Ask a QuestionBacklink Anchor Text Profile
-
I'm looking to clean up my back link profile as we have a Google penalty for unnatural linking. Any pointers on what I should be looking for in terms of what makes a link bad? We have a massive percentage of links under the anchor text of "workwear" and this is the keyword we have the penalty for. Is it better to get the links removed or the anchor text changed? Thanks
-
That looks like a penalty to me.
-
Daniel sorry for your negative experience. Not all SEO company's work that way.
It is a great idea to first try to get those links removed yourself, but if you cannot, Google has recently released a disavow tool, which allows you to tell Google what links you want to disavow from your website. Here is the URL to the disavow tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Hope this helps.
-
Hi, thanks all. We actually employed a so called reputable seo firm to improve our rankings and 12 months on and several thousand pounds lighter this is what we are left with. I've noticed that many of the sites are almost identical in terms of their design and domain name. Even some ip addresses are the same so it looks like a content farm to me. I think I'm better trying to get them removed, hopefully some key somewhere can delete our site from their db and remove all of them in one go, it's never that easy tho I suppose. Amazing that you can give people money in good faith to promote your site and secure quality links and this is what we and up with. Thanks for your input tho guys
-
Hi Daniel,
If you have a penalty for "workwear", most likely many of the links that have the anchor text "workwear" were built unnaturally. I would anaylize all of your links with this anchor text and remove the ones that are unnatural or spammy.
Google implemented this penalty to find unnatural link building tactics from bad sites, and one easy way to spot unnatural link building is if an anchor text is repeated. Google uses this measure because that is not how a quality website link to another website. Quality links do not have a standard anchor text, and the anchor text often includes the brand name.
The links that are worth keeping are the links from sites with a high domain and page authority and were not built automatically.
As a rule, the links that matter now and in the future are built by communicating with people and doing "link worthy things" not by pressing a submit button.
-
Well I guess my next question in that case is 'did you buy or source links from a link farm?!' My understanding is that it's very rare for there to be manual intervention in this fashion, and if you have received a penalty, it's probably for good reason.
Having looked through OSE there's nothing that's massively obvious (for me), but will probably be more obvious for you. Bear in mind that data in OSE could be some weeks old.
Cheers
Matt
-
The answer to if it's better to get the links removed or just change the anchor text is maybe to both. If there's an inbound link that seems spammy or doesn't really fit in well with the topic of your site (ex: your site is about cars, but a site about oranges is linking to you), then removing the link could be the better long term plan.
If it's a quality link from a credible source, you want to keep that link so look for anchor text diversity as far as the keywords used.
-
This is the latest message we have from them from webmaster tools. We never had an actual notification of a penalty but our 1st page ranking for Workwear dropped to page 20 overnight. All other rankings suffered as well:
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www../,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www../ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
-
Hi Daniel,
Have you received a notification from Google (in Webmaster tools) that they have penalised you? In theory, they should not penalise your website for receiving links from dodgy sources, just not pass on any link juice from the dodgy site.
If you think about it, why wouldn't every business just set about getting loads of dodgy links to their competitor's website? Then google will penalise their competitor and all will be good with the world, right? Wrong.
If you have not received an official notice from Google, it is very unlikely (near impossible) that you were penalised for getting spammy links.
If you're hell bent on checking backlinks, use SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer. This will tell you the domain authority of the websites you receive links from. I would cull any backlinks with extreme caution though... Domain authority may not tell you the whole story.
Good luck
Matt
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Online press coverage: publications asking for fee to add backlink. Should I pay?
For the last few years I've been gaining steady backlinks for my clients by producing online press releases for them (e.g. publishing results of a survey they commissioned, or their expert opinion on recent news, etc). The online coverage included a backlink naturally or by me just asking the publication nicely. But recently I'm finding that publications are asking for a fee to publish the article (with a link) or they will publish the article for free, but will add a link for a fee. Note: these publications aren't link-building-sites, they're good DA sites such as https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/ and https://www.moneymagpie.com/ (MOZ DAs of 80 and 56 respectively). The fees are around $200 each. The clients can afford to pay for this type of coverage, but is there a risk in these cases with Google?
Link Building | | AndJH0 -
Does a text URL (without hyperlink) provide any SEO value?
Our clients use the link shortener of our service software to share their job offers. Sometime the job baords they post to do not allow hyperlink and thus post the url as text only. Do these url texts offer any benfits in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | rflores0 -
How to deal with over-optimised anchor text?
Hi, We took on a client a few months ago, who came to us after seeing a drop in rankings. After cleaning up the site, we concluded that their drop is more than likely down to over-optimised anchor text. The keywords that have mainly been affected are the ones that have a majority of links with the exact anchor text. The links have built using blog networks, articles and there are some comments thrown in for good measure. We have no way of getting them removed. Hmm, links can't hurt you!? So what is the best solution? Has anyone had any success over coming this issue? What sort of time scales are we looking at? Gareth
Link Building | | garethbrown0 -
Do you make member profiles on sites that have public member profile listings?
Or do you find that this takes more time than it is worth? I mean there are literally thousands of websites that allow you to signup and create a public profile and drop your link in there. But is this really worth the efforts? Would like to hear from some people on both sides of the argument, as i am sure there are people who do this, and also people who don't on here.
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
Does it pay to change link text internally?
Most of my internal pages have their best links from within our site (of course we are trying to change that). Is it worth the effort to sculpt the link text to show varied text instead of most all showing the same link text? Or is that only important from external links?
Link Building | | joemas990 -
Anchor text distribution
Hey SEO Mozosphere - Working on a link buying strategy. I know it is wise to target not only anchor text links but also branded text links to keep your anchor text distribution looking natural. However, do you think it would be too risky to ask for branded text links only from low PR sites and focus the more valuable keyword anchor text links on high PR sites?
Link Building | | znotes0 -
Does the url text count as anchor text in google's algo?
I always try to strive for getting good anchortext in links that people link to my sites with, but sometimes they are not very web savvy, or just plain not willing to format the link the way i want it and we end up with links that use the URL as the anchortext. My question is, if i format a url such that it has keywords in it, and when someone makes a link like this: http://www.storwell.com/self-storage-toronto-bursary-application-form.php does google consider the words: storwell, self, storage, toronto, bursary, application & form as the anchor text?
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
Value of a link from very large profile site
Hello We have an opportunity to get a link from a very large traffic site. It comes with a price tag, and Im wondering if it is worth it. Is it ok to mention the page and cost? It is the 5th largest internet site. Would be on their benefactors page. There are many other sites linking from the page, and its obvious they are on there for the link value. I know sometimes one link can do wonders for rankings, where thousands of others can not. But wondering if there is any way to quanitfy this. Is it worth it for the value of the backlink? If we link to the home page, the link juice (alot I hope) would pass through to the deeper pages, and increase their rankings for their target keywords? Thanks for your advise. Sam
Link Building | | Impact-2015550