I have seen more of a boost to my sites when having quality links pointing to me above all else. It’s all about the strength of the link pointing back to you that matters.

Thank you for this amazing post! This is something that most marketers spend hours and hours discussing and fighting on forums and SEO blogs, but the simple truth is that the basic algorithm is very simple.

I’m sure this post will help people dispel some of the link building myths.

Cheers,

Joseph

good stuff in the ever changing world of Sergey Brin….relevant links makes good common sense…thnx for the psot

Great Post!
I was uncertain about that. But Now I get it. Nice Information.

Thank you very much for sharing this amazing example. I got laugh by looking at the example. Of course we should be careful for the future.

Very interesting post, I did wonder about this however there must be some relevancy to the volume of backlinks that site has with the anchor text “TEA” else we would be back to the meta tag keywords again where people are simply targeting inaccurate keywords to get the volume of traffic again.

I did a small test of my own that is similar, I optimized many pages around different teams football shirs, however when I looked for my keywords in Google the pages were low ranking, however the site index (named Site Map) ranked in some cases number 1 postion for the keyphrases simply because of the amount of times the word football shirt appeared on the page, and the fact that amongst them was the keyword I was looking for!

Great information! I was beginning to wonder why so many sites are ranking so easily.

Very interesting! I have seen similar results for other terms.

And what is even more interesting is that I just ran that search from my computer (in Tennessee) and the number one result is the Tennessee Education Association, not the Texas Education Agency which was number 2 for me, so Google is doing some localization with the search results.

I then logged out of my Google account and Texas Education Agency moved to number one and Tennessee Education Association moved to number 2. By the way, I did not visit either one of those sites so the rankings were not based on my history.

Another interesting thing to note is that from what I can see, the Tennessee site is about number 10 in the search results for people outside of Tennessee. So Google seems to only be changing the ranking of the top 10 when factoring in my location, which is what I have been seeing in the personalization testing I have done. The Tennessee site has significantly less links than any of the other top ten results, so there is no other reason for it to show as the number 1 results.

This is an interesting finding and would be more useful if it were backed up with a numerous other examples.

Testing is good; making sense of what you are seeing is where the actionable knowledge comes from.

I agree that one test in one niche is not a proof – the more tests users do, the better. My idea was to show a certain trend and (in some cases – to open the eyes, because a big portion of the audience is still under the Google spell of “we see everything, we understand everything – feel the wrath of the big G!”) I am pushing up on drama here, but come on – go to forums and you will see pure Medieval fear of Google in lots of people.

I also agree with you that partially this example can be a sign of other sites (in the tea niche) having not so many good backlinks.

But isn’t it another proof of the importance of backlinks

And isn’t it what Google hates us to know, saying all the time “don’t care about backlinks, care about content on your site” and stuff like that

This is an EXCELLENT point! You are absolutely correct, and you did a great job of explaining the reasons why this is true.

We support your opinion based on our own extensive research and experience. While you may not get credit for questionable inbound links (or backlinks), they are never used by the search engines to punish a website. If that was the case, imagine how much subterfuge would be taking place every day across the internet. It would be the Wild West all over again.

Keep up the good work!

Tom

Hi, very interesting observations and valid conclusions. What I like about your conclusions is that you have the brains not to take for granted what that arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial, over-bearing lump (google) dictates to its users.
I tried to check out the ‘international’ version of TEA as I’m in Australia but those arrogant sods at google are slowly dictating what we can view by pinning us down via IP address to only see the local versions. No doubt their aim is to eventually charge for local space use and advertising. VERY annoying, so today I will change over finally to Bing and freedom to choose.
Anyway, good report. Cheers.

I’ve made over the last couple of months tests in this respect and can underline your conclusions 100%.

Go and build anchor text backlinks folks, that’s THE most important SEO tool.

On page SEO isn’t half that important as you can get a site with ZERO content ranked #1 ?????????? Uh…

Get a free report here http://tinyurl.com/SEOntrial which proof’s what I say.

G.

thx for your article very usefull for me newbie in SEO

I tend to agree with you, backlinks are backlinks and as long as it had anchor text that you want you cant go wrong. If in doubt dominate

I have found this information to be very true. I have been doing SEO for a few months now and I have noticed alot of folks out there breaking there heads over this when in fact its a very simple process

I personally have done a zillion tests on anchor text and no anchor text. I think no anchor text is actually stronger maybe because it leaves Google to pick what anchor text to use from the content text for the link which they like to do. On the other hand using anchor text, the SEO person has a chance to steer a web site in a certain direction, not necessarily google’s direction. Your average lay person would have no idea what an blank blank is, let alone how to use it. Using a blank blank would be a give away that a pro was up to something.

I also read this post so many times, and I’d like to say that this post is the most important thing I’ve read for so long time. Your case study is really great! It saved me a lot of troubles. But guys let me tell you something: Google is great doing so, and I mean it. Why do we want this to be about tea. It’s not encyclopedia, it’s a search engine. When people use the keyword “tea” to find your website, it means that this many people would use this keyword to reach you, and that exactly what Google does: It give them what they want.
However, you are absolutely right, Google doesn’t give weight to relevancy. The keyword appeared where no other website you get backlinks from mentioned this keyword on their content.

First I have to see your post made this 11 year veteran of Search Engine Marketing sit and read. I just wanted to see nice job and to keep up the good work.

