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.
-
OK. So My takeaway from this is that it's probably best (since it's so much easier) to go mostly for brand-related anchor text, other perhaps than in cases where I'm really trying to make a push on a particular page? If that's correct, then my last question is: Are brand anchor text links to a particular page thought to be weighted considerably less by Google than page title anchor text for that particular page?
-
too many people assume that Google penalizes a site for same-word anchor text as a single criteria. They don't penalize for brand related phrases as much as for non-brand keyword over-use, because it's "natural" that a site or company would be referred to by it's brand name by most people. It's much less likely that a site or company would be referred to by an over-abundance of a non-brand phrase, unless that company was so well known by that phrase or those phrases as to be unique enough that those phrases were synonymous with that brand. The overwhelming majority of sites and companies in existence do not enjoy such a luxury.
-
This seems to make a lot of sense, but then I look at the link profile with OSE of a site like Askmen - in the top 500 of the most-trafficked sites in the U.S - and over 95% of their 10,000 or so backlinks are brand name... There are very few that appear to be targeting specific keywords at all. I know one counterexample isn't much, but this was literally the first site of that size that I looked at. If Google had changed its criteria to those you suggest, could one not expect a site like this to be massively penalized?
-
To add to Banar's recommendation, I'll offer that Google has been focused more on quality of trust signals in the past year and change than ever - a big part of that is "how natural does the link profile look?" Too much emphasis on brand only, or only one or two phrases across all or even most of your anchor text is an unnatural pattern. So too is obtaining links purely or mostly from the "low hanging fruit" you describe. You need variety of anchor text, variety of pages links point to, and variety of sources links come from.
-
Hi Zachary,
DO NOT ever target one page only. If you are really very very busy, please, optimize at least couple of pages. There has to be a diversity in links as well as anchor text. Of course, you will concentrate a little more at home page and main keywords but please remember about link and anchor text diversity.
As of the low-hanging fruit - absolutely NO. It's much better to build 10 good links than 1,000 spammy links. Google is smarter than this. Trust me, Google's thousands of engineers are working every day to improve search algorithm. You don't want to take that chance and compete with them.
Good luck & see you at the top
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
-
Odd one - dropping positions but traffic improving
Seem to have a bit of an odd one. For the last few months been running a backlink campaign for a 2/3 year old site, got good positions for some keywords/pages but seems to have plateaued the last 60 days or so with some keywords dropping in position.
Link Building | | seoman10
The odd thing is traffic seems to be still improving (according to GA and GSC). I am wondering if - have hit a niche ceiling
or rankbrain type thing i.e. google trying to work out what the site should be ranking for and messing with positions.
or because it is just a newish site. Any ideas?2 -
Link Anchor Text post Penguin 2.0
I have heard a great variety of views concerning the anchor text used for link building post Penguin 2.0 but have yet to hear some consensus. Some say the anchor text for external links should be different than internal. Some say brand should be used on external and keywords on internal. Some say brand and a variety of keywords on external. Any thoughts on a strategy consistent with google expectations and guidelines?
Link Building | | casper4340 -
Our anchor-text profile is natural, but looks spammy, what to do?
We are a site with about 12 directories, each one in a sub-folder and previously had their own URL which we merged together for increased branding efforts. When I was analyzing our anchor-text profile of our study abroad directory, it seems that the anchor-text profile is heavy on your key keywords, such as 'Study Abroad' and then some branded. When I say heavy, I am talking 88% are 'study abroad'; followed by 4% are branded, and 2% are branded the old URL that is 301'd to the new subfolder. We have never bought links nor have we really had a strong link building strategy. I am currently thinking of disavowing the links with low DA and are part of the heavily used (study abroad) keywords. Is this a good idea? What should we do to show that these are natural links?
Link Building | | GoAbroadKP0 -
Does it help to have more than one backlink from the same website?
I have received two follow links from a website with a domain authority of 64 because I contributed to 2 blog posts. Will it help my site to get more back links from this same website or should I focus my efforts elsewhere?
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Help I have spam backlinks on my site and I am trying to remove them. Can someone please help me.
The site is www.jans.com I have identified the offending site as http://newbieontheblock.blogspot.com/ IT is loading me with bad anchor text...
Link Building | | Snell0 -
Many links from one source
Have recently noticed a big drop in rankings. up to 50% for some key pages. Trying to find out why. in webmastertools I have a total of 13000 links. I have noticed that 4000 come from one site to my home page. Keyword is not related and I have never heard of the site. Not sure if I should just ignore these links or use disallow. If I disallow won't a sudden reduction in my links look strange to google? I have read in this forum that negative SEO is very rare but I have no idea where these links have come from or what they are for.
Link Building | | Discountdisplays0 -
If I write an article that contains a link back to my site, should I post in only one place or can I post it several times?
If I write an article that contains a link back to my site, should I post in only one place or can I post it several times?
Link Building | | dad7more0 -
Would notifying visitors that they can put text link ads on your site destroy you in terms of Google?
I am debating buying this product for Joomla on that note: http://www.jv-extensions.com/content/_/joomla-extensions/jv-contentlinks-r52 Would you advise for or against this purchase?
Link Building | | Uramark1