Google and External Anchors

[Net Wizard]

How crucial is it, you decide.

Here's what I've observed on a single page

example only:
external anchors: Software & Computer Products
internal anchors: Software & Computer Products
page title: Software & Computer Products
Result
Actual Serp: Software & Computer Products - #1
Allinxxxxx: Software & Computer Products - #1

As it turns out I have the phrase reverse, the popular one is 'Computer & Software Products' needless to say I changed the following.

Page Title: Computer & Software Products
Internal Anchors: Computer & Software Products
External Anchors: remain the same
Result
Allinxxxxx: Computer & Software Products - #2
Actual Serp: Software & Computer Products - #4
Actual Serp: Computer & Software Products - #150+

Note: This is the same page, the number of backlinks are the same, the text are the same, technically, the condition are equal.

My assumption: since I rank #2 in all 'allinxxxx' operator, I expect that at least I would be in the top 10. In essence, since there is a 'very minor' changes the ranking wouldn't be impacted that much.

The exact words or wordings were not change 'except for the order' in the Title and Internal Anchors.

Note the Allinxxxx: result above, I'm #2 in ALL of them reflecting minor change in title, texts, anchors and urls. Reflecting also the competitiveness of the exact term.

But, I dropped like a bomb in the actual serp going down to 150, the only reason I can see since everything else are equal...is the "order" of my primary keywords in the external anchors.

I believe that order and even positioning of your keywords is important in your external anchors BUT not this important that it is almost a major factor in determining your ranking at Google.

Do you believe that the order of keywords in the external anchors has a very high weight in Google's algo?

What do you think? :D

[qwerty]

I think that having the exact phrase as anchor text gives you a huge boost. My question would be which of the following would be better, as far as coming in second to all of the words in the exact order:

1. all the words of the exact phrase, but in a different order, or
2. some of the words of the exact phrase, but in the exact order.

[Net Wizard]

Good question and pretty tricky.

Without seeing an actual comparable condition(not yet anyway) I believe that the #1 condition has a better chance in ranking than the #2 condition assuming of course that everything else is equal.

Just like my situation above...

If the external anchors say is "Software & Computer" then the question would be...

Would I still be #1 for 'Software & Computer Products' if I didn't make any internal changes?

On the other hand, my external anchors say "Software & Computer Products" (not in exact order because of my internal changes)...

I did still rank at #4 for 'Software & Computer Products' even though my internals are now 'Computer & Softwares Products'

So, I would say that external anchors "Software & Computer" alone with no internal changes on my part would have a hard time to beat the ranking result of the inexact order external anchors.

But, I'll poke around if I could see 'actual' comparables.

Cheers

[Bernard]

I'm guessing that the revised phrase is more competitive? Did you use the phrase in the body of the page?

There are too many variables to proclaim the external anchor text the sole determining factor in your SERP.

It is also possible that if you do not do a single thing to your site, it will slowly rise in the rankings over time. I have noticed this effect for some of my sites.

[Net Wizard]

Did you use the phrase in the body of the page?
Sorry, I neglect to mention that as well. Yes, I changed the order in the body as well.
I'm guessing that the revised phrase is more competitive?
According to 'Allinxxx:' I'm #2 in all aspect including 'Allinanchor:Computer & Software Products' though I don't expect to be #2 but at least not far from there.

To point it further to the external anchor as the possible culprit...

I just did a query which both are competitive according to the size of the index

Queries: (sample only)
software and computer - Top 50 out of 4,750,000
computer and software - 0 out of 4,770,000

I mean come-on, I have the 'Computer & Software' in the Title, anchors, texts, and URLs...I don't show up for 'computer and software' but I'm in the top 50 for 'software and computer'?

What else do you think is affecting the result aside from the external links?

Perhaps, the other pages are more better optimized than mine for the term 'computer and software'? Browsing through the serps for 'computer and software', I don't see any evidenced of pages that are aggressively SEO'd.

So, I went hunting for worst pages...I don't have to go real deep to find pages with hardly any content, low PR, 1 or 2 backlinks from so-so sites. Aside of course for the term 'computer and software' are in their pages whether in the title or h1 or in the body...the external anchors 'does' show 'computer and software' in that exact order regardless of the length of the anchor.

[Bernard]

How long ago did you make the changes?

[Net Wizard]

This page is crawled every other day or sometimes daily and I changed the order of the phrase in all attributes about a month ago.

After, it was crawled and start apprearing in the serp as evidenced by the fresh tag...the ranking have changed. As if the link from the home page has no effect and in spite of the gradual changes in other internal pages reflecting the new anchor....there is no improvement as evidenced by the query 'computer and software' but slight movement for 'software and computer' to the minus side as more and more internal pages changes their anchor in regards to this page.

But, the negative movement is insignificant that it's not really worth worrying about as if the impact of those internal anchors are negligible.

As I have posted before...the page used to be #1 for 'Software and Computer Products' after the change in internal anchors and title, the page is still holding #4 for 'Software and Computer Products' and no changes on the rankings of other sites.

Site #1 - #3 now used to be #2- #4 respectively....so, it's me who is moving and not them :D

[joker]

I think that having the exact phrase as anchor text gives you a huge boost.
IMO, it's very doubtfull. I think only variety of different links anchors will result in huge boost ;)

[Bernard]

NW, based upon what you've written, I'd say your conclusion has merit. It would be interesting to see if your positioning in the new SERP remains relatively stable over a few months or slowly rises without further changes (but that is probably not practical).

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums joker! :hi:

[Net Wizard]

joker....welcome to the forum :hi:

if your positioning in the new SERP remains relatively stable over a few months or slowly rises without further changes
As of now, over a month ago, still rooted +-4 on the same ranking in all keyword/s and still nowhere to be found for 'Computer and Software'.

[Steve Sardell]

Hi NW,
IMHO there very well may be a large cause and effect from the textual links leading to your site, but as has already been pointed by others, there are too many variables to derive a solid conclusion.

In one of the newer fora there currently is an attempted experiment to examine the importance of IBL's text (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14) You may find it an interesting read, but like yours there are still many variables to consider.

PS. moderators edit link if not allowed

[Net Wizard]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the links, seems we corroborate each other in his study. However, we differ in what we are looking at.

For instance, he looks at the 'Allinanchor' which in actuality is the result of the internal and external anchors. Furthermore, the test doesn't tell if the 'Allinchor' was used to match the exact phrase. Otherwise, it would only pick-up the keywords that are scattered

What I'm looking at is the impact of the 'exact match external anchor' which he corroborated in one of his post that he went for a link campaign to gather more anchors to improve his position.

In my case, as I have posted previously, I'm already doing better in all factors, meaning...Title, Text, URL, and Anchors using the ALLIN operator without exact matching. In fact, I'm #2 in all level. Yet, in the actual serp I'm buried for the target phrase.

If I do a search based on my 'external anchors' I'm #4, Top 50(for the shorter version)

But, If I do a search based on the order of the phrase I used in my site...I'm gone

I believe that Google have turned the knob 'high' on exact matching for external anchors and not for the internal anchors. So meaning, if you have external anchors that exactly match the query you have a better chance to rank hgiher.

This reminds me of Google bombing....it's seems to me that is what is currently happening to the algo.

If your [competitor B] for instance have only 20 exact external anchors all using 'computer and software products' and your [page A] have only 1 exact external anchor and hundreds of exact internal anchors using the same term....it seems to me the one with 20 exact external anchors will rank better.

The Allinanchor on this case will report accurately

allinanchor: computer and software products
[page A] - 101 anchors - #1
[competitor B] - 20 anchors - #2

But in actual serp
[competitor B] - 20 'exact external anchors' - #1
[page A] - 1 'exact external anchor' - #2

That's what I think where that test failed....it just simply failed to account for the weight of 'exact external anchors' thus when you run that test...you will see sites that are in the red(meaning below 100 for allinanchor) yet are ranking high.

Take a phrase for example that can be reverse...anything...run it through google...though we expect the same result...they are actually different...

linux computer
computer linux

Why should it be different, if not for the exact matching in the external anchors?

[Net Wizard]

Bernard,

Just an update...

after some tweaking, I finally made #1 on the reverse order phrase :D

On top of that, on the phrase that I don't show up at all in the 1000 serp out of 4 million+ pages....

I now rank 104 :D huge jump and I believe that it's only a matter of a few updates for the internal pages to push that page to the top as well.

:cheers:

[Bernard]

:cheers: NW. Be sure to send us a postcard when you are enjoying your caviar dreams. :D

[Net Wizard]

:cheers:

Last night was a well deserve sleep :D

And, I was not dreaming, the phrase is still holding at #1 regardless of order and the #104 is now at #87, still long way to go but my internal pages are not fully updated yet. It's just a matter of time :D

[Peter (IMC)]

Do you believe that the order of keywords in the external anchors has a very high weight in Google's algo?

It all depends on topics I think. Sometimes changing the order of words places a phrase in a completely different topic.

network ip camera - ip network camera
topic: camera - camera
subtopic ip camera - network camera
subtopic network ip camera - ip network camera

computer hardware products - hardware computer products
topic: products
subtopic: hardware products - computer products
subtopic: computer hardware products - hardware computer products

depending on what Google thinks the PR the page has for a specific subtopic the rank may change, you can even drop completely if the PR for that subtopic is 0.

Also notice that hardware products and computer products are completely different things. Topical structure is very important and it helps if your website's structure reflects the topical structure you want your pages to show up for. This also helps with those more difficult high level keyword phrases.

Hope that helps,

Peter

[Net Wizard]

You are right Peter :D

Google treat the order of words differently and what you have explained is what happened in my case. I'm #1 in a specific order but dropped in another order.
depending on what Google thinks the PR the page has for a specific subtopic the rank may change, you can even drop completely if the PR for that subtopic is 0.
This is where I disagree ;)
I believe if you optimize the phrase right, regardless of order you will still be able to rank high.

Just like my case, I changed the order and my #1 spot dropped slightly to #4 but made no improvement on my target phrase.

After several experimentation and tweaking, I started to see 'a pattern' on how Google look at a site and needless to say the result of that observation has produced me an optimization that regardless of how a phrase is ordered by the user's query, Google will still look at my page as relevant to the user's query.

Currently, my ranking for the main phrase I optimize for, 'regardless of order' is stuck at #1 except for 1 combination which I'm #2 . :)

And yes, when the phrase is rearranged, it's a completely different set of sites that are coming up in the serp. The trick then, is to find a way to optimize that you will show-up regardless how the phrase is ordered.

~

Just a reminder to those who uses stop words in their phrase, such as 'and', 'or', etc..

Don't use it, you might not have a chance against a page that has the exact phrase unless of course you have accidentaly stumbled on the right optimization for the phrase ;)

If you are not sure, stay with the exact phrase w/o stop word/s just to be safe.

Some may point out that Google ignore 'and' or any other stop word anyway. However, I believe that it is completely different when it comes to the algo.

Like...

computer software products vs.
computer and software products

I could be wrong :D I'm just basing this assumption on how I programmed my analyzer.

Cheers

[Peter (IMC)]

quote:
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depending on what Google thinks the PR the page has for a specific subtopic the rank may change, you can even drop completely if the PR for that subtopic is 0.
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This is where I disagree
I believe if you optimize the phrase right, regardless of order you will still be able to rank high.

Just like my case, I changed the order and my #1 spot dropped slightly to #4 but made no improvement on my target phrase.

After several experimentation and tweaking, I started to see 'a pattern' on how Google look at a site and needless to say the result of that observation has produced me an optimization that regardless of how a phrase is ordered by the user's query, Google will still look at my page as relevant to the user's query.


hmm,.. :) Maybe you don't disagree. What you probably did was manage to get that page into more than 1 subtopic. I believe that a page can be assigned to more than 1 topic and therefore also to more than 1 subtopic. Just depends on how you present the phrase and what your backlinks say.

If you are assigned to more subtopics then you may gain PR for each of them,.. :) And then you´re back where you were on all of them and it depends just on the competition for each version of the phrase, how high you rank.

Peter

[Net Wizard]

What you probably did was manage to get that page into more than 1 subtopic. I believe that a page can be assigned to more than 1 topic and therefore also to more than 1 subtopic.
If we classify it as topic and sub-topic then I agree :D
Just depends on how you present the phrase and what your backlinks say.
If you mean how an algo would rate the site relevancy to a query then I agree :D

Cheers