SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday discussions - Anchor Text replaced by co-citation.

Found this blog post at SEOMoz for last week's Whiteboard Friday, and thought I would share it.

Quote:

---

Imagine this: you're checking your rankings, and you see a page ranking number 6! Awesome! But wait…you never optimized for that keyword. How did you end up there? Hmmm…

The answer, dear Moz friends, is likely co-citation.

---

The video and transcript is here if you'd like to read/watch more.

It seems that anchor text isn't really dying, and that its being replaced by co-citation. Rand has also given a few good examples of how sites are ranking for "keywords" seo's never optimized for.

What are your thoughts on this, and how do you think it will impact your site the next time you optimize your site?

I am going to take a look at the video transcription. co-citation is new to me. it is the first time i am hearing about it. but i will go around and find about it. is it a new strategy in doing seo?

I don't think its a strategy, just something they've noticed, and that could be developed into a technique perhaps? Only, how would you target something like that? I mean they've mentioned that these were words in the content just plain text used, and these words helped a site rank, and for some it was even for a competitive niche.

As always great SEOMoz :)
Nice catch Sam and I also think this is where google is going with their algos in the future...
They proved it with penguin and exact anchor texts and I myself discovered something similar from my test cases that sites will rank better when using some generic or brand names texts and anchors alone and mixed with other keywords,
so that just support this guys theory and I think he is very close to the algo signals currently taking place among other important signals I already talked about.
As I always said it is just common sense...

---------- Post added 11-21-2012 at 12:30 PM ----------

I just want to add analogy here... you Sam just did what this guy is talking in your first post... :)
So as I said common sense...