Products To Products links

[Tormar]

Hi,
I want to create good internal linking structure, but I have a problem with product to product link.

E.g. I have a new model of product: iPhone 6, and old iPhone 5, and I want to put link from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6, but if I make link like this, I dropped for a few positions.

Also, if I have similar product e.g. photography Kit for iPhone 6, and I put a link from this additional product to iPhone 6, I will lose my position.
Why, do you have any recommendations?

[Everett]

Tormar,

Can you share the site so we can see exactly what's going on and provide a better answer?

We find many eCommerce sites overdo anchor text. For example, if you sell Car Stereos and you have brands/manufacturer categories in the navigation, this is too much anchor text for "car stereos" below:

Car Stereos by Brand
JVC Car Stereos
Clarion Car Stereos
Kenwood Car Stereos
Blaupunkt Car Stereos
....

We advice those clients to use labels like this:
Car Stereos by Brand
JVC
Clarion
Kenwood
Blaupunkt
...

Without seeing your site, I'm not sure exactly what you're doing. However, if you find that the changes you made continue to have a negative impact on your rankings, the obvious choice would be to undo those changes.

[Tormar]

I do not believe that is the point. This test was live 5 days and I loosed maybe 4-5 positions.
What anchor text is recommended to use? I used some phrase keywords.

[Everett]

How long did you let that test run for? I have seen plenty of first-hand evidence to support the assumption that Google purposefully moves rankings around like this when they see changes. It used to be easy to test things. You change something, wait a couple of days, check your rankings. The search quality team at Google has no doubt known for a long time that this is how many SEOs operate. It isn't surprising to think they may purposefully push down rankings for awhile just to confuse webmasters / SEOs who are trying to reverse engineer the algorithm or test things like this.

[Tormar]

These situations aren't hypothetical because I tested. My I phone 6 page lose rank if I put link on iPhone 5 page to iPhone 6 page, and same situation is with photography Kit page, if I put link on "Photography Kit page" to iPhone 6 page, my iPhone 6 will lose rank.

[MattRoney]

Hi Tormar!

Just to be sure I'm understanding, are you saying that your iPhone 5 page lost rankings when you added a link from it to your iPhone 6 page, and that your Photography Kit page lost rankings when you added a link from it to your iPhone 6 page? Or are you saying the former happened, so you're concerned the latter will, too? Or are both of these situations hypothetical, and you're just nervous about adding either of these links?