Recommendation to fix Google backlink anchor text over optimisation filter penalty (auto)
-
Hi guys,
Some of you may have seen a previous question I posted regarding a new client I started working with. Essentially the clients website steadily lost all non domain name keyword rankings over a period of 4-12 weeks, despite content changes and various other improvements. See following::
After further hair pulling and digging around, I realised that the back link anchor text distribution was unnatural for its homepage/root.
From OSE, only about 55/700 of links anchor text contain the clients domain or company name!....8%.
The distribution of the non domain keywords isn’t too bad (most repeated keyword has 142 links out of the 700). This is a result of the client submitting to directories over the last 3 years and just throwing in targeted keywords.
Is my assumption that it is this penalty/filter correct? If it is I guess the lesson is that domain name anchor texts should make up more of your links?
MY QUESTION:
What are some of the effective ways I can potentially remove this filter and get the client ranking on its homepage again?
Ensure all new links contain the company name?
Google said there was no manual penalty, so not sure if there’s any point submitting another reconsideration request?Any advice or effective experiences where a fix has worked would be greatly appreciated!
Also, if we assume company is "www.Bluewidget.com", what would be the best way to link most naturally:
Bluewidget
Blue widget
Blue widget .com
www.bluewidget.com
http://www.bluewidget.com....etcI'm guessing a mix of the above, but if anyone could suggest a hierarchy that would be great.
-
Thanks for the response, that answer from Rand is definitely helpful.
Do you (or anyone else!) have actual experience of this penalty and getting past it?
I guess I'm looking for some positive assurance before I start on backlinking that could potentially not fix anything
-
Hey Hash,
I'd start work on building non-keyword links from good authority sites. You need control over the anchor text so start in the usual places (directories) etc. Rand wrote a good Q&A answer on anchor text variations which is worth reading.
Remeber to build links not only to the homepage but to other pages throughout the site.
Personally, I wouldn't bother with another reconsideration request to Google as the number of link you'll need to build is relatively small.
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
-
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
Fetch as Google - Redirected
Hi I have swaped from HTTP to HTTPS and put a redirect on for HTTP to redirect to HTTPS. I also put www.xyz.co.uk/index.html to redirect to www.xyz.co.uk When I fetch as Google it shows up redirect! Does this mean that I have too many 301 looping? Do I need the redirect on index.html to root domain if I have a rel conanical in place for index.html htaccess (Linix) - RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.xyz.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^$ index.html [R=301,L]0 -
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers Any markup that could be used to be listed like this. Why is some sites listed like this and some not. Why is the adzuna.co.za page listed with Results 1-10 while some other with Jobs 1-10 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | classifiedtech0 -
Link Anchor Text - Best Practice?
Moz - Open Site Explorer using the following setup: Tab: Inbound Links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
Show: "all"
from: "Only Internal" I have run a number of random tests and have noticed the following results in the link anchor text. [No Anchor Text]
company name
website url
Home
etc. What is the best practice and naming convention to be used? Regards Mark0 -
Does changing Anchor text of old built links raise a red flag in Google?
I have lot of links (10000+) built against Exact match anchor text so what is solution to that now? Other than disavowing them all, May I change the anchor text of those links (From Exact Match To Brand Name or naked URL)? Does Google have algorithms to detect anchor text changes and if so, do those algorithms detect these sorts of changes and raise a red flag on sites doing it. I respect your opinions but please only comment if you are sure about it because I am already facing a penalty so can't afford to get another.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan1 -
Google Manual Penalty - Unnatural Links
Hi, We are in the process of trying to remove a partial manual penalty for unnatural links. I would like to do a complete link audit of our site, where can I get complete data on sites linking to my website? Webmaster tools only appears to show the top 1000 domains. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Sculpting anchor text percentage through disavow?
Hi there, should less-than-optimal links be preserved, if those links contribute to a more attractive anchor text percentage profile? I'm working on a client who spun a bunch of articles, using keyword word anchor text. No surprise, the strategy worked great up to the penguin update. About 90% of the client's links come from these spun articles. The other 10% of links are naturally occurring, quality links. Furthermore, these quality links are also keyword rich. Now, it occurs to me that if I remove / disavow the links coming from the spun articles, I'm left with the 10% of quality, anchor text rich links. I'm concerned that Google will see this percentage as too high, and lower the rank. Furthermore, I have a vague memory of watching some YouTube video, where an ex-Googler says that your brand name should be about 60% of your anchor text, and everything else lower. Finally, when I examine the anchor text in links coming into the ranking sites, they have 5-15% anchor text density on their keywords. So, I feel a bit of a contradiction: I should clean up all of the crappy links from the spun articles, but then that risks having only the keyword rich anchor text links active? Therefore, I'm considering leaving some of the crappy links active on non-relevant keyword text, such as the good 'ol "click here" link. Also, before answering this, I can already predict some of the answers on philosophical grounds: those crappy links from spun articles are not natural and garbage, so get rid of them. Fair enough, but I'm also interested in an answer on only the dimension of what will produce the highest rank for my client?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Google, Links and Javascript
So today I was taking a look at http://www.seomoz.org/top500 page and saw that the AddThis page is currently at the position 19. I think the main reason for that is because their plugin create, through javascript, linkbacks to their page where their share buttons reside. So any page with AddThis installed would easily have 4/5 linbacks to their site, creating that huge amount of linkbacks they have. Ok, that pretty much shows that Google doesn´t care if the link is created in the HTML (on the backend) or through Javascript (frontend). But heres the catch. If someones create a free plugin for wordpress/drupal or any other huge cms platform out there with a feature that linkbacks to the page of the creator of the plugin (thats pretty common, I know) but instead of inserting the link in the plugin source code they put it somewhere else, wich then is loaded with a javascript code (exactly how AddThis works). This would allow the owner of the plugin to change the link showed at anytime he wants. The main reason for that would be, dont know, an URL address update for his blog or businness or something. However that could easily be used to link to whatever tha hell the owner of the plugin wants to. What your thoughts about this, I think this could be easily classified as White or Black hat depending on what the owners do. However, would google think the same way about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bemcapaz0