Julia: What would you say to Web site owners who are reluctant to use links because they think it will take people away from their site?

Bob: For one thing, a Web site without any off-site links is a dead end, and there is some evidence to suggest that search engines view sites that don’t link out as being less valuable.

Unless you’re willing to pay, you may have a hard time convincing people to link to you if you’re not planning on linking back to them. But it’s still possible, especially if you’ve got content that’s so good people will want to link to you anyway, but it’s definitely harder to get one-way links than reciprocal ones. I’m not suggesting that people link directly to their competitors. The idea is to link to sites that complement content that you’re providing. By doing so, you’re contributing to impression that your site is an authority on your theme: not only do you have great information, but you have links to other sources of information. That’s another reason for people to come back to your site more often. And if you’re still worried about sending people away from your site and never seeing them again, you can set your off-site links to open in a new window, by adding target=”_blank” to code for link. If you do this, however, it’s a good idea for usability purposes to let people know that link will open in a new window. Otherwise, people who have their browser windows maximized may not realize what’s happened, and should they try to get back to your site by hitting their back button they’re likely to be confused when it fails to take them anywhere.

Julia: We often hear term "Anchor text". Can your explain what this means and why it's important?

Bob: Anchor text is part of a text link that’s visible on page. On a Web page, that would look like this: :Search Engine Marketing and Copywriting Services ”Search Engine Marketing and Copywriting Services” is anchor text. What’s important about it is that it tells both user and search engine spider what page link points to is about. In a search engine optimization project, getting links to your site that use your keywords in anchor text helps to get your page to rank higher for those keywords. That’s why it’s important to have something other than “click here” as anchor text.The power of anchor text can be seen by example of practice of “Googlebombing,” in which numerous sites will link to a particular page using same anchor text. If enough sites do it, Google will rank that page at top of its listings for searches on that text. George W. Bush’ biography page on site of White House is still number one in Google for query “miserable failure” about half a year after that particular Googlebomb was created. Whether or not you personally agree that those words do a good job of describing Mr. Bush, Google accepts what it sees as opinion of general online community. If enough pages tell Google that miserable failure George W. Bush, then as far as Google is concerned, it must be true.

Julia: Another thing we hear a lot about is Pagerank™—a tool webmasters often use to determine whether a site is worth linking to or not. What does this mean?

Bob: PageRank (not to be confused with “page rank”) is a part of Google’s algorithm for ranking pages. There are numerous theories as to how it’s calculated, but only Google knows for certain. In any case, that’s not important to this discussion. What matters is that PageRank is a measure of value of a page based on links pointing to it, value of pages on which those links reside,and number of other links that are on those pages. It’s strictly numerical, and has absolutely nothing to do with relevance or value to reader. In other words, if I have a page about Shakespeare, and I link to two pages, one about Shakespeare, and other about care and feeding of parakeets, same amount of PageRank will be passed to both of those pages. The fact that one of those pages is about same subject as my page does not enter into calculation.

You can see an estimation of PageRank of a given page if you have Google toolbar installed. But it’s important to keep in mind that PageRank is not everything, nor is it most important thing. It’s one of many factors Google takes into account when it ranks pages for queries, and it’s not at all uncommon to see that a site that ranks on top of a SERP (search engine results page) has a lower PageRank than pages below it on SERP.

One of reasons people believe that PageRank is important is that if you do a backlink check in Google by typing “link:www.site.com” in search box, you’ll generally (but not absolutely) only see pages that link to URL in question and have a PageRank of 4/10 or higher. People have taken this to mean that a link from a page with a lower PR doesn’t count, and that simply isn’t true. It’s true that, all other things being equal, higher PR of a page linking to yours, more PR it’s going to pass to your page, but as I said, PR is just one aspect of Google’s algorithm, and every link apart from troublesome ones we spoke of earlier has some value.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that a page that shows a PR of 2/10 in toolbar today may have a 5/10 or 6/10 a few months from now.When I’m looking for sites from which I may wish to request links, only time what I see in toolbar matters to me is when I see that it has no PageRank at all. Assuming site isn’t new, that can sometimes be an indication that site has done something which caused Google to demote it. That is, it may be what Google refers to as a “bad neighborhood,” and as such, you should be extra careful in checking it out before you agree to link back to it.

Julia: Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, Bob! I hope you all will check out Bob's site at: for more information about his company.

The only thing in data so far to set No.4 apart from others is a higher keyword count in body content. But that's not likely to help since it has a much higher body word count.

Keyword density in body content

The table this section refers to is at: Table 2

*The SEO Analyzer did not return results, so word count was calculated from keyword density SEO did return & knowing body content keyword count.

In Body word count, none of these pages comply with analyzer recommended figure of 436 to 629.

Now although keyword density in body content of No.10 is slightly higher than 19 it's also higher than No.1, but it doesn't get ranked No.1 because of it.

No.4 has a lower body keyword density than all except No.30, yet it still gets ranked No.4 !

Another factor to consider is keyword prominence or how close keywords are to beginning of either title, link text or in main page content. The analyzer reported a minor keyword prominence problem with No 19 in link text and body content and more of a problem with prominence of No.30 in link text.

But to keep these prominence reports in perspective for No 19 & 30 we must not forget that No.4 and 10 have zero keyword prominence in link text because they don't have any link text !

Online Analyzer Keyword Density

One of most detailed online keyword density analyzer's is that from www.ranks.nl

The table this section refers to is at: Table 3

The above results show keyword density & prominence for words "keyword" & "density" as separate words and also as a two word phrase "keyword density".

It seems a higher keyword density coupled with a higher prominence goes some way to explain ranking order. The exception to this No.4 whose ranking is not due to keyword density or prominence since on both counts it's only slightly different to No.30.

Two other things are striking about results from all analyzer's, firstly very wide variation in word count and secondly variation in keyword count.

The word count by analyzer's varies by as much as 81.3% (No.10), 44% for No.19 & 41.9% for No.30.

In worst extreme (No.10) keyword density calculated by analyzer's varies by 154.4%

The keyword counts for No.10 & 30 show most variation. The keyword density software counts 3 occurrences of word "keyword" and 3 of "density". The online analyzer counts 8 and 5 respectively.

For position 30 software counts 13 for "keyword" and 9 for "density" whilst online tool counts 8 and 6 respectively. In worst case this is a keyword count variation of 62.5%.

The software was set to look for keywords in Title,Link text, Links, Header tags (h1-h6), Meta Keywords & Description tags, Body text & Alt tags. In fact only place it was not set to look are comment tags, but then neither was online analyzer.

Both software and Ranks online analyzer can exclude words shorter than a defined setting. In all keyword density analyzer's where option was available it was set to ignore words of 2 letters or less.

To another online analyzer position No.4 had only 10 keywords and a body word count of 969 both of which differ from figures already seen.

Can we use any tool to compare one page with another ? None give consistently high word & keyword counts or consistent low ones, a relative analysis of pages is also questionable.

Keyword Density Analyzer Conclusions

Three software tools and two online tools have been shown to all produce widely differing word counts (variation 81.3%), keyword count (variation 62.5%) and as a result wide variations in keyword density (variation 154.4%). This whilst analyzing 5 different pages with Google rankings from No.1 position to No.30.

It seems likely with 5 different tools all producing different results that Google itself also arrives at yet other figures for word count, keyword count, prominence & keyword density.

Based on tests, these tools don't produce absolute results or consistent relative comparisons between pages. The differences in word count and keyword count between these analyzer's could not be explained by a word exclusion filter.

The rankings of test pages can not be explained just on basis of keyword density, prominence, word count, keywords in meta tags, headers, links or Alt tags.

This should come as no surprise, since we know other factors like on & off site links and link popularity all play a role.

What may come as a surprise is that analyzer tools we rely upon give such widely differing results. Does this mean we should stop using them, no I don't think so, at least not until something better comes along.