Anchor text after the recent Panda update
-
Hi everyone,
I just read this article: http://goo.gl/GkgUr and I can confirm this is true because one of my websites drastically lost its rank last week due to high percentage of targeted keyword within back links.
Thus, what I'm worrying about is the anchor text within back links. I'm about to launch a new web site soon that will be publishing lots of landing pages for a travel niche. What I initially thought is to optimize landing page by page, so when the current page ranks well to move on to next one and so on. I thought that, by ranking a single landing page well, will have some positive impact to the rest of landing pages.
But, after a lot of time spent on studying link building strategies, I decided to spread back links among landing pages equally. I will try to get as much as possible back links from the relevant content and high quality sites (press releases, guest posting, link exchange, social networks promotion). Please correct me on this one if you disagree.
According to the above article, the recent google panda update calculates a percentage of keywords among anchor text and it would be the best to keep those at less than 30%, including "link", "here", "domain.com" etc.
For instance, lets say that my website counts 500 landing pages and every single one targets a different low competition exact keyword. So, if I start building back links equally for each of the landing pages and I want to cover each one with a back link from a relevant content, what should I use for the anchor text? Initially I thought the keyword should be the anchor text, but after I read the article I'm not so sure any more.
I guess search engines would say something like: "Ok, there are 500 landing pages and 500 different anchor texts pointing to different pages that belongs to domain.com", perhaps this should increase TLD's authority but what will happen to the landing pages? Would search engines (primarily google) see them as a 100% single anchor text and harm the rank?
I really appreciate your help.
Thank you!
-
It's hard for me to translate that into what the real anchor text would look like, but I think that targeting "/landing-page1" with "landing page 1" every time you build a link is definitely not a good idea.
-
Hi
Thank you for the explanation. Please take a look at the attached example displaying exactly how I was thinking to structure the links. I'm talking links from guest posts and other relevant content I might have influence on. Besides that, I hope I'll get enough links from people who likes the content.
The question is, what if no one actually links back my landing pages and I'm left with all those pages linked from a single relevant page (anchored with 100% exact keyword). Is it going to harm the site and do you think my strategy is wrong? Any better advices?
Thank you!
-
So far (and this is based on very limited data), it appears that Penguin 2.0 targets many of the same tactics that Penguin 1.0 did, just on a deeper level, across more pages, and probably with a bit less forgiveness. So, I think it's safe to say that anchor text manipulation is still a factor in the new Penguin update.
I agree with Mark that it's dangerous to think in terms of pure percentages, as it's probably more complex than that, and may be dependent on a mix of factors, including the SERP "neighborhood" you're in. The problem with any aggressive manual link-building is that it's prone to looking artificial, so it's important to look for ways to both build and attract links, which naturally creates a variety of anchor text. As long as you're building by hand, it's going to be hard not to "over-optimize" (for lack of a better term).
I definitely think it's a good idea to diversify across landing pages. If you're going to build links manually, I'd just be careful not to use the same tactics on every landing page. That pattern is going to look more obvious when Google sees it across the whole site. Mix it up as much as you can, not just anchor text, but the actual link sources and types of links. It's really easy to carry one tactic too far that's ok in small quantities.
-
If you post shortened URLs in a forum a lot of people will not visit them because they are uncertain of their distination.
... just sayin'
-
So again I would look at the competition and look at ratio of their deep link to home page links. I have focused much more on using internal links to pass juice on and use of anchor text, I have found the pages I deep linked to suffered the most, the pages that had no or very few back links to seem to have done better if I have good internal links to them.
-
Thanks a lot for the advice. Any thoughts on the other question is spreading money kw back links among landing pages better or it's more useful to rank page by page?
-
Each industry / keyword is different, what works for one industry does not mean it will work for another. % of brand vrs money making kw's vrs white noise (click here, etc) will really depend on what sector you are in. My advice would be look at the link profile of the top 3 sites in your industry and match what they do then slowly improve on it.
If the top 3 ranking sites on average have say 7% White noise links, 60% branded and 33% money making kw's, then that would be what I would aim for. I have learned over the last 12 months that one brush does not fit all!
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
-
Having some problems with understanding how to properly use anchor text for my keywords' better rankings. Please help!
Hello, Last week I did some work on my website's inner pages linking and some of my highly ranking keywords fell down as a result. I guess I did something wrong, please help me figure out what exactly was wrong! Here is the example of what I did. I put a link to the page that ranks for 'Thermador repair Brentwood' here: http://www.ifixappliancesla.com/blog/2016/09/12/appliance-repair-brentwood/ I put exactly same anchor text, 'Thermador repair Brentwood'. For my blog posts, I use Yoast plugin, so when adding the link, I received the message "You are linking to another page with the focus word you want this page rank for. Consider changing that if you truly want this page to rank." While this one's ranking, 'Thermador repair Brentwood', didn't fall down, others did. Could you please confirm if my understanding is right and I'd better not use the same keywords on two or more pages? If yes, what is the best practice for linking to the pages that are not in the main menu? Let's say, I decided to do blog posts for the areas my appliance repair company serves and to optimize those pages for respective keywords. So, I have pages like "Appliance Repair Service in Brentwood" (which is optimized for "appliance repair brentwood" keyword), "Appliance Repair Service in Beverly Hills" ("appliance repair beverly hills" keyword), etc. I thought that the best way to link to them is to put the same anchor texts: "appliance repair beverly hills", etc. But it looks like the best way would be to use the anchor texts like "Beverly Hills", "appliance servicemen in Beverly Hills". Please tell me if I am right? Any explanation, advise or referral would be much appreciated! Thank you!
Link Building | | kirupa0 -
Naked link anchors or long tail anchors ?
Hi, Do naked link anchors such as "www.mysite.com/my-category" have the same SEO power as long tails anchors? What about the UX which such anchors? Lately a site published our back-to-school article with this horrible naked link anchor, it does not look friendly to me as a reader, but I am wondering whether I should bother, how important it is for google and for readers? Thank you in advance. Isabelle
Link Building | | isabelledylag0 -
Position Drop - Anchor Text Penalty
Hi - About a month ago we dropped out of all out top position ranking and now can be found around page 600 on Google for all those keywords. I feel this is because our SEO company over used or money keywords as anchor text - Could this be correct?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Can personal name anchors from blog commenting be a risk?
Hello, I've created a new site early this year. In an effort to stay on Googles good side I decided not to do any link building. Everything you create yourself is pretty much frowned upon by Google, right? I have been doing a fair bit of blog commenting where that would add value. As a result my link profile shows about 50% anchors with my name in it. Can this be dangerous? Thanks!
Link Building | | andersvin0 -
Exact match anchor text is negative signal?
Hi all, I am wondering if the exact match anchor text is 100% negative signal after the penguin. I mean even from relevant sites and natural use. During the last 2 weeks I see negative SERP changes and I start to think that it is because exact match keyword anchor text is used. I also use some other anchor texts along with it all the time.. but now I think of using 100% exact match anchor free links. Does anybody have similar observations? Thank you in advance.
Link Building | | VasilTasev0 -
Tool based websites after Panda and Penguin
I have several sites that I classify as "tool" based sites. These type of sites includes anagram solvers for word games, ip address lookups and other various based tools. I like to specialize in these kind of sites because frankly I am not a blogger and hate to write. Before Panda I was doing fairly well, I had many users coming to my sites everyday. The Panda update "tips" that I read all over including on google sites seems to always refer to articles and how to deal with those. The only problem is that I am not an article based site. Yes I have content that describes my tools, but we are talking 1 to at most 2 paragraphs per page. I know Panda effected my ratings because I lost ranking with some big keywords. Since then I have been able to gain some ground, but I am having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly google wants from a site like me. The main path I am getting from Panda is concentrating on the users, and what will make their experience better. I focus on that whenever I make a change. I figure the easier I make it for them, the happier they are going to be. I am wondering what you guys think about some things I can look into creating or focusing on to enhance my site. I use social media heavily (FB, tweets, posterous, blog, RSS Feed) already, but is there something else I can look at that might help me that I am not seeing. I seem to be running out of ideas. Maybe add more content to my pages? Check link structure (its pretty basic as it is) add more article based blog posts? Just want some ideas, I will send my URL to anyone who wants to take a look and see what I may be missing. C
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
External Anchor text page to target?
I have onpage optimised 4 pages on my website example.com/services/chosenkeyword-1 example.com/services/chosenkeyword-2 example.com/services/chosenkeyword-3 example.com/services/chosenkeyword-4 Should I built links with various anchor text to my home page or the exact internal page as above? Cheers.
Link Building | | Socialdude0 -
Over Optimised Anchor Text
Hi. We are new to the seomoz community so just getting the hange of it. We have run a few reports and found that we have to many links with the eaxct match anchor text. We are as a result we feel penalised and held back at no.7 or lower. There doesn't seem to be any other logical explanations why aren't higher besides that. What would the best way to deal with this over optimisation issue? Thanks
Link Building | | GardenGamer
Shannon0