When is it excessive anchor text usage?
-
Hrello fellow Mozzers.
There's been alot of writing about excessive anchor text usage, and as an SEO I get it. Don't get to crazy about it, but - WHEN is it excessive anchor text usage?
Is it excessive if I have 50 links distributed in 10 blogposts?
Is it excessive if I have a 250 links distributed across the entire site?It's fair enough that excessive anchort text usage get's you penalized, but it's freakishly annoying that nobody tells you WHEN you've reach the line that defines "excessive"...
Anyone??
-
I think you have to separate out a couple of issues here...
First off, 250 links distributed across a site or 50 across 10 blog posts may have very little additional value than a few links on a site or 10 links on 10 blog posts. Linking root domains generally have a lot more impact than total links. If you've got 50 links on 10 posts to the same site, it's very likely some of those links are low quality (even not having any idea what the anchor text is). I'm assuming you mean inbound links all to the same site (and even the same page), though. It's really tough to talk in generalities.
It depends a lot on the targeted text. If your exact-match anchor text is your brand name, or if it's product-oriented but matches your domain name, you'll get more leeway. If Apple has 10,000,000 links to "Apple, Inc.", Google won't care. If Bob's plumbing has 1,000 links and 90% of them are to "buy cheap viagra", that's going to look bad really fast. So, "excessive" can be very situational.
If you're targeting one phrase over and over, most of your links are built/paid (not "natural") and that phrase is keyword-loaded without reflecting your brand, you're probably pushing too hard. Diversification is very important. I think targeting is important, to a point, but it's really easy to over-think it.
-
I agree with ipositions, we have found that over 80% starts looking suspect and will be penalised
-
I have seen clients who have gotten warnings in webmaster tools with even less. More like 23% (which was my first comment when we picked them up..sadly an agency before just went nuts with 1 term...so time for me to clean it up )
-
Now that sounds exciting...
-
We've noticed that rather than being a number it's a percentage. Once you hit 80% of all anchor text being the same term you will usually get penalized. This doesn't seem to apply to new sites though.
-
Pashmina is absolutely true in the fact that not anyone can give you an accurate limit. Also, pointing out the 30 anchor links that she is specifying leads me to believe it's based on a great article that Randfish wrote.
This is the link to the article here: Testing the Value of Anchor Text Optimized Internal Links
You will notice that he replies to a commenter with the following questions:
"Very interesting Rand. I've always wanted to test the effects of internal anchor texts.
You stated that excessive internal anchor text linking can trip an automated penalty, what do you consider an excessive amount? Thanks for opening our eyes to this."
Rand's answer was based on his observation as the following:
"I honestly can't say where the limit lies, but in both cases I observed, there were in excess of 30 links sitewide that were clearly anchor text optimized to push rankings."
Although this info seems to be valuable information, it may be outdated and hold less value to the current time.
-
I don't think anyone can accurately say what the threshold is, or if there is a single number for all sites. I've read somewhere a while back that the threshold is around 30 anchor links that are specifically for optimization (and not for user's benefit).
If you still have heavy footers, your links can be immediately reduced with a redesign of that area. Removing internal and barely used navigation elements will help too. Analyzing your site flow via Google Analytics can help you figure out where to tighten a page and get rid of links that no one is clicking on.
In general I think we all have to become more purist, and sparse in our internal anchor text linking. And then get very creative with designing a very good navigation and architecture for our audience. The Rational Surfer Model lends some insight into this too.
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
-
Advantages of Replacing Anchor Text with an Image?
Greetings, I was reading the a recent case study pertaining to Penguin 2.1. (My website was hit hard) It stated: "While classifying the website’s anchor texts (sorted by count), the first thing that strikes you is that the vast majority of the anchors are straight money keywords, which could be a possible reason for the penalty." My website suffers from a similar situation. Is there any advantage to replacing the links to my website on my affiliate sites with images instead of using Anchor Text? My manager is concerned with losing so many backlinks. Thanks!
Link Building | | CFSSEO0 -
Anchor text after the recent Panda update
Hi everyone, I just read this article: http://goo.gl/GkgUr and I can confirm this is true because one of my websites drastically lost its rank last week due to high percentage of targeted keyword within back links. Thus, what I'm worrying about is the anchor text within back links. I'm about to launch a new web site soon that will be publishing lots of landing pages for a travel niche. What I initially thought is to optimize landing page by page, so when the current page ranks well to move on to next one and so on. I thought that, by ranking a single landing page well, will have some positive impact to the rest of landing pages. But, after a lot of time spent on studying link building strategies, I decided to spread back links among landing pages equally. I will try to get as much as possible back links from the relevant content and high quality sites (press releases, guest posting, link exchange, social networks promotion). Please correct me on this one if you disagree. According to the above article, the recent google panda update calculates a percentage of keywords among anchor text and it would be the best to keep those at less than 30%, including "link", "here", "domain.com" etc. For instance, lets say that my website counts 500 landing pages and every single one targets a different low competition exact keyword. So, if I start building back links equally for each of the landing pages and I want to cover each one with a back link from a relevant content, what should I use for the anchor text? Initially I thought the keyword should be the anchor text, but after I read the article I'm not so sure any more. I guess search engines would say something like: "Ok, there are 500 landing pages and 500 different anchor texts pointing to different pages that belongs to domain.com", perhaps this should increase TLD's authority but what will happen to the landing pages? Would search engines (primarily google) see them as a 100% single anchor text and harm the rank? I really appreciate your help. Thank you!
Link Building | | vlddlv0 -
What is keyword rich anchor text?
So, I have searched around the internet but, I still can't find the answer.What is Keyword Rich Anchor Text? Is it basically just exact matching to the page. For example if my page was www.randonmpage.com would a keyword rich anchor text be randompage? Thanks. Peter
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
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
Link Building | | hvwltd0 -
Position Drop - Anchor Text Penalty
Hi - About a month ago we dropped out of all out top position ranking and now can be found around page 600 on Google for all those keywords. I feel this is because our SEO company over used or money keywords as anchor text - Could this be correct?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Your Experience with Exact Match Anchor Text Penalties
Hi Moz community! I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a site penalized or dampened because of too many exact match anchor links or know of any examples. I don't want to be overly concerned about it if it is a low risk. Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Www.text-link-ads.com, worth the trouble?
Has anyone used http://www.text-link-ads.com for link building. It is a service I've been reading a fair deal about and I was hoping to hear everyone's opinion on it.
Link Building | | calin_daniel0