Preface: I presented this at last year's SEOmoz's SEO Conference Mozcon and will be presenting there again this year, so come join me!!!
So guys this morning I'm fired up, I'm fired up because I am seeing clients get smashed by competitors who deploy the lowest of low quality SEO tactics, I'm fired up because I am getting more and more evidence (that post is coming soon) that building links with high quality / high authority domains - without getting some heavy amount of anchor text is STILL a recipe for failure, even though we all know that getting anchor text in the majority of your links is not natural, what are we to do?
I'm watching some crap SEO firm outranking us without a single link that has their brand name as the anchor text, they have no twitter following, no blog readership, no youtube channel, nothing...yet they are outranking so many respected quality firms, its ridiculous. Social signals improve search results? In fringe cases yes, but in a lot of others not seeing it.
So with that said, I wanted to share my presentation from last year's Mozcon - to show you guys how I presented this issue last year, when I had a client who was getting stomped even after they got links from some of the oldest and most popular publications in the world ( I list those publications in the presentation and in the video). It was painful to see, and I decided to work on reverse engineering (to the best of my ability) search results using SEO tools like open site explorer and majestic SEO. This year I am going back to Seattle and I am back on my SAME crusade...but now I am going to work much deeper on the strategy side...once you see yourself getting killed on directory links...with exact anchor text matches, how do you fight fire with fire in a HIGHER quality way?
The presentation this year is also going to focus on how by taking the higher road you'll be protecting your rankings for the long haul, but for now guys...all your advanced tools might not mean a thing, simple SEOmoz tools are getting me all the ammo I need to see how I am getting beat and I want to vomit based on what I am seeing...
Here is a video too on me discussing a similar topic:
