Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I know that Google prefers a varied back link profile, and so it's ideal to get both - but I wanted to know, are followed back links from blog comments, forum posts etc. (i.e. The low-hanging fruit) weighted significantly lower by Google than links appearing within the of a page, for example? If so, is it possible to quantify by how much?

OK. So My takeaway from this is that it's probably best (since it's so much easier) to go mostly for brand-related anchor text, other perhaps than in cases where I'm really trying to make a push on a particular page? If that's correct, then my last question is: Are brand anchor text links to a particular page thought to be weighted considerably less by Google than page title anchor text for that particular page?

I'm launching a new stain removal website, and wanted to know what would be considered the best way to organize the content? Since most articles will roughly involve "removing X from Y" or "how to remove Z," I can see two ways... 1. Organize articles by Stained Items, Stain Agents and perhaps Cleaning Detergents. 2. Spread the categories out more, to try and group stained items according to categories... E.g. Hard surfaces, delicates, fabrics, ceramics etc. Any thoughts on which of these two might be the best way to organize the site, or are there any better suggestions? Not sure what the main considerations are here... Either of these two seem equally user-friendly.

This seems to make a lot of sense, but then I look at the link profile with OSE of a site like Askmen - in the top 500 of the most-trafficked sites in the U.S - and over 95% of their 10,000 or so backlinks are brand name... There are very few that appear to be targeting specific keywords at all. I know one counterexample isn't much, but this was literally the first site of that size that I looked at. If Google had changed its criteria to those you suggest, could one not expect a site like this to be massively penalized?

I'm looking at a lot of competitor's sites, and they only seem to have gone after root domain anchor text in their link-building campaigns. Since I am just launching and am essentially a one-man band (with some hired help), is it worth my while to attempt to optimize individual keywords or pages at this point, or should I just do as they have done, and try to get domain-name links wherever I can?

For that matter, should I spend more time going for the low-hanging fruit of followed blog comments, forum posts etc, or emailing influencers to try and get editorial links?

Sorry if that last one is a bit broad, and thanks very much in advance for any and all help.

By keyword optimization I just meant looking at the traffic based on a smaler number of articles and making better future selections based on which keywords were performing the best etc.

This was a nice answer, thanks. I was curious how you saw RSS syndication as helping to ensure articles will be indexed as quickly as possible?

I'm building a content site (the model is AdSense revenue) around a certain niche, and I'm currently paying for about 6 articles to be contributed per week. I have the capacity to be paying for a lot more articles, however, so I'm wondering what, if any, factors exist to recommend building the site up slowly as opposed to throwing on e.g. 100 articles over the next week? Those I can think of are:

1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc.

2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now.

All that being said, I still feel like the benefit in terms of traffic of adding more content now - since I can - might outweigh these considerations. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Bah, I haven't read the white paper yet, but now I'm even more confused! Both previous answerers veered towards "use the keyword difficulty too, go for keywords you think you have a good chance of hitting the first SERP for," whereas this study would suggest doing otherwise might not be a bad strategy. Hmm.

I operate a stain removal website and was wondering how consistent it was worth being from title tag to title tag. To give you an example, here is a group of keyword phrases that I might wish to target:

"getting out pet stains with vinegar"

"how do I remove water stains from wood"

"removing chocolate stains"

Does the benefit to be gained (whatever that might be) from making these consistently of the form "how to remove X from Y, " or "how to remove X" outweigh simply giving articles titles based on the exact phrases above?

I heard from someone that Google is getting more proficient at spotting "clumsy" title tags, although I'm not sure if any of the above examples would fall into that category, and was thinking that I should then probably proceed on the basis of directly titling articles based on the exact keywords I am uncovering...

Any advice much appreciated.

I understand that the scores it generates are essentially based on the difficulty of appearing on the first SERP for the keyword in question. That said, I am having a lot of difficulty finding keywords in my niche which return a score that would make this easily achievable for a site of my size....

The reason I'm pointing this out is because theoretically, a keyword could have a HIGHLY competitive first SERP, with a significant drop-off on the second SERP, which would make achieving a top ranking on that page substantially easier. So my question really is, is the importance of appearing on the first SERP so unequivocally important that it is a pointless activity to attempt deliberately to rank for keywords on the second SERP, which is ignored by the keyword difficulty tool?

I know the breakdown of clicks goes something like 40% for top spot, 12% for second and downwards from there, but if a certain query has over a million searches per month, for example, it would still be possible to get considerable amounts of traffic by trying to rank highly on the second SERP, which the keyword difficulty tool cannot help with. So is this really a useless activity?

It helps with the theory, but some more specificity would help Are you saying 40-50 would be considered high demand/difficulty phrases? The problem is that I'm not finding much in the niches I'm targeting at around keyword difficulty 30...

I know that words in their 20's or 30's would be ideal, but it's proving hard for me to find relevant keywords with such scores (just a couple with scores in the 30's). Is going for words between 40-50 a waste of time?

Thanks.