Ok we spotted something to do with link relevance this week, we think maybe the first public sighting ever, and it’s big.

…BIG !!

Basically we have seen a site ranking for a phrase, due to content on the linking site, it ranks for words that are just near the link (to it)

But the words are not in any link anchor text, from there or anywhere else, Kapiche?

There are several excellent resources on Link (Ranking) Value Factors notably SEOMoz & Wiep.  Moz don’t really mention this at all, Wiep does, but the SEOs interviewed range from not very interested, to completely disinterested in the value of this as a ranking factor.

..If we are correct, this observation will change that forever.

Quoted from Wieps page, with our own entry at the end

04. Surrounding text (near-link relevance)

Q. Does the content of a text that directly surrounds a link of positive influence the value of a link? This question only covers the content that surrounds the link directly. The overall page relevance will be mentioned later on.

Eric Ward: “Multiple factors play into the ultimate effect of surrounding text. In some cases it will be useful, in some cases it will be useless.”

Bob Gladstein: “It’s not clear to me whether it’s more a matter of the general theme of the page or just text in the area of the link, but it does make a difference.”

Peter van der Graaf: “Surrounding text in de direct vicinity of a link is important, but links in the vicinity are just as important.”

Maurizio Petrone: “Nowadays, anchor text is by far a more important factor rather than the text surrounding the link. If the text is not unique (within the website, too) its value decreases long more.”

André Scholten: “Context can mean a lot, there a words that have a total different meaning when placed in a different context. Search engines will determine which linked page is more relevant when searched for a specific context.”

Hamlet Batista: “This is documented in the original paper describing Google’s search engine and on one of the latest patents. Extensive testing is required to be certain.”

Ralph Tegtmeier: “More of an informed guess than a scientifically proven assertion. I’m fairly confident, however, that proximity of keywords and targeted search terms will play a fairly important role soon.”

SEO Ibiza – Yes absolutely, Google now looks at and factors in the  content and text around the links.

You can now rank for other peoples content if they link to you!

This week we have seen a site ranking for specific keywords from the body /content of the linking site.

• The keyword string is 5 words long.
• The ranking site ranks for keyword 1 + 2
• The linking page url and titles do include keywords 3-5
  
• The ranking site does not contain keywords 3, 4 and 5 at all.
• The Google cache shows the usual-

“These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: keyword3 + keyword4 + keyword5″

Repeat, keywords 3, 4 & 5 are NOT link anchors, they are merely just on the page /url  / titles of the linking site! There are definitely no incoming links whatsoever with anchor text keywords 3, 4 or 5.

Running the search with Keyword1 + Keyword 2 + Keyword3 + Keyword4 + NEWKeyword6 removes the ranking site from the SERP, ie it’s just these 3 words, and definitely because of the linking sites links / content.

If anybody would like to see this discovery for yourselves leave a comment and if know you we’ll mail you the example.  Otherwise you had better start thinking about the content & text around your inbound links, because you can now rank for it

Merry Xmas to all from SEO Ibiza

25.12.2009 – had a chance to have a good look at it yesterday, and  thankfully as today the SERP has changed. Although the results remain today, today there are other sites in the SERP displaying similar odd rankings as well and the result is not so stand-out as it was upon first noticing on the 22nd.

The linking site has now appeared one position below the ranking site too, and two other keyword 1 + keyword 2 sites are showing keyword 3, 4 and 5 as “links to this site”.

We’re now trying to replicate the effect with a similar pairing of experimental sites.  watch this space.