Exact Match Anchor Text - How Can These Guys Be Getting Away With It?

[OctopusHR]

Hi.

I've noticed that some of my search competitors seem to be getting away with heavy use of exact match anchor text in their backlinks. In the UK, for the term [HR Software] the top 3 SERPs have on average:

• 63% of their backlinking domains using the exact match anchor text [HR Software]
• 50% of their backlinking pages use the exact match anchor text [HR Software]

I know there are hundreds of factors at play other than just the above but to me their anchor text profiles scream "LINK SPAM".

Is this normal? Have I missed something? or do I just bide my time and wait for them to be hit with a penalty?

Thanks

David

[TakeshiYoung]

How are you checking their backlinks? Keep in mind that even the best link checkers can find only a fraction of the links pointing to a site. It could be that there are more links going to the site that you're not aware of, that Google knows about. Ahrefs has the largest index of links, in my experience.

It's also possible that the site has a lot of other positive signals going to the site. Generally, the more authoritative and trustworthy a site is in Google's eyes, the more it can get away with in terms of spammy tactics without getting penalized.

You also don't know which of those links are helping with the rankings, if any. It's entirely possible that the company has already disavowed most of those links in Webmaster tools, or Google is discounting them automatically. Or maybe they will end up getting penalized in the next Penguin update.

In short, don't rely too much on competitive backlink analysis. It can give you a few ideas of links to go after, but it doesn't always give you the full picture.

[artdivision]

Sorry to sound negative but the only thing you have missed is believing that everything you read about Google works

I believe that all these PR releases is where Google wants to go in the future or how they wished things to happen, a white hat online marketing strategy best guide if you'd like. But as to what actually works you will be surprised to find out that a lot of black hat tactics not only work, but actually are good in keeping a site on page one for a long long time.

While this is a strategy that will innevitably lead you to the day you will log to your ranking tool and your whole web site will be gone, bear in mind that Google DID encourage heavy anchor text link building. Few months later they realise that people can abuse it as was greatly noted in this post here http://yoast.com/godaddy-link-building/ where GoDaddy managed to climb on page one overnight back in 2011, not that long ago but before the first Penguin release.

There are a lot of techniques that still work these days, techniques that have been reported black hat ages ago, and that google have made an example of. If they made an example why do they still work you may ask? I am in no position to answer, but they do work. Here is a sum up of 5 reasons you might be getting outranked by a competitor http://www.atladasmedia.co.uk/blog/5-seo-reasons-you-may-be-getting-beat-in-rankings-by-websites-that-are-no-better-than-yours/ one of which is:

2. Anchor text link building. YES – Penguin is nasty and there are a lot of web sites that got penalised but anchor text link building does help if done properly. I did a quick search on terms such as the one mentioned above as well as local companies and the top pages have keywords in between six and 15 percent of their anchor texts. This is where a lot of companies that use keyword domain names as shown above, have an advantage, as their domain name can also serve as an anchor text if someone decides to link to them.

Hope this answers your question!