The following is part three of a guest post written by Farky Rafiq of Liquid Silver Marketing. Farky works in conjunction with Webbed Feet UK on many of our SEO projects.

Google’s answer seems to be, devalue the anchor text by reconsidering prominence, quality, environment and relevancy.

As previously mentioned Google Penguin was first seen in April 2012, which seeks to better understand the types of links that have been created for SEO purposes and it drops the rankings accordingly if the percentage of spam is reached. The removal of the penalty is part of a manual review process that can even see a website banned due to questionable link-building strategies.

We know that anchor-text now considers prominence, which we’ve always used to an unfair advantage but also contextual analysis driven by using Ngram data is also being used. How else beyond links could relevancy at a global level within search be defined? (Just an observation of connected studies).

In terms of prominence, not all links are created equal, many websites use footer links to improve the theme of the page content, but also to try and pass value to other pages or from site to site.

This can also occur based on the location of keywords that are placed throughout the site as part of the internal linking structure; we often help support the theme by targeting and disseminating the link-juice across the pages by improving the Page Rank flow or in other words sculpting Page Rank.

Which is ok, we just need to be careful to keep the anchor text density below 65% and shown in some recent studies. We have recently seen change to the rankings for content below the fold which again seems to be based on relevancy. Maybe bounce rates?

Although Google says they’re not used to calculate rankings, we do know that click-through-rate is connected to rankings how else could a website be found and quality measured on a search engine results page beyond rankings be used as a quality signal?

Some of this can be seen within Google Webmaster Tools which has a section that provides us with a CTR (click-through-rate) which is an indication of how well the content is doing within the results pages.

If anchor text drives rankings from the back-link profile then poor results are shown by way of high bounce rates, the impact on search quality is clear to see.

The reading level of content has always been important as we consider the returned results.

If we were to query the term “flu” we would expect maybe a Wikipedia article but if we query the term. “Influenza”. We get medical journals and articles returned.

Although these subjects are related, on their own they return a completely different result which has to do with searchers ‘intent’ and the reading level for the query. Thereby serving a result relevant to the users search which goes beyond keyword research and is theme related. Therefore the brand must reflect this content strategy site-wide. Search Engine Optimisation isn’t just about working on the site-wide and page level link-juice metrics, it’s about building brands that people want to link to and share, which drives relevancy.

It’s become more about ‘Inbound Marketing’ which is a term coined by a company called Hub Spot. Inbound Marketing seeks to place a greater emphasis on a content strategy that drives results.

Most website can benefit from some forms of SEO because it’s often overlooked at the development stage, there’s a large gap between the below professions which can have an impact of how well a website performs in the search engines.

• Graphic Design
• SEO / SEM / PPC
• Content Strategist, Copy
• Web design XHTML,CSS
• User Experience Management (U.X)
• Clients Aspirations (Disjointed)
• Web Developers PHP, ASP, JAVA, AJAX
• Content Management Systems C.M.S
• Marketing, Branding, Communications

This goes far beyond the technicalities of SEO We are all seeking to do different things that are related. So we need to adopt a design process that works together to deliver websites that aren’t solely created for search engines. They need to put the user first.

When we consider that the purpose of search marketing the objective is to deliver targeted visitors that ultimately complete a conversion. Whether that be lead generation, e-commerce, engagement or direct sales. part of our goal is to deliver our message to the audience that supports this process.

Search, P.P.C Email and Blogging are within the reach of most business, our strategies need to consider the wider context of our search marketing in order to deliver meaningful results.

Look out for part four coming soon, if you can't wait that long you can download the whole article now.

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