I suspect in the near future Google’s algorithms will be taking in the relevancy of the backlink. That is why I think attention should be still made to relevancy. Which is another reason I think the Free Traffic System is an ideal system!! For you receive relevant, as well as quality backlinks!

Like most things in life balance is the key to success. Links from high PR relevant pages is the way to go for all the good reasons we know. That desire needs to be balanced with the difficulty in finding all these (high pr/relevant)sites in the short term. I promoted a wedding dress site for a very strong keyword phrase to page one (google)using high PR irrelevant sites. Naturally as time progresses I will seek more relevant links but in the mean time I’m getting free traffic. I hope this makes sense.

This is something I’ve known for a long time and has not only frustrated SEO’s, but surfers as well. Google is among the worst for delivering relevant search results. This is why Bing has seen a sudden rise in popularity, it does a better job at delivering relevant results, I now even find myself using Bing more than Google. Besides that, most of my keyword terms stick on page one of Bing much better, whereas on Google all my keyword terms suffer terribly from the “up and down” bounce effect, I get to page one for a few days and then back down to page 2 or 4, and sometimes worse, then a few weeks later I’m back to page one again for a few more days. On Google I even find myself occasionally getting beat out by garbage spam doorway pages that have no relevant content to the search term. Google spouts off about how strict they are about penalizing sites for doorway spam pages, heck they can’t even do a good job of picking up on them.

But I agree, and I’ll stick with “Relevancy in Link Building” as it appears to matter and make a difference with Bing and Yahoo. In fact, if it wasn’t for my decent page rankings in Bink and Yahoo, I probably would have gave up on backlink building by now. Google isn’t the only game in town, and if they don’t smarten up they may eventually find themselves the second seed search engine.

Very interesting article. I am just starting to build backlinks to my site and your article is very helpful.

I wonder if yahoo and bing consider backlinks in their algo.

More power.

Stephanie

a very interesting explanation. I am now more convinced that building backlinks can still be relied upon to win a SEO competition. thanks a lot to the FTS team.

Funny you should write about this because I was just discussing it with some other internet marketers.

Same deal “tea” and relavency. My outlook is a little different. The way I see it, revency is relevent. How does Google know that when you search fro TEA you are looking for TEA the drink and not TEA the Texas Education Agency.

That’s why there are 10 first page results to any search, one of them has to fit what you specifically are looking for.

Granted not many people search for the Texas Education Agency using “TEA” but some might. You can’t rule it out.

What about “do follow” and “no follow”? Does Google Care them for quality of backlink?

Sure, “do follow” is calculated, and “no follow” is reported by Google to be not calculated (when it comes down to the backlinks), because the bots follow the “no follow” backlinks, just to see what is there, on that hyperlinked page. But you will not give your SEO juice to this page.

Yes, it is true that at the moment backlinks from irrelevant sites count probably the same as those from relevant ones. I have a personal opinion that Google probably puts more weight on relevant sites, but even that can be beaten by sheer backlink outnumbering from irrelevant sites.

The reason why I believe some radical changes on that field won’t happen in at least the next 3-4 years is because it doesn’t seem easy and possible to detect what links are REALLY irrelevant and what are the spontaneous ones. For example, if you have a link from CNN, which is by definition in the “news” niche, and it links to, for example, tennis blog which is well, in the “tennis” niche, it’s obvious those two sites by their specific definition don’t match at all, at least directly. But since CNN is news site, it covers wide specter of topics.

Also, imagine a celebrity gossip blog which gossips about, for example, the still-hot Tyger Woods affairs, and somewhere in the blog post there is a link to some golf-related blog or website that has direct or indirect connection to Tyger Woods or his affairs. It is obvious the link isn’t relevant at all – you get a link for golf website from celebrity gossip website (blog). But still, the link counts, and it is logical it must be counted because the blog post is about that thematic.

Every system has a weak spot, nothing is perfect.

P.S. I also have to agree with Shaun, he has a good point there.

Thanks for the post. I Think that you hit it right on the nose. Do your own tests. TEST TEST TEST. The one way to reach success in SEO.

I also agree with Shaun.

Thank you so much for clearing that up. I have argued that same thing to others who insisted I was wrong. I knew there was a logical explanation and now I can show them the TEA example.

Could it be that the sites linking to the TEA site are all relevant to that and that is where the relevancy appears? They are giving weight to the fact that TEA is a relevant abbreviation and if that is the case Google must follow.

Natural language evolves in the same way – look at how many simple words no longer have the same meaning as 20 years ago.

But then, a couple of years ago the theory also went that being too relevant, too close in the same niche, was more an indicator of spammy links. Finance to finance was OK, but when all links came from a tight subset of the finance niche people thought there was less weight.

As you said, who knows what Google will do in the future? Emulating natural behaviour is best, which is a lot of relevancy and some not so relevant.

Thanks for the insights – I’ve got say this whole world of SEO is fascinating and infuriating in equal measure – every time I try and improve my ranking I find I am doing something wrong !

I love the way you guys are really helping other affiliates with the expert advice.

In my opinion, Anchor Text and Relevancy are more important in ranking of google. The more relevancy and the more anchor text you get, the better ranking you will get.

Maybe relevancy is only a little one of the google’s 200 factor. But I believe if you do anchor text in the relevant will be better than other. Like you say, it will be showed up in one or two year.