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
-
01 November 2013 - A possible Google's update??
Hello Guys! On 01 November 2013, one of our website's traffic has been dropped by more than 70%. We had added plenty of domains to the disavow tool, I am just wondering if its a Google's update or the disavow tool has destroyed the site? Any ideas? 9p3sN3p.jpg
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Over optimization of Anchor Text | Consequences, Guidelines, Precautions
Hi everyone. I am really worried because of the constant penguin and panda algorithms. I hired two or three SEO agencies and they did some link building for my pages a while ago. And just this time, our rankings dropped almost sitewide some 7-8 positions. I checked our link profile in this site , and we do not seem to have spammy links. I admit that we do have some low link quality, such as directories, blog posts, etc. And it seems to have 10-15 links with overoptimized anchor text, such as keyword exact anchor text, etc. I have a couple of questions regarding this matter? - What entitles an overoptimized anchor text? I mean, i can´t control people linking to me out there, and many of them used the product or brand name. Added to the fact that my former agency used article marketing links with exact keyword. - If i "overoptimized" my anchor text, what is the best solution?, I could change some anchor text by asking some people. Should i disavow, delete? What is your best bet here? - What is (May 27 2013) best practice for anchor text or link referall. I know it will keep changing, but i want to engage in the right practice right now. should link with www.domain.com/keywordpage.html, or how would one look natural? -I saw some recent links that are really strange to me. Could the competition be sending me some bad links in order to augment the situation. Is that something normal?, it sounds strange to me. Thanks for your valuable advice. I know many people are frustrated with these penalties and hits. Because there are still many sites with Mass EMDs, 3-page content, flash sites, that are ranking better than a high quality and engaging one. Any resource is more than welcome to recover from these dropped rankings. Regards,
Link Building | | JesusD0 -
Is blog commenting still useful for SEO, post Panda and Penguin?
One website I checked is ranking well on Google. Upon checking its backlinks, I found that most of them are blog comments. Is blog commenting still valuable? Anyone encountered any recent problem (ranks gone down, etc)? Are there any specific strategy to blog commenting these days? Thanks!
Link Building | | AgentsofValue0 -
Is bold text anchor link worth the higher price tag in directory listing?
Does it make a difference with Google if anchor link text is bold? The niche directory is offering regular lifetime listing for $199 (actual page pr 6) or bold for $349 (same page, same position). Also bold link has option of including email address. Does email address have any effect on SEO? Seems like a bad deal for bold, isn't it?
Link Building | | SirMax0 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0 -
Rel="canonical" or text link?
Lets say I have a commercial website that nobody will link to so I create a non commercial website with some awesome content that is highly linkable. I then get 30 - 40 quality links pointing to this site which I then either rel ="canonical" back to my main site to the page with the replica content or do I simply add a text link from the new site to the old sites homepage. Which would benefit my commercial site most? We are seeing the strategy of building a non commercial site for links becoming more and more popular. The second question is is it worth the effort for in effect one backlink?
Link Building | | fazza470 -
Does having backlinks with anchor text keyword1 negatively effect SERP position for keyword2?
I have recently been gaining a lot of backlinks which have anchortext that is not exactly related to the keywords we are targeting. I have no control over the anchotext used in these backlinks in this situation. Given that we already rank in a certain position for keyword2 based on the existing backlinks we have with keyword2 in them. Will adding another say 50 high authority backlinks with anchortext keyword1 hurt our rankings for keyword2? What i am trying to ask here, is can you dilute existing backlink keyword anchortext by gaining backlinks with different anchortext?
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
Strong pages and subpages: Building exact anchor again and again, or mix up?
Hi Seo Moz Team, I'm looking for some tips to optimize my site. The site is from mid 2009 and I'm targeting a bunch of keywords around a specific topic. One mainkeyword is a two phrase, let's say "keyword one". Since the beginning I built a lot of keyword anchor links with exact "keyword one" to my homepage. The key was climbing week to week until I reached number two on google. This place I could hold for round about 4 month. Until then it was going down to number 18 to number 14. The keyword "keyword one" was used most of all and it is the far most used key in the bunch of the other keywords. My first question is: I don't know what to do. I started building some brand links in order to mix the anchortext up. Should I built some new links to "keyword one" until I'm in the tops again although I have so much of them already? Could it be, that I have a keyword penalty one year now? In the meantime I worked with other keywords, deeplinks with total different keys and brand links. Smaller keys are ranking good and are very stable on positions 1-3. But especially this key is a little bid tricky. Other sites in the serps have roundabout 5-10 links regarding "keyword one" and they are ranking better than my site with 30-40 exakt anchor. My other idea was, that some links with anchor "keyword one" could be devalued. In this case it should be ok to build some new with exact anchor? The second keyword, lets say "key word two" is a three word combination. I have 60 good and editorial links on this special page and mixed up since I was optimizing for this key. Url mentions, exact anchor, variations and so on. With this key I'm on number 3. Number two is a very week site with no exact anchor backlink but a three word "keyword Domain". Regarding to this, my second question: There is no other site on my project, that is stronger than this three key combination page, but I can't reach to number 1-2 in google. The incoming links are very good regarding to all the other sites in the serps. Should I have patience? Building more and more links? I'm afraid that it is unnatural this way. For your information: There is one site in the serps from 2004. Everything this site does is to build lnks with "keyword one" and two other keywords. No variations, no brand. I think 85% of the time. This guy is ranking on positions 2-3 with this combinations since 3 years now, but smaller keys are week and foundable in comparison. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Whipeout770