Written by Ric, Image by Ian

(Note: This is a follow-up on the previous  article entitled Penguin: Another Black and White from Google)

The Penguin chainsaw massacre.

Keywords and anchor text are essential in search engine optimization. One of the targets of the Penguin Update are the sites that are overstuffed with keywords and anchor texts. Did it actually hit the target?

Micrositemasters.com’s analysis shows that the sites that were affected use money keywords as anchor texts for more than 60 percent incoming links.

It seems that the focus on anchor words will become minimal as compared to content relevancy. This trend will make the optimization of keywords and anchor texts irrelevant in the long run.

BUT is it really the case?

The affected sites

According to Searchmetrics, the sites that were greatly affected are mostly database-driven – they aggregate information and use their databases to create a lot of pages. Press portals and aggregators that are usually created by very aggressive SEOs, are also affected. Last, some of them are heavily-templated web sites.

Keywords, without content

Although fresh and new content are the main requirements being set by Google now, the problem is that in some instances some sites really do not have “content” at all but they still rank well.

Matching money keywords with anchor texts is quite shaky now. The 60-percent boundary may spell the future of a site. There is another aspect of SEO that needs to be further maximized when building links and when optimizing a site, in general.

The importance of niches

One important trend in the latest update is that relevancy is given to sites that have links from the same, similar, or related niches.

According to micrositemasters.com, the sites that were penalized after the update were the ones that have very few links from other domains and websites that belong to the same niche. Links from non-relevant sites are also fine as long as there is a proper balance.

We know now that money keywords (especially money keywords) used as anchor texts should be avoided. How do we deal with the competition, which I think is still largely dependent on keywords?

Competitive analysis after the update

Competitive analysis should be done regularly. Finding new competitors is one of the basic steps in order for an SEO campaign to succeed. Although this is a common topic for some, I think this is still valid in a post-Panda and Penguin period.

The fact that the latest update was aimed at eradicating “overstuffed keywords” sites and webspam, it will surely result in a different role of anchor texts and other components of competitive analysis.

Anchor text diversity should really be considered seriously now when doing some competitive analysis.
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Sources:

Update: Google “Bad” SEO Update – Now named Penguin Update
SEO Competitive Analysis: Your Roadmap to Ranking #1 On Google
SEO Competitive Analysis – 2011 Edition
Competitive Link Analysis Tips – Whiteboard Friday
How the Latest Google Algorithm Penguin Update will Affect You
Google Penguin Update: Impact of Anchor Text Diversity & Link Relevancy
Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter (And 5 Easy Ways to Do So!)