Ask a QuestionBacklink Anchor Text Profile
-
I'm looking to clean up my back link profile as we have a Google penalty for unnatural linking. Any pointers on what I should be looking for in terms of what makes a link bad? We have a massive percentage of links under the anchor text of "workwear" and this is the keyword we have the penalty for. Is it better to get the links removed or the anchor text changed? Thanks
-
That looks like a penalty to me.
-
Daniel sorry for your negative experience. Not all SEO company's work that way.
It is a great idea to first try to get those links removed yourself, but if you cannot, Google has recently released a disavow tool, which allows you to tell Google what links you want to disavow from your website. Here is the URL to the disavow tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Hope this helps.
-
Hi, thanks all. We actually employed a so called reputable seo firm to improve our rankings and 12 months on and several thousand pounds lighter this is what we are left with. I've noticed that many of the sites are almost identical in terms of their design and domain name. Even some ip addresses are the same so it looks like a content farm to me. I think I'm better trying to get them removed, hopefully some key somewhere can delete our site from their db and remove all of them in one go, it's never that easy tho I suppose. Amazing that you can give people money in good faith to promote your site and secure quality links and this is what we and up with. Thanks for your input tho guys
-
Hi Daniel,
If you have a penalty for "workwear", most likely many of the links that have the anchor text "workwear" were built unnaturally. I would anaylize all of your links with this anchor text and remove the ones that are unnatural or spammy.
Google implemented this penalty to find unnatural link building tactics from bad sites, and one easy way to spot unnatural link building is if an anchor text is repeated. Google uses this measure because that is not how a quality website link to another website. Quality links do not have a standard anchor text, and the anchor text often includes the brand name.
The links that are worth keeping are the links from sites with a high domain and page authority and were not built automatically.
As a rule, the links that matter now and in the future are built by communicating with people and doing "link worthy things" not by pressing a submit button.
-
Well I guess my next question in that case is 'did you buy or source links from a link farm?!' My understanding is that it's very rare for there to be manual intervention in this fashion, and if you have received a penalty, it's probably for good reason.
Having looked through OSE there's nothing that's massively obvious (for me), but will probably be more obvious for you. Bear in mind that data in OSE could be some weeks old.
Cheers
Matt
-
The answer to if it's better to get the links removed or just change the anchor text is maybe to both. If there's an inbound link that seems spammy or doesn't really fit in well with the topic of your site (ex: your site is about cars, but a site about oranges is linking to you), then removing the link could be the better long term plan.
If it's a quality link from a credible source, you want to keep that link so look for anchor text diversity as far as the keywords used.
-
This is the latest message we have from them from webmaster tools. We never had an actual notification of a penalty but our 1st page ranking for Workwear dropped to page 20 overnight. All other rankings suffered as well:
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www../,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www../ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
-
Hi Daniel,
Have you received a notification from Google (in Webmaster tools) that they have penalised you? In theory, they should not penalise your website for receiving links from dodgy sources, just not pass on any link juice from the dodgy site.
If you think about it, why wouldn't every business just set about getting loads of dodgy links to their competitor's website? Then google will penalise their competitor and all will be good with the world, right? Wrong.
If you have not received an official notice from Google, it is very unlikely (near impossible) that you were penalised for getting spammy links.
If you're hell bent on checking backlinks, use SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer. This will tell you the domain authority of the websites you receive links from. I would cull any backlinks with extreme caution though... Domain authority may not tell you the whole story.
Good luck
Matt
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
-
What do you think of these profile links for SEO?
In my Google Search Console today, I saw a link from Creative Market. In Moz last week I saw a link from Instructables. In Moz, they have high numbers. DO you think these type of profiles have a big impact? https://artists.spotify.com/c/artist/3N1BM4dOORzK8BF6DrkEDU/profile#about (Moz-50, ahrefs-14) https://creativemarket.com/julie.gallaher (Moz-36, Ahrefs-12) https://www.instructables.com/member/jazzmansac (Moz-42, Ahrefs-13) https://moz.com/community/users/907261 (Moz-50, Ahrefs-25) https://www.are.na/julie-gallaher (Moz-25, Ahrefs-11) They all look to be do follow links
Link Building | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Tooltip text
Will adding tooltip text to al my links improve my rankings? I read some article, but it's a hell of a job to add tooltip text to al my links. i was wondering if it's worth the time: A tooltip text appears if the mouse hovers over the image or a link and is provided by using the TITLE attribute. A description of the image or the link then appears in the tooltip in a small yellow box (Internet Explorer). The TITLE text (tooltip text) gives a short description of a link or image. The difference between an ALT text and the TITLE text is that the ALT text is a short description that replaces the image if the image does not load. The number of links (internal and external) and images must be equal to the number of tooltips for every page. The number of TITLE text can be higher because ALT text can also be used for other HTML elements. Add Title texts to links or images for those which do not have them yet. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO3 -
Is it still important anchor text?
Hi folks, my question is related to inbound links how important is anchor text? Can you give me one example? Also what about outbound links. Should I add longer anchor text? Miško Macolić Tomičić
Link Building | | Eurasmus.com0 -
Building on Brand for a keyword heavy domain with bad backlink profile
The domain is keyword heavy think along the lines of "mountainbikes.com" and they are ranking ok for mountain bikes, however on inspection they have a LOT of poor quality back links and a lot of those links are anchor text phrases (and far too much of it!). A lot of people recommend building on brand in situations like this, however how would I go about doing this for a site without a branded domain name? In this case their is a company name but it's not the same as the domain name, would you simply build links using the company name "Uber Bikes" or use the domain www.mountainbikes.com. If the aim is just to build a more varied back link profile then I guess using both would be good? Thanks in advance! 🙂
Link Building | | SEOKeith0 -
Shortened url vs. anchor text
Are there any benefits to linking a shortened url vs. an anchor text when I am link building?Would linking via shortened link such as tinyurl cause problems with SERPS? Also, would it be more beneficial to short link to the homepage or landing page?
Link Building | | Modbargains0 -
Anchor text... How hard should one try?
I'm looking at a lot of competitor's sites, and they only seem to have gone after root domain anchor text in their link-building campaigns. Since I am just launching and am essentially a one-man band (with some hired help), is it worth my while to attempt to optimize individual keywords or pages at this point, or should I just do as they have done, and try to get domain-name links wherever I can? For that matter, should I spend more time going for the low-hanging fruit of followed blog comments, forum posts etc, or emailing influencers to try and get editorial links? Sorry if that last one is a bit broad, and thanks very much in advance for any and all help.
Link Building | | ZakGottlieb710 -
Set a desination url to text that did not have it previously
I have the following question. Is it OK to set a desination url to text that did not have it previously? Can it cause SEO (SERP) issues? For example, I have this sentence: The tool you're using is great, but this template will help you. Say, the "this template" text has been just plain text for like a year. And now I want to add a certain destination url to the "this template" phrase. So, can it cause some SEO issues to me or not?
Link Building | | VinceWicks0 -
How to have an internal call to action with an anchor that employs the correct internal linking practices?
I wanted to put a call to action in my internal profiles, but I'm not able to get out of the classic "check out" and "learn more" links. Right now the best copy I've been able to come up with is: <nickname>is using StyleJam for his web design portfolio - check out the benefits </nickname> Where "check out the benefits" is a link to my home page. I wanted to understand first of all how important this is, and second what techniques you use for internal calls to action. TIA.
Link Building | | ngw0