Internal Anchor Text: Don't Get Rekt

Taking a step back from the plan.

I know we were going to be looking at real life examples of external NATURAL ANCHOR TEXT (NAT) today but...

Shit happens.

I haven't best figured out how to do it without pictures (BersekerMail limitation, not mine) while keeping it under 5000 words.

Plus...

Tuesday isn't great for me, I have a lot of stuff on the schedule and...

Yesterday's email generated more responses than all the rest combined.

Quick digression...some of the email responses I get are the most fun I have in this project (yes Nelly, even you...) so don't hesitate to bang the reply button if you have something to say.

Yesterday (and today), everyone wants to ask about internal anchor text.

"Can you spam away with exact (hello, LinkWhisper users) internal anchor text and get good results."

Yeah, absolutely.

Up until late 2022.

Was a fantastic loophole, everyone I know that was good at SEO was abusing it.

And then 2023, Google made it a priority to close it down.

To be clear, I'm talking about internal links in the <body> div.

Navigation/menu links are treated differently, because Google recognizes DOM structure.

If they didn't, every site with an exact anchor in the Nav bar would be self penalizing.

Especially the bread and butter sites they NEED to do well to service searcher intent most frequently, the local small business mom and pops.

Per Safari Digital:

"1. 46% of all searches on Google include local intent

46% of all searches will have to do with location – an SEO statistic that highlights the relevance of local search marketing for Google searches. Small to medium-sized businesses not implementing basic local SEO strategies will miss out on ranking for almost half of all Google searches. With more than 3.5 billion searches being received by Google every day, that's a whopping 1.6 billion of them that include local intent."

Sites mostly run by designers with limited (at best) SEO knowledge.

Guys (and gals) who are going to over-optimize the sites, especially in Menus and other Nav features.

Not by malice but via inexperience in SEO.

Lots of words to say DOM structure matters, we've tested it.

Move on...

Talking to myself there.

Google adjusted, SEOS (should have) adjusted.

Based on the emails, not everyone.

That's fine.

We're here now and we'll get that sorted.

Internal strategy...

A sentence from yesterday that I REALLY hope got you thinking about the why of SEO, not just the how.

"The more relevant the two pages, the less I need the anchor."

Really think about that.

Think about why that would be.

Too lazy?

Want spoon fed?

Fine, something for everyone here.

The more relevant the two pages, the less I have to try and FORCE relevancy between them.

Take it a step further.

Only interlink relevant pages.

Now you can be super safe with your anchors and you're closer to the topic structure I described here:

https://twitter.com/GrindstoneSEO/status/1741507371388813544

Without even planning it out.

Synergy.

Obviously there will be SOME need to interlink less relevant parts of your site together.

Both for user experience and SEO gainz.

Here I want the keywords to exist naturally in the linked from page.

No keyword stuffing.

I'm still going to be shy on exact anchors here, focusing instead on Phrase/Partials/LSI (don't even start, I'm using the 2005 definition) anchors.

But I will always place at least one exact anchor back to the page I want to rank.

Where?

On the page I want to rank.

You did not just have an aneurysm.

You read that correctly.

That's old school SEO and it still helps today.

No, it won't help you outrank a suite of powerhouses with your shitty AI splog.

But when you're on page 1 and every position you gain equals more traffic?

These are the games we (I) play then.

Great, I'm done.

Hope you enjoyed the read, tell me off if you didn't.

Cheers,

Grind

P.S. Obligatory shilling of the services, keep my team busy, go buy links: https://clients.grindstoneseo.com