Beaten in SERP's by a site going 'all in' on 2 keywords in their anchor text profile.

[robertrRSwalters]

I would like to get peoples thoughts on putting 80% of your anchor text links in just 2 keywords vs a nice spread of branded and longtail keywords.. like I am.

recently fell off the first page for a key SERP.. and the site in P10 has gone nuts on just that two keyword's..

I know we have a good site onpage/ conversion / low bounce rate page views etc.. Pretty sure we get more traffic than them.

Seems that this obvious bloated anchor text profiling has worked for them though..

What do you guys think/know?

[SteveOllington]

I'm guessing they must have some pretty authorative links to over-rule the fact that their link profile is like that.

[RyanPurkey]

Right. The more competitive the more shuffle you'll see.

[robertrRSwalters]

Sounds like a reasonable deduction.. we were P7 for this now P13.. thats quite a drop, but to be fair I have left this SERP alone for the last 7 weeks or so and it is competative.

[RyanPurkey]

Keyword stuffing is rarely a good idea as it's both annoying for a reader / user of a website and a commonly flagged spam technique.

1.10 is a tricky ranking because you do get some boost from being at the bottom of the page but there's a high likelihood of getting shuffled out of that position.  I 'd recommend not worrying so much about who is currently in 1.10 and go after the link profile of the top 5 in that SERP. It sounds like you're in a good place in terms of conversion, so really it's a matter of building your brand / backlinks.