Google focus on anchor-text variation?

An interesting report at SEL points out that “miserable failure” no longer brings up the Whitehouse site.

My immediate thought is that this is an anchot text issue - that Google have modified the alogrithm so that too much of the same anchor text is likely to be ignored.

This is because the whole miserable failure was basically a link bomb designed around a single keyword.

So how does this impact link development?

Well, it’s been mentioned for around 2 years now that varying anchor text could be an important strategy for ranking purposes.

This isn’t simply to evade possible Google filters.

More importantly, when set up as part of a Landing Page strategy, it means you can really hammer at the longtail for a range of major keywords, combinations, and variations of.

Because there was no major algo update at Google late in 2006, I’m expecting to have to really hold onto my hat in 2007,

However, the first change through the gates doesn’t look like an issue I need to be worried about, as it’s already factored into my own link development, and I’m not seeing clients fall on rankings.

What really piques my interest, though, is the recent use of clustering technology that Google recently started to show at the bottom of results.

In my opinion this shows that semantic processing is becoming much more of an issue.

Again, I’ve already factored this in - links as in context with surrounding keywords where possible.

But the more Google pushes on semantic processing, the more we’ll have to watch out for how those links are placed.

Time to ensure link development campaigns are future-proofed again.