Big Changes In How Google Thinks – Take Advantage!

If you can understand this, and apply it, you will rank.

It is remarkable the number of changes in Google.  Generally people are slow to catch on. But it’s actually easier to rank now than ever. You just need to play by the rules.

Today, it’s not just about backlinks and anchor text.

Let me demonstrate with a quick case study.

Adobe.com – “Click Here”

Many times big websites share pdfs, whether they be online bills or user guides or whatever, they often put a link to Adobe “To download Adobe Reader, click here” – with a link to Adobe Reader.

For years, if you Google’d “click here” the #1 result was Adobe.

That’s because backlinks with Anchor text USED TO BE the best and most important ranking factor.  It used to be essential that you had plenty of backlinks with the anchor text (the “anchor text” is just the set of words that when you click on them take you to the link).

And you wanted the anchor text to be the key phrase that you intended to rank for.

So if I wanted to rank my site for Labrador Training, I wanted links all over the internet with anchor text “Labrador Training”

No longer is this so much the case…

It is still an important factor, to have some backlinks with anchor text that you want to rank for, but these need to be small in number to avoid what’s called a Penguin penalty.

But more importantly, Anchor text is no longer such a strong ranking factor.  To prove that, let me ask you a question.  First, look at this:

See that result which is number 1?  An authority site, with an article all about using “click here” as anchor text.

It’s a really useful, informative, article.

Let me ask you this:  how many backlinks to that #1 result have anchor text “click here” do you think?  According to Majestic – just TWO.

And a TOTAL of just FOUR backlinks in total.

How many links does the Adobe page have with anchor text “click here”? Over six hundred! And backlinks total over one hundred thousand in the last 5 years

Yet Adobe is ranked #2.  And Adobe is also a site with huge authority.  And over 600 backlinks saying click here.  But ranked number 2 to a site with just two anchor text backlinks…. wow!!!

Conclusion?

Google is ranking that number 1 site for good reasons – on-site reasons.

Backlinks are still important, and anchor text is important (keep it varied and natural).  But unless you can show Google your page is highly relevant to the phrase you want to rank for, you are going to find it tough to rank.

How Do We Achieve This So We Rank Too?

First, good quality content with relevant related words that will cue Google to the topic.  We’ve taught you how to achieve this relevance in our SEO Breakthrough webinars.

But you’ve got to get plenty of good quality, highly relevant content, preferably media rich (images and/or videos embedded).

And you also have to get your technical layout right. One of those areas is Schema. Now Schema is a reasonably complex micro data that is inserted in the HTML. The purpose is to provide the search engines with added information about your site so that they can better understand your content. As you help Google (and the others), they reward you with better rank and a higher visibility in the SERPS.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo all support and encourage Schema, and sites that use Schema structure in their HTML will rank better “like for like” than a site that doesn’t use Schema.

The trouble is, Schema it is complex.  You can either hire a coder, or, fortunately, there are plugins that make the job easier.

Recommendation

Chris and my recommendation is the Project Supremacy plugin from Todd Spears.  The same one guy behind Spyder Spanker, which we have used for years.  Project Supremacy is back on sale having been closed for a while.  Get it here:

http://John-Pearce.com/project-supremacy.php

Either way, on page optimization, including use of Schema markup, and making your page highly relevant, is more important to ranking today than ever before.  Be sure to focus on getting it absolutely as good as you can!

All the best

John