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@Prentzz thank you for that post - I couldn't agree more that it's a case of just being too close to the edge of the cliff. It's the optimal place to be to see the waves but it just takes a little erosion to drop you off the edge.
That's the analogy I started using about 10 years ago with links customers and it's similar today. Exact match anchors are super powerful. They always have been. As recently as a year or so ago on here I saw people mention how powerful they still were - and lots of people really pushing going back to them again more than before Penguin even because of how well they were working etc...
I always used to say to customers who wanted to go all out like that - it's safer to be just a bit further inshore. Don't be one of the first sites to drop off that cliff - give yourself the chance to 'see the waves' for longer and give yourself more time to notice what's going on to others and adapt etc.
I've seen the same with content. A law firm SEO buddy of mine that we did links for updated one of his clients pages to be like an encyclopaedia page almost - multimedia, podcasts, example cases - and immediately after updating it lost tons of places. But over time all the people on the edge of the cliff with their 'accident law [town]', 'car crash in [town]' pages with all the bold, italic, and underline crap that were outranking his client eventually fell off the cliff as Google constantly adjusts, and his page moved up anyway after such a major change I think Google does randomise how it responds to it to make testing harder leading to a net gain for the client worth way more than the page rewrite.
Sure at the time you could have concluded - spam local law firm pages with bad links was the cheapest/easiest way to win - but those law firms had all built houses right at the cliffs edge.
That's the analogy I started using about 10 years ago with links customers and it's similar today. Exact match anchors are super powerful. They always have been. As recently as a year or so ago on here I saw people mention how powerful they still were - and lots of people really pushing going back to them again more than before Penguin even because of how well they were working etc...
I always used to say to customers who wanted to go all out like that - it's safer to be just a bit further inshore. Don't be one of the first sites to drop off that cliff - give yourself the chance to 'see the waves' for longer and give yourself more time to notice what's going on to others and adapt etc.
I've seen the same with content. A law firm SEO buddy of mine that we did links for updated one of his clients pages to be like an encyclopaedia page almost - multimedia, podcasts, example cases - and immediately after updating it lost tons of places. But over time all the people on the edge of the cliff with their 'accident law [town]', 'car crash in [town]' pages with all the bold, italic, and underline crap that were outranking his client eventually fell off the cliff as Google constantly adjusts, and his page moved up anyway after such a major change I think Google does randomise how it responds to it to make testing harder leading to a net gain for the client worth way more than the page rewrite.
Sure at the time you could have concluded - spam local law firm pages with bad links was the cheapest/easiest way to win - but those law firms had all built houses right at the cliffs edge.