Penalised for specific keywords
-
Hi guys and girls,
I've recently taken over management of a client that appears to be suffering a punishment on Google for specific keywords.
Firstly has anyone encountered an issue such as this before, specific keyword de-ranking, and if so did re inclusion requests yield any joy?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
-
Another option is to ask webmasters to change your anchor text. But you'll have to do that on a link-by-link basis, in order to provide anchor text that is relevant to both the source and target page.
Also, we've seen a lot of luck changing some portion of your profile to generic anchor text like "read more", "more info" or "website", as well as others using the destination page's title as the anchor text. Finally, you can resort to raw URLs in some, as well. What we try to do there is use a raw URL where we can use either the brand name or the destination page's title in the same sentence. -
Hi James,
I just answered your PM. thanks
Carla
-
Thank you both for your opinions, this has been a great help.
-
Excellent point and something I have not considered.
Thanks Jon
-
Ahh yes, the delete or dilute dilemma
In my experience, only sites with very few links can get away with dilution. If your site has thousands of links, and a large percentage are exact anchors, you'd have to engage in some very obvious bulk link building to dilute things quickly and sufficiently. In that scenario, best to find a way to remove the links, either by reaching out to webmasters or through a disavow.
-
Hi Jon and James,
Just a thought but if you have over-optimized a specific anchor text instead of disavowing the links you may want to add more links but with different anchor text so that the anchor text looks more diverse. I'll give you an example.
Over-optimizaed anchor text = "abc"
Hypothetical Current situation
- Amount of "abc" links = 25
- Name brand links = 100
Hypothetical Solution
- Amount of "abc" links = 25
- Name brand links = 100
- New links with "def" anchor text = 10
- New links with "ghi" anchor text = 10
Good luck!
-
Sure, Google's Penguin update has keyword level components, and Google has been penalizing sites at a keyword level for many years when they find a site with too many links coming in using exact match anchor text. Depending on the scope of the problem, there are a number of potential solutions. This post might be helpful in terms of potentially fixing the issue: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool
-
Hi James,
I did encounter something similar. You have probably overoptimized a specific keyword. If all your incoming links have the same anchor text and it is not your brand name then Google is punishing you for non-natural link building. Are you ranking for other keywords?. You might have been sandboxed and not know it. What is the domain name?
Thanks
Carla
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 Fluctuation on "Canvas Prints" keyword in google.co.uk
Hello Moz We are struggling for "canvas prints" ranking in google.co.uk since last 2 years. every time in SERP my webpage has been changed. i want to rank this URL on this particular keyword - "canvas prints" Can you tell me why my page has been fluctuate every time in SERP's. mtwpvf
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CommercePundit1 -
Link with Anchor to header of the page: Keyword is ranking
I saw something interesting this week. I am doing research and spec-ing out a content page we are creating and one of our competitors "office Depot" on their phone repair page create exact match keywords that lead to an anchor that took you to the header of that pages. They were ranking first for all of those keywords with little to no links Thier strategy is the more local long tail that includes "near me" Have you guys ever seen this
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uBreakiFix
this is the URL: https://www.officedepot.com/a/content/customer-service/samedayrepair/ They are ranking for these keywords ( Top 3 nationally ) iphone 6 repair near me iphone 7 repair near me I am assuming that this is both due to their PA and DA authority shifting the authority to itself, but it does not make sense how they are lacking in a lot of SEO low-hanging fruits like H1/H2 keyword saturation, URL, Title Tag within this content page....Anyone up for discussing this?0 -
How Can I Safely Establish Homepage Relevancy With Internal Keyword Links?
My website has roughly 1000-2000 pages. However, our homepage is lacking relevancy as to what it is about. One way that I'd like to tackle this problem, is by updating many of our pages with internal linking. I often hear, use exact keyword links with caution, but have assumed this mainly referred to external backlinks. Would it be a disaster to set up our single most relevant keyword on about 300 pages and point it to our homepage? There are breadcrumbs on our site, but the home link uses an image (It's a picture of a house, if you're curious.) Am I better off just to change that to our most relevant keyword? I could use any advice on internal links for establishing better homepage relevancy. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | osaka730 -
Glossary pages - keyword stuffing danger?
I've put together a glossary of terms related to my industry that have SEO value and am planning on building out a section on our site with unique pages for each term. However, most of these terms have synonyms or are highly similar to other valuable terms. If I were to make a glossary, and on each page (that will have high-quality, valuable, and accurate definitions and more), wrote something like "{term}, also commonly referred to as {synonym}, {synonym}," would I run the risk of keyword stuffing penalties? My only other idea beyond creating a glossary with separate pages defining each synonym is to use schema.org markup to add synonyms to the HTML of the page, but that could be seen as even more grey-hat type keyword stuffing. I guess one other option would be to work the synonyms into the definition so that the presence of the keyword reads more organically. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | alecfwilson0 -
Is it a good idea to target a similar versions of a keyword?
Salute you all, I am optimizing a site for an attorney. I have done some good research and find the keyword difficulties. Some of my keywords are very similar was wondering is this a good idea and safe (white hat) or not? e.g. page title: 1) city immigration lawyer 2) city immigration attorney My main and first reason is to target all users. Since some will search under 'attorney' and some under 'Lawyer'. Secondly one is easier than the other. I appreciate any input from more experienced seo experts. Chris 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Chris-tx0 -
Content optimized for old keywords and G Updates
Hi, We've got some old content, about 50 pages worth in an Ecommerce site, that is optimized for keywords that aren't the subject of the page - these keywords occur about 8 times (2 keywords per page) in the old content. We are going through these 50 pages and changing the title, H1, and meta description tag to match the exact subject of the page - so that we will increase in rankings again - the updates have been lowering our rankings. Do we need to completely rewrite the content for these 50 pages, or can we just sprinkle it with any needed additions of the one keyword that is the subject of the page? The reason I'm asking is that our rankings keep dropping and these 50 pages seem to be part of the problem. We're in the process of updating these 50 pages Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Best method to target similar keywords??
Hi Guys, We have client that wants to target 3 similar terms (used, secondhand and pre-owned) variations. We have been having a discussion about the different methods to try but can't make a decision on the best route. The target page has a list of pre-owned products so whichever route was take these products still need to be visible without creating duplicate content issues.... 1 - Go all in on one page do our best at optimising a single page for all 3. - i don't like this route.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kal-SEO
2 - Stick with the current pre-owned url and create a url for used and secondhand with a 301 redirect back to the pre-owned url.
3 - Create three individual pages aimed at a keyword individually, keep the pre-owned as the original and add canonical links to used and secondhand I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks in advanced0 -
How does someone rank page one on google for one domain for over 150 keywords?
A local seo is exclaiming his fantastic track record for a pool company(amonst others) in our local market. Over 150 keywords on page one of google. I checked out a few things using some moz tools and didn't find anything that would suggest that this has come from white hat strategies, tactics or links etc. Interested in how he is doing this and if it is white hat? Thanks, C
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charlesgrimm0