Ranking via partial match
-
If I wanted to rank for "red hot widgets" and my domain was redhot.com, would it be better to obtain backlinks (via "red hot widgets" anchor text) pointing to:
A) redhot.com (homepage)
or
Many thanks.
-
I can't find the perfect quote right now, but I have often read articles were Eric Enge, Matt Cutts and others with a high degree of credibility talked about how unnatural anchor text patterns will likely lead to a (algorithmic) penalty.
Some example articles:
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/anchor-text.shtml
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-061608.shtml
The premise is anchor links are supposed to be independent, and such links will vary naturally if not unduly influenced. When the identical anchor text is used past a certain threshhold, it is clear some extra influence is at work and the links will not have the same value. That influence can include such factors as a widget with specific code, links submitted to 100s of directories, republished articles, standard software created by links, etc.
A natural, independent link has more value then any form of influenced link, and Google does what it can to differentiate them and weight them accordingly.
-
Interesting about redhot.com/red-hot-widgets vs.redhot.com/widgets. So the latter will not be considered a closer match and no problem repeating the KWs red & hot?
Robert, regarding assumption 2, if I was trying to rank for hot dog onions and the domain was hotdog.com would the same still apply?
ie. Is hotdogs.com/hot-dog-onions better than hotdogs.com/onions -- hot dogs & hot dog onions being 2 different products?
-
Thanks for the advice guys.
-
Ryan,
the natural anchor text varies or naturally varying anchor text: Other than appearing unnatural or having readability issues, is there any evidence you have seen as to this having an effect on ranking, etc.? Just curious on this.
-
Based on your question being what you prefer to rank for KW: "red hot widgets" I would say a variant of B would be best. Assumption 1: Redhot is a descriptor of multiple items - widgets, gidgets, and midgets.
Assumption 2: Redhot.com was not a single product or service offering.
The variant I would use is redhot.com/red-hot-widgets; the reason being that I would have the partial KW in the domain and you would have an exact-match KW in the URL.
In a highly competitive widget market, you could go with widgets.redhot.com and grow the subdomain but you will need links, good anchor text and time. You would be growing widgets as its own domain, links, etc.
With a smaller site and the above assumptions, I would go with redhot.com/red-hot-widgets.com.
-
Ideally each page of your site should target one keyword or phrase. Presumably your home page will focus your brand name "Red Hot". Your redhot.com/widgets page will focus "red hot widgets". If this description is accurate for your site, then the backlinks for "red hot widgets" would best applied to your /widgets page.
Keep in mind, natural anchor text varies. It would not be a good idea to have all your links use the same anchor text as it would appear quite unnatural.
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
-
Redirect and ranking issue
Hi there - was wondering whether someone might be able to help. For a period of a day and a half, all the traffic to our website's blog articles were mistakenly being redirected to our homepage. A number of these articles ranked in the top 5 in Google worldwide for their targeted keywords, so this was a considerable amount of organic traffic that was instantly being redirected. It was a strange site glitch and our web team rectified the error, but now all these articles have disappeared from Google rankings (not visible anywhere in the first five pages). I'm presuming this must be linked to this redirect issue - we've been advised to wait and see whether Google restores these rankings, but I'm still concerned as to whether this represents a more serious problem? We have re-indexed the pages we are most concerned about, but am not sure whether there is anything else obvious we should think to do. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them!
Technical SEO | | rwat0 -
Crawl Issues / Partial Fetch Via Google
We recently launched a new site that doesn't have any ads, but in Webmaster Tools under "Fetch as Google" under the rendering of the page I see: Googlebot couldn't get all resources for this page. Here's a list: URL Type Reason Severity https://static.doubleclick.net/instream/ad_status.js
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
Script
Blocked
Low
robots.txt
https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id
AJAX
Blocked
Low
robots.txt
Not sure where that would be coming from as we don't have any ads running on our site?
Also, it's stating the the fetch is a "partial" fetch.
Any insight is appreciated.
0 -
2 pages ranking for same keyword.. Need some advice on what to do.
Here's my question. When I first started my website we started Using keyword anchor building links To my homepage . Over the years Our business has expanded to more than just baby headbands. I now have a baby headband page. When tracking my rankings. I sometimes see Both pages in Google for the same keyword. Other days I do not see both of them. My question is Should I continue building links and keyword anchor text for the home page Or should I switch them and start building keyword-rich anchor text for my baby headband page. I'm just wondering if the Search engine is confused by the two. When searching for the keyword baby headbands. I will sometimes show up for eight and nine. 8 is my home page and 9 is for the baby headband page. I have always shown up for the keyword "baby Headbands" for my home page.
Technical SEO | | PB20070 -
Bing rankings question
Hi, We just wrapped up a website redesign about a month ago. The content stayed primarily the same. Once we launched the new site all of our rankings in Google stayed the same but we lost rank for all competitive keywords on Bing. I looked in Bing Webmaster tools and it doesn't show any penalties but it does show that we have too many H1 tags. I don't think the H1 tag thing is the issue but maybe. Do you know what could be causing this?
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
Large amounts of ranking data
Hello all, I am currently conducting some keyword. I need to check a websites rankings for around 1000 keywords. I currently use chrome on a Mac. This presents a problem, because all of the APIs I've seen are for excel on windows. Does anyone have any ideas of how to do this on a Mac & Chrome? Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | chris.kent0 -
Lost ranking for top keyword
For the last 3 months we've been working on www.UneekJewelry.com to get it rank for "unique engagement rings" and got it to position 14 but since September 18th, 2012 that all changed. The website no longer ranks for our money keyword not even in the top 500. We haven't been building exact match keywords but using more phrase match and I can't tell if its because we don't have enough exact match or something else. We have been working on trying to figure out what the issue is as they still rank for other keywords like "unique engagement rings in los angeles", therefore we don't know if this is a keyword penalty or glitch in Google, can anyone give us any insight on what could cause such a drop in those specific keywords for our site. Most of the link building we have done for this client is from in content blogs. The only blog we were suspicious of we removed the article from that blog two days ago. The ranking have not come back. This was the last blog that the exact match keyword was used where we removed the article from: http://colorfuljewelry.blogspot.com/ Thanks,
Technical SEO | | harrykabadaian0 -
Should I update old well-ranked posts?
I have a Wordpress site and I think I have "split content" problem. We use to publish preview info, i.e. "leaked images of iphone 5". Some weeks later, official release with official images. And some weeks later, our own review with quality content and pictures. Sometimes the first post are well ranked, but the best content is in our review. How should I manage that? I tried to make a page of each product and link it, but posts stills rank better than pages. And now I have several pages for the same keyword, ie: mysite.com/2011/08/11/leaked-images-of-iphone-5 mysite.com/2011/09/15/iphone-5-official mysite.com/2011/10/15/iphone-5-mysite-review and all linked in mysite.com/phones/iphone5 ... and mysite.com/tag/iphone5 What do you think is best approach to this kind of site? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | DSG0 -
Targeting City via Web Server
Here's a question I can't seem to find an answer to. Does web hosting within a targeting city make a different in the engines? For example, a site targeting the Denver area, with web hosting in Denver. Will this boast the ranking or is targeting limited to countries? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mkoster0