Weekly SEO news: 1 December 2020
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Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Google confirms that the anchor text of a hyperlink is a ranking signal for Google

Google's John Mueller confirmed in a webmaster hangout on YouTube that the anchor texts of hyperlinks are a ranking signal for Google. Normal anchor texts help Google to rank a page for what the anchor text says about the page. Google is also able to ignore spam links that try to manipulate rankings:

Anchor links are an important ranking signal

John Mueller said that anchor texts are a ranking signal, and he said that Google can detect fake links:

"In general, when it comes to these kind of links, what we try to look at is the specific anchor text there.

So if it's something where, when we look at it, it looks like, oh, it's promoting this website in a way that it uses very keyword-rich anchor text, then that would be more problematic. If it's essentially just linking to the URL or if it's using the business name as something that is linking to the website name, then usually that's less of an issue. [...]

It's very possible that we already ignore these specific links, because these are the kind of links that are very easy for our systems to pick up and say, well, we can just ignore those."

You can view the full video here.

How to analyze the anchor texts of any website for free

Checking the links of competing websites can help you to improve the links of your own website. Unfortunately, Google Search Console shows the links that point to your own website but not the links of your competitors. Fortunately, there is a free tool that enables you to check the links of any website.

Google has confirmed that links from other websites are a strong ranking signal. There is a strong correlation between good links from other websites and high rankings on Google.

Find the websites and links that will give your own website a ranking boost by analyzing the links of your competitors. Analyze the links of your own website, remove bad links and improve the existing links that point to your site.

Your free link analysis tool: OpenLinkProfiler.org

OpenLinkProfiler.org is a free link analysis tool that enables you to take a look at the links of any website. It enables you to find particular links quickly and easily:

free link analysis

You can filter the links by age, by anchor text, by the title of the linking page, by Link Influence Score (LIS), by industry, by context, etc.

Find the links that point to a particular page, links that contain particular words, etc. OpenLinkProfiler.org also parses the data for you so that you get the top stats with a single mouse click:

link analysis details

Billions of links at your fingertips

The link database of OpenLinkProfiler.org contains billions of links that are updated regularly. Go to OpenLinkProfiler.org now and analyze the links of any website. Don't forget to tell your friends about this free tool.

Check your links for free

Stay safe during these difficult times!

2. Internet marketing news of the week

John MuellerClick bots won't improve your Google rankings

" Let's say you are trying to rank for a very niche keyword. What is stopping you from making a bot with rotating IPs to google the keyword and click on your website? Then stay there for some amount of time clicking randomly on your website to seem like a real person. [...] John Mueller of Google actually responded to it saying 'It makes no sense, but knock yourself out.'"


The new conversational Search experience

"Google Search rolled out new ways to get you to the information you want, using context from your recent activity. Thanks to our newest language understanding capabilities, it’s now easier for you to get to a more specific, on-topic search, navigate a topic you’re interested in and find additional information relevant to that topic."

GoogleGoogle: you cannot force a HTTP/2 crawl for your website

"Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that you cannot force a HTTP/2 crawl for your website. There is also no ranking advantage if Google’s crawls your website that way."


Google: having private WHOIS domain name data is okay

"Google's John Mueller confirmed on Twitter that having private WHOIS domain name data has no impact on the rankings of your web pages in Google's search results. Making a domain registration private doesn't make the domain a part of a link network."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • Google: Others copying your content wouldn't be reason for your pages to rank lower.
  • Google deletes all automatically created AMP story URLs.
  • Google adds 'Message' button to local posts.
  • Google tests multiple contextual links in featured snippets.
  • Google shows average review ratings of hotels and their category in Google Maps.
  • Google tests featured snippets that contain links to other websites.
  • Google shows misleading quotes in search results.

3. Previous articles