Google recognizes brand associations – Co-Citation – The Future Link building Technique

February 9 2013

Websites, new or old ones and especially the small start-up businesses may need to work harder on self-promotion in order to increase their visibility. How to achieve that? Well this is a bit difficult to answer at first. Having many aggressive companies to compete with, companies that perform SEO for other businesses, the market nowadays have grown in a struggle arena and a very difficult place for prosperity and success.

The first thing used as the tool number one in the best SEOs practices, was and is the anchor text.

For those who do not know what the anchor text is, a simple explanation follows: link on a page presented with a text instead with a web address (example: Web Design Sydney as an anchor text link and the https://www.webski.com.au/web-design/ is a url link. Usually the text is a keyword that you target the most or you aim at for your business purposes, used as an anchor text, with which you are telling Google or to other Search engines that you are targeting for that particular keyword , and that the page you are linking to has much to do with the phrase used as an anchor text.

All of this process has helped in developing a new industry in the lines of the SEO techniques – the link building.

As explained on the Wikipedia, the Link building in the SEO process is a process of affecting the visibility of a web-page in the Search Engines results, on the other it means building quality, relevant links to your website, which in return helps your website achieve higher rankings in the search engines and drive larger traffic to your site. Or even simpler: getting as many links from reputable -high PR sites, and links from sites that are in your keyword range or are highly relevant to your business. That’s what traditional link-building is all about.

Nowadays, Google has got even cleverer and some of till- now circumstances have changed for good. The new era is here – Google algorithmic or other updates and changes have one purpose: vanishing of all the not quality web sites and blogs (created for the intention to include links that will point to other No or Low quality web sites) in order to drive traffic, next is the barring of the signal that helps ranking growth from pages –not –worth –reading, online articles, blog comments, forums, social media posts and other low quality web where an anchor text can be placed in order to drive traffic or increase rankings.

Introduction to co-citation techniques and mention-based co-citation data

Alternatively Google has found the answer and it is simple: They are getting much smarter about this subject, and although it is a traffic generator technique the co-citation is used to purify and intensify the search engine rankings and creating more targeted traffic.

If you are one of the web masters that use “white art” SEO techniques than you’ve probably heard about the latest predictions of Rand Fishkin, SEOMOZ’s leading gurus about: the anchor text diminishing as a signal and google replacing it with something else called co-occurrence or co-siltation.

With fewer words the co –citation is a habit of using of terms and phrases (keywords) along with a brand or a link while you are backlinking or doing inbound link campaigns for your site. Simple – the co-citations are mentions of your business name or brand and the products that you offer to the audience and clients.

Co-occurrence is something that should happen naturally if your content and page ranking strategies are in place, by this you contribute to the Google goal – eliminating the urgent-fix SEO’s who want to rank fast by doing some basic backlinking or practice the reciprocal or paid links. Therefore as much as you have content that speaks your brand and the keyword phrase without linking to your page then you are contributing for a more meaningful and smart web and for the powerful keen changes that follow in the future & the basics to the Google’s next changes.

In fact the simple explanation of the method called co-citation or the co –occurrence is a parallel measure used to establish a subject similarity between the sites or their pages. If company One and company Two are both linked together by company Three then it may be said that they are related – even though they do not link to each other. Without these sites having their best targeted keywords used in any SEO anchor techniques such as: keywords in the HTML title tag, headings or not even in the home page, other anchor text, on-page text or other.

So even if it doesn’t turn your co-citation to be the best way to increase the ranking you have nothing to lose, you are focusing on the marketing, building brand strategies for your business by distributing high quality content that is referenced and deriving for the audience. This way you are contributing, sharing with the right people and distributing your brand across the web.

Make people write about your brand on high authority sites!

As Rand Fishkin discusses in his November post and he is signifying something arriving on a big entrance in the future SEO: “You can see a lot of articles on the web that mention cell phone ratings and reviews and mention Consumer Reports. They don’t necessarily link to the page that sells cell phones. But many of them will do exactly this. If you look at a text snippet on the page, it’ll say, “Cell phones as rated by Consumer Reports.” This doesn’t even link. It’s not even pointing to their website or to that specific web page. But Google sees the words “cell phone”, the word “rated,” and the “Consumer Reports.” They put two and two together and say, “It seems like lots of people on the Internet seem to think that Consumer Reports and cell phone ratings go together.” – This is his explanation about the prediction for the anchor text and the co-citation replacing it and one of the future looking element of how are we going to do SEO. At this point it’s good to mention that Google recognizes brands and not only, they support every brand association or the effort of people writing about this brand without linking to it by only using competitive keyword phrases.

This behavior of co-citation and brand association is founded on content analysis with one goal- sourcing context, in order for the most relevant to rank as highly as it can. In fact the simple explanation of the new method called co-citation or the co –occurrence is a matching measure used to establish a theme connection between two websites or their pages.

If company One and company Two are both linked together by company Three then it may be said that they are related – even though they do not link to each other. Without these sites having their best targeted keywords used in any SEO techniques such as: title tag, or other meta tags, headings or not even on the home page. How do they rank well and is the co-citation the reason for that? The answer will be yes! If you see a site ranking well without the standard SEO techniques then you should know that the co-occurrence or the co-citation is causing that. Google isn’t just looking anymore for links or quality content; they’re looking for Context and co-occurrence is probably a part of the newest Penguin updates, principally when trying to understand what a relevant link is.

Further, if you are an SEO master this is what you should be recognized for rather than using low-quality tactics and on-page factors. Make sure you always target to relevant competitive keywords and prior to linking make research about the site you intent to co-site, if it is a reputable and high ranked site. Doing SEO the right way, placing links on the right places on the web, for you site or others, means only one: You will be prepared for the next big update and Google changes, shutting down the anchor text signals and introducing the co-citation techniques and mention-based co-citation data as the “white hat” SEO leading techniques that contribute to a smarter web and high ranking positions.

A final tip for closure: Use any of these types of associations (keyword & brand or keyword & website or keyword & URL) and they may accompany a good content text placed on high authority web sites on the way of high SEPR’s positions. Mentioning your company brand, website url with the key phrase of your products and services on other relevant web pages will keep you among the top businesses in your industry.

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