Anchor Text Wanker Smecht
Originally sent to the GrindstoneSEO email list.
By Grind — Founder of GrindstoneSEO. Building links since 2006. @GrindstoneSEO
First...
Did you miss me?
Two days no inbox abuse?
The silence must have been lovely...
Sigh...anchor text...LFGO.
I said I'd covered this ad naseum.
I have.
Start here: https://twitter.com/GrindstoneSEO/status/1541572837466484736
More here: https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Agrindstoneseo)%20anchor%20text&src=typed_query
I've got a full chapter on it as well in my course I'm writing.
What?
You forgot I promised an ebook on Parasite SEO?
I didn't.
But it's sort of transmogrified into a bigger nastier beast.
Because there's no reason to try and teach you how I Parasite SEO if I don't teach you the WHY of how I SEO first...
I digress...
Anchor text.
It is the single most important off site SEO component.
Why?
Because the Fred update established relationships between entities based on site reputation (read that as authority) and those entities determine how your anchor text is scored.
Who cares about Fred, right?
We do.
Because some time back, Google rolled Fred into Core.
And despite whatever they're calling the latest update that fucked your shitty affiliate site right off the map, it was Core that did the heavy lifting.
I'll guarantee it.
Why?
Because people have paid me an obscene amount of money over the last 5 years to help them diagnose SEO fuxxored sites.
And it's always the anchor text that gets them.
Every time.
You might not be able to see it in Ahrefs.
Or GSC. Or SEMRush.
But if you pony up for a Link Research Tools account for a month, you'll see it.
Ahrefs has ~28% of the links that LRT finds fyi.
Sample size of 20+ analyzed sites now.
If you're doing Disavow/link profile protection shit and not using LRT, you're wasting your time.
FredCore™ is also why negative SEO works so well right now.
Exact/Phrase/LSI from low quality sites to your less than Forbes strong site is toxic stew, my internet friends.
And it doesn't matter if you're doing it to yourself or some punk ass is doing it to you.
Same result. Slapparooni, population you.
Luckily, the solution is simple.
Stop.Building.Links.With.Anchor.Text.You.Want.To.Rank.For.
Easy peasy.
Until you start looking at sites.
And realize that 99% of you are still doing SEO like it's 2010.
But it's not, it's 2024.
Google doesn't need you tell it that the connection between the best car subwoofer review page on another site and your best car subwoofer review site needs to be conjoined by the words best car subwoofer review.
It just doesn't.
It can make that association by itself just fine.
And by not cramming your best car subwoofer review anchor text down Google's dry throat, you future proof yourself against destruction.
That DR50 site that gets 10,000 traffic off organic searches today is a DR50 site with 0 organic searches 6-8 months (hi Mike) from now.
It's inevitable.
It's the game link buyers and sellers are playing.
So don't set yourself up for heartache by being greedy with anchor text today that will be toxic next year.
Instead, lean into the beautiful power of Natural Anchor Text.
Even if the value of that site goes to ZERO next year, if you used anchors relevant to your topic that you don't care about being penalized for, you really don't care about future devaluations.
It's that simple.
And it's a glorious feeling to not give two shites about the latest updates.
Someone asked me the other day if I'd recovered any of my slapped sites from HCU.
'No, I don't get slapped anymore. I do SEO differently'
Sure, some sites outranked mine because things changed (UGC, yeah you know me) but if a slap is going 1-2-3 to 5-6-7, slap away Google.
I'll build back better from there gladly.
And circling back, to how 99.9% of you are still thinking about anchors like it's 2010, the questioner in the comment above...
I'd already helped him recover a site with a Disavow of toxic links + recrawling/reindexing all the now disavowed pages.
But it's so ingrained in the SEO community that you HAVE TO BUILD ANCHORS TO RANK that you can't get out of your own ways.
Fark, I'm ranting....
You have your homework above, read.
Today's will be more philosophy than function, tomorrow I'll show you some real life examples.
Cheers,
Grind
P.S. Can't be arsed to learn all this? Just go buy links from a team that gets it: https://clients.grindstoneseo.com
P.S.S. List significantly smaller today, I gave the rel=noopeners 36 hours to confirm their interest. Bye now.
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