General Question About 'Variety'

B

bigdiscount

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Jan 10, 2012
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Hi

I'm relatively new at SEO (no more than 2 years experience), and work as the development and SEO Rep for a retailer.

In my time I've had reasonable success with the sites that I've been responsible for but I want to know more about link building strategy incorporated by webmasters. Variety is an important thing, as the concept encompases Google's 'unique' and 'natural' guidelines.

However, what does variety actually mean to webmasters?

Does it mean variety of platforms/sources? i.e. directories, blogs, forums, social bookmarks, social networks or does it mean a variety of actual link content (anchor text content).

I started off in web development (and still toy with development now from time to time), and it is the developer in me that says 'a blog is a document, a directory is a document, a forum is a document' etc etc. Therefore, if they are all documents, the search engines should view each of the sources as being generally irrelevent when it comes to ranking....If my way of thinking is correct, then it is anchor text that the search engines are actually looking at.

But this then causes a problem in my little old brain because a competitor of ours uses a branded anchor for the vast majority of their inbound links (around 80% of the links), which clearly doesn't show variety from a viewpoint of uniqueness. But they haven't been flagged by Google either, which must mean that they view branded anchor inbound links as looking natural.

So, should the conclusion be that anchor text should be varied in order to check the 'unique' and 'natural' boxes, UNLESS it is a branded term? Because branded terms should be expected to make up the majority (I can see why - if anybody is anchoring to a site for whatever reason, they would usually refer to the brand name).

This ,however, is just hypothetical. It could actually show that Google doesn't care about the uniqueness of anchor text.

I'd love to know the viewpoint of others on this topic.

Also, when link building itself, how varied are other webmaster's anchor text? Is every link unique? (unlikely - link building would take forever), or do you have a selection of different titles and descriptions (if directory building for example), and accept that they will not be unique? (Which leads to another question: how often would you vary links and content? Every 50 posts? Every 100 posts? In the past I've approached the top end of this scale and not been penalised by Google, but I would be very reluctant to push futher).

Hopefully I've not rambled too much - but I'd be really interested to know your opinions and thoughts.



Thanks
Will
 


Originally for me, varity was for IPs that I submitted each "document"

Now, anchor text varity is very important, and I ultra spun all the content submitted to every property, and also spun the anchor text as well
 
Thanks Martillo....Yes, I thought that it was the anchor text - more so than the type of containing document. The document type itself must be relatively irrelevent.
The question is - how varied does the anchor text need to be? Unique anchor text can't be created with every link, because it would take far too long, so therefore a compromise has to be made i.e. a variety of links and descriptions for example, to be used for a bulk of link/directory submissions.

Your note about variety of IPs is interesting. I'd never really considered that before :)
 
With anchor text try to copy what is in the real world...if your keyword is Blue Shoes it could be....
a fraction Blue Shoes
a fraction Blue suede shoes, blue leather shoes, examples of blue shoes, great blue shoes etc
and a fraction click here, website, more info etc

That way your links are not all the same but have a focus.

That's my take anyway
 
@bigdiscount

What variety mostly refers to is a problem in anchor optimization.

With a website for blue suede shoes in chicago, people optimized their link building, so the anchor text was something along the lines of blue suede shoes chicago, blue suede shoes, etc.. with little to no variety.

Now, natural links look different

you'd have

blue suede shoes
blue suede shoes shop I found in town
look at my blue shoes
here

etc..

Try replicating that, instead of over-optimizing.

::emp::
 
@emp: So, that suggests that a variety of source 'documents' would be a good idea because to get the variety that you are referring to would require free flowing links to be embedded into sentences, rather than just titles and descriptions (that directories use). So certainly blog postings, as well as directory listings would be required to make the most of this....but then that moves into the territory of paid links (unless you get very lucky).

Thanks everyone for your views!
 
However, what does variety actually mean to webmasters?

Does it mean variety of platforms/sources? i.e. directories, blogs, forums, social bookmarks, social networks or does it mean a variety of actual link content (anchor text content).
Click to expand...

Imo, it means all of that.

For example, the content of the "document"; Google does use the surrounding
text to sort images. That has been shown to be true. So, I would not discount
the text.

What do you think? If 100% of your links come from forums, will Google
take that into consideration?

That would seem unnatural to me.

Bompa
 
It is a big brand yes....
@Bompa - thanks for your input. But the point is: how could Google tell the difference between a blog, forum and a directory etc? That is what I find difficult to get my head around...
The difference is obvious to us - but we are human! :)
 
@bigdiscount

I think you are overthinking this.

Variety is of course.... variety.

Varying link texts
Varying link targets (home page, deeper pages, etc..)
Varying sources (directories, blog posts, blog comments, solcial media...)

The differences between sites can be detected easiest by footprints (software like a CMS leaves specific pieces of text in a website and noob webmasters don't remove it)

or by specific words used on specific platforms

For example:
Forums - member, thread, post

etc, etc..

::emp::
 
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