OK to change the anchor text of a link?
-
I have built a link on behalf of a ciient in a long, well-written article on a reputable website that accepts contributor accounts. I therefore control the link.
I have since realised that the anchor text of the link could be optimized much better than it currently is (while still only being a partial match). Would I be punished by the algorithm for going in and changing the link?
I know it's not 100% "natural," but then we're SEOs, and i don't think it's too implausible that a website owner may go in and do the same... Maybe if I add some text as well, it would make things look more natural?
-
If they crawl the article again, and notice that the anchor text has changed, then it could put up a red flag.
Yes, indeed. I agree with Bernadette.
Every site should have some anchor text diversity. It keeps you from looking like you are trying to manipulate the search engines. This particular anchor text, which is not exactly what you want, could actually be extremely beneficial if lots of your other links have highly optimized anchor text.
I would not tweak this link. Google is watching.
-
Zakkyg, if the link was in an article, and Google has already crawled the link, then keep in mind that they DO know what that anchor text is, and have noted it. If they crawl the article again, and notice that the anchor text has changed, then it could put up a red flag. Typically, when an article is written, it's complete--if the anchor text changes or a link is added, it could potentially be turned into a paid link or "optimized" link, which is what you're doing.
Generally speaking, you have a limited time to get the anchor text updated... if it's an older post then it may not make a difference.
-
It would be highly unlikely you would be penalized for updating the anchor text in one blog. I would be more concerned if you had an alarmingly high number of exact match anchor text links pointing to your client's site.
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
-
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Problem with internal links
Hello! Our domain, http://www.unionroom.com/, is having a strange issue with OSE in that it is telling us our internal pages aren't linking to one another. An example of this is that it is showing our About page ( http://www.unionroom.com/about/ ) only having three links, but this link appears twice on every single page on the website (~200 pages) in the header and footer. We've hung around for a little while to see if OSE would correct itself, but it hasn't and this now suggests that it may be an issue with our in-linking structure. Can anyone spot any issues with our build? The rest of the websites that we produce, that are all built in the same way, all have healthy internal linking structures according to OSE. Very confusing! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unionroom0 -
Linking and non-linking root domains
Hi, Is there any affect on SEO based on the ratio of linking root domains to non-linking root domains and if so what is the affect? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Dummy links in posts
Hi, Dummy links in posts. We use 100's of sample/example lnks as below http://<domain name></domain name> http://localhost http://192.168.1.1 http:/some site name as example which is not available/sample.html many more is there any tag we can use to show its a sample and not a link and while we scan pages to find broken links they are skipped and not reported as 404 etc? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Will aggressive use of branded keywords in anchor text attract Penguin’s wrath?
I'm working on a site for a serviced apartment site http://www.alcove.co.in/ which offers apartments in 9 cities in India. Site was ranking in 1st page of Google for “serviced apartment + city” for 7 cities until sometime in Jan 2013. However organic traffic has been gradually falling since sometime in September 2012 (40% fall this month over same period last year). There’s been no sudden fall in traffic which we may link with any Penguin update. There have been no warning messages in Google WMT. Even today the site ranks in 1st page for 3 cities; however ‘Serviced apartments bangalore’ which was the biggest revenue earner, is not ranked in first 5 pages. My questions are whether will aggressive use of branded keywords in anchor text will attract Penguin’s wrath, does Google makes allowance for case when company's name includes keywords. In our case, company name is Alcove Service apartments, could there be some other reason for fall in ranking/traffic? The distribution of anchors (external links, multiple links from same domain are counted) is : percent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anand53
Keywords 34%
brand+keywords 43%
Natural 4%
only brand 11%
URL 7% For the above, Brand = ‘Alcove Service apartments’ or ‘Alcove Serviced apartments’ brand+keywords = various combinations of ‘alcove’ + [‘guest houses’ or ‘hotels’ or ‘accommodation’] + city1 + city2… Intriguingly, Open Site Explorer analysis of domain metrics (Domain Authority, Followed Linking Root Domains, etc) ranks Alcove higher than all but one site appearing in 1st page of Google for ‘Serviced apartments bangalore’. Most of alcove’s links are from article directories (no spun articles were used), directories and link exchanges with relevant sites. Any suggestions and guidance on what we could do to remedy the situation would be greatly appreciated! Thanks0 -
Are menu links with the same anchor text but different destinations a problem?
My website uses the same anchor text to go to different pages, with section headers indicating where they go. Is this a problem? f so, why? Here is an example of what I mean: Women Shoes - link to women shoes Clothes - link to women clothes Accessories - link to women accessories Men Shoes - link to men shoes Clothes - link to men clothes Accessories - link to men accessories Kids Shoes - link to kids shoes Clothes - link to kids clothes Accessories - link to kids accessories
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
A Client Changed the Link Structure for Their Site... Not Just Once, but Twice
I have a client who's experiencing a number of crawl errors, which I've gotten down fo 9,000 from 18,000. One of the challenges they experience is that they've modified their URL structure a couple times. First it was: site.com/year/month/day/post-name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy
Then it was: site.com/category/post-name
Now it's: site.com/post-name I'm not sure of the time elapsed between these changes, but enough time has passed that the URLs for the previous two URL structures have been indexed and spit out 404s now. What's the best/clean way to address this issue?I'm not going to create 9k redirect rules obviously, but there's got to be a way to address this issue and resolve it moving forward.0 -
Any advice on acquiring "jump to" via anchor link text?
Google says these types of references are generated algorithmically and that users should include a table of contents & descriptive anchor link text. Is there anything else we should take into consideration? Also, does anyone know how this works with pagination? Due to the design of our site, we can't make one really long article, but would need to divide it up into several 'pages'--even though it would all live on one URL (we'd use the # for pagination). Thank you in advance for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1