I am still confused about anchor text and penalties
-
As I understand in order to rank well for the page in google, the page/site has to have a lot of back links that have an anchor text with the keywords that you want to rank for.
At the same time if google finds that your anchor text contains kewords that are in your title or h1 tag, it may penalize your site. So what do i do to rank well for my chosen keywords.
Lets say I am only interested in keywords San Francisco widget and Oakland widget
The title of my webpage says San Francisco | Oakland widget
The anchor text that I usually pick is either San Francisco widget or Oakland widget.
I also have plenty of links that have anchor text like "website" or "click here"
What should I use for my anchor text in my backlinks?
-
One nice thing about the Penguin update is that we don't need to be quite so concerned with anchor text. I would say focus more on getting links from high-authority, trusted websites and less on the anchor text. Getting keyword-rich anchor text links from time to time won't hurt - and if you're using natural link building methods, you'll probably be fine having them - the important thing is that your ratio of keyword-rich anchor text links to regular anchor text likes (like "click here") is similar to that of other sites in your niche. It's when it's ALL your links or a vast majority of your links that it starts to look suspicious.
-
Moosa pointed out some very good points. I would like to add that with the recent Penguin update by Google, broadening your anchor text usage is critical. A good way to start would be doing some competitive research analyzing the top 10 competitors and looking into their anchor text distribution %
-
Good answer... thumb up for you
-
Ok I guess you took it a little differently… let me explain it to you.
In order to rank well you need lot of quality back links pointing to your website but if you have lots of back links coming from different websites pointing the same keyword then this is the problem!
There is no problem in keywords having in title, H1 and body but do not stuff it and use verity of anchor text internally and for link building.
Use of anchor text is good but over using the same anchor text will hurt (this is the case for non branded keyword)
For instance if you have a keyword ‘Oakland widget’ it can be use in verity of ways that includes:
- Oakland widget
- Widget Oakland
- Widgets in Oakland
And more long term phrase…
Hope it helps…
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
-
How long before our website bounce back after Google Penalty?
One of our client websites got recently hacked. In a span of 4 days, it received random backlinks from random websites with random anchor texts. We are already in good standing for some of the keywords we are tracking and the attack got us a penalty from Google and we lost our rankings, moving out of the top 500. We already disavowed these dirty backlinks though we never really diagnosed where these came from. How long do you think our client's website will bounce back from the penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SirAdri110 -
The most efficient anchor text distribution technique
I have many client websites and of course my goal is to do my best in the results I show. Share how you distribute anchor text which work the best. Such a scheme works the best for me naked/ branded/ generic Would you add any other strategy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lynn120 -
We lost 60-70% of our organic traffic but no penalty - what happened?
Hi Mozzers! Need some help/advice I’m running a sports betting site – superbetting.com and around 16-19<sup>th</sup> may our organic traffic suddenly dropped with 60-70% or so and ever since we’ve been struggling trying to find the cause and not least, been trying to do something about. A few observations / thoughts; It seems we’ve suddenly have quite a few inbound links from Russia without promoting our content / site towards Russian users. Neither do we have any Russian content. Should we disavow those links and/or try to contact the sites to get our link removed? Looking in ahrefs, I can see that anchors also suddenly are dominated by Russian. Maybe obvious given the above but still strange … We have struggled with spammers trying to deploy link in our forum and have just recently removed them ( or at least we think we have) but could those bad links been hurting us over time? Google ran an algo update in may regarding “quality signals” and I full aware that our site may not be top-notch but I can’t belief that should have hit us that hard since I (and I may be biased :)) would say that there are far lousier sites ranking better than us now than before. Any feedback would be appreciated Thanks! Mike
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | skjorte19740 -
Strategies to recover from a Google Penalty?
2 years ago we took over a client who had a hacked site and also had signed up with a black hat SEO team that set up 50 spammy directory links back to the site. Since then we have cleaned up the hacks, had the site reviewed by Google and readded to the Search Index, and disavowed all the directory links through GWT. Over the last 2 years, we've encouraged the client to create new content and have developed a small but engaged social following. The website is www.fishtalesoutfitting.com/. The site's domain authority is 30, but it struggles to rank higher than 20 for even uncompetitive long tail keywords. Other sites with much lower domain authorities outrank the site for our primary keywords. We are now overhauling the site design and content. We are considering creating an entirely new URL for the primary domain. We would then use 301 redirects from the old url to the new. We'd welcome insight into why the current site may still be getting penalized, as well as thoughts on our strategy or other recommendations to recover from the events of 2 years ago. Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mlwilmore0 -
Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
Moz Friends, A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well. I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use Just my thoughts and notes on the two: Our Page Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things) Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability Fresh content updates Mobile optimized Reasonable page speeds Good on-page optimization Good back links from industry influences Competitor Page Negatives Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy Lower quality content site wide They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm) Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look) Less focused on page optimization Not mobile optimized Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences, Engine: www.google.co.uk Keyword: Sