A couple days ago I wrote about the most important SEO ranking factor according to 37 search experts. Today I’ll cover the ranking factors that placed 2nd and 3rd.

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
3. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)

This should come as no surprise to SEOs. Anchor text and link popularity have been important for a while now. So, instead of trying to prove to you how important they are, I’ll talk about common mistakes regarding these two factors.

The thing I’ve been seeing with anchor text is webmasters using the same text without varying it. This looks unnatural to Google, so you risk being penalized. John Chow, a popular blogger, got a top 10 ranking for make money online by doing a reciprocal link exchange with his readers. However, he got caught by Google and they dropped him off the front page of the SERPs.

Here’s the lesson to learn: don’t link with just one anchor text. For example, if you’re trying to rank for hawaii travel, don’t only use that text. Use other texts like

great hawaii travel
travel to hawaii
hawaii vacation
hawaii destination
tropical paradise

Also, to really look more natural and go under Google’s radar, add other types of links like image links and non-keyword anchor text links like click here, link, and http://yoursite.com.

With link popularity, the thing to remember is the importance of deep links, or links to internal pages, and quality links.  It looks spammy if most of your links point to your home page.  It looks more natural if you have links to your subdomains, folders, and internal pages.  And make sure you have great content, because that’s the best way to get links from quality sites.

Please share your thoughts