. If every backlink and internal backlink used the SAME anchor text, how do you suppose that would look to an algorithm? It would look unnatural for sure. When you are building your own backlinks through articles, web 2.0 sites or any other source, I would make sure around 15%-20% of the anchor text is un perfect, but still LSI related. This will make you look a ton better, if indeed there is an anchor text density filter, which I bet there is. as I always preach, the more natural everything about your on and off site SEO is, the better results you will have. I am not sure if anchor text density will be a more talked about topic over the next couple of months, but it makes sense. SEO's are getting smarter and smarter about learning how to dance with Google, so more may be forthcoming on this.

Lower Priced Trusted Directories

I was asked by email what low priced paid directories I use, so I thought it would make a good blog post. I do not submit to these until around the 2 month mark or so of launching a site as I want to first get a good read on the profitability of the site. Also I will not use them if I have been able to pick up good solid backlinks from like sites along the way for free. It is judged on a site by site basis. The lower priced ones I use are below. I would suggest BOTW and the Yahoo Directory if you can indeed justify it, but I understand most of you are on tight budgets. If you do decide to submit to any of these, make sure your site is solid. If it is thin, beef it before spending your money. Throwing good links at crap sites is worthless in my opinion. Like most directories free or paid, the traffic is very sporadic, if any, but the higher trusted the directory, the better quality the backlink.

http://www.gimpsy.com/
http://www.goguides.org/
http://www.joeant.com/
http://www.skaffe.com/

My New Site Initial Backlink Campaign

It is not too often that a launch a new niche site these days as I have plenty of older sites to choose from that I am going through and redoing. Last week however, I turned out a new site that I spent 2 weeks building and put it through it's initial backlink push. This is a standard process for me as I have it down to a science. The initial push is to mainly get the spiders rolling and get a few a medium quality backlinks coming in. I start with submitting 200 link directory submissions with Submit Edge. Now link directories are not high quality by any means, but they still seem to be respected by Yahoo and Bing for now. Another good thing is they all do not show up at one time. They trickle in over the months. I use 3 different anchor text titles and 4-5 site descriptions in these submissions to mix it up a bit. This makes it appear a bit more natural in nature, even though it really isn't. Next I write 3 plain, generic articles. The two best ones get submitted to EzineArticles and GoArticles with a solid anchor text driven backlink in the bio section. The worse of the three gets spun thoroughly using Crewriter and submitted to Free Traffic System. Next I write a 300 word press release anouncing my new site launch and submit it to PRLog for free. Lastly I social bookmark a few of the sites onsite articles to 5 or 6 social bookmarking sites. That is it for my initial backlink push. From there I slowly start my push for much higher quality backlinks with semi-related sites and better targeted articles for the article directories.

The Cleaner The Better

I am not good with drawing or painting. I am above average when it comes to graphic design, but not a professional by any means. Often times in the past I have tried to over compensate my sites with flashy headers and colors. Let me tell you from experience, the cleaner the site, the more professional it looks. If you are not good at design, stick to the more basic looking Wordpress themes like the Arthemia or any other magazine type theme. If you are working with BANS, the free template in the new BANS guide is excellent as well. Any of these templates can easily have the colors changed and a nice clean small logo at the top will suffice. Make sure your logo is professional looking as well, it helps establish the brand. A great free program I have mentioned before, is Xheader. You can find free tutorials on using it all over the web. Just start with Youtube to be exact. Your content on site will lend the most credibility to your site, not a flashy logo. It is all too common to want to over design a site. When in doubt the more white space the better and two to three colors are plenty. Look at the website for Target, nice and clean. This blog is testament as well. Every template change has made this ordinary blogger blog look better and more professional. It continues to rise in traffic and earnings as well. The look is not the only reason mind you, but it sure does not hurt.

Editor Note: Thanks for the few emails concerning my not feeling well. Just a nasty headache was all. Back in the saddle fully today.

Site Relaunching Tips

I was going to do a post on relaunching a site today and came across a post on SEOMoz discussing the same thing. I just relaunched a few sites myself recently and while it is a pain, here are a few things to pay attention to. I will discuss this more in depth in a later post as I am a bit under the weather this evening.

10 Things You Must Check When You Re-launch Your Website

Why @IJustine Does Not Go Backlink Hunting

If you do not know who IJustine is, you have not been in tune with the web. Justine is the queen of social media. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, you name it. She knows how to promote herself. Do you think she goes hunting at link directories, article directories or other places for backlinks? I think not. She produces content that people want to link to and she is damn good at it. Now not everyone is a video guru like she is, but you can learn a bunch about HOW she promotes herself by just watching her work. If there is an avenue to promote her site, she uses it. If you can apply a third of how she promotes to your great content, you will pick up natural backlinks as well. If you are just promoting a thin affiliate store, do not expect results, but if you have great useful content, you WILL see results. You can see Justine on the web at http://ijustine.com/ and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Ijustine. See, I just gave her backlinks. Oh, she is not hard on the eyes either. If I looked that appealing, I would make more videos. LOL!

Saturday Around The Web August 1st

Wow another week and month has come and gone. I hope everyone had a profitable month of July. I am very satisfied with my month and look forward to a great August as well. Below are some great items I bookmarked across the web this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Sonia Simone has an interseting take on creating better content by Treating Your Readers Like Dogs.

Darren Rowse from Pro Blogger explains by video: How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to Find Topics to Write about. also if you have not read his new EBOOK, you should. it is a must have.

Interesting guest post on SEOMoz about The Effect of Site Structure on Organic Traffic.

Website Magazine has listed the Twenty-Five Essential Reads for Web Pro’s. I own a few of these myself. Also Website Magazine is a great FREE magazine.

LinkShare has now partnered with Widgetbox to enable publishers to create money-making product widgets. These are fantastic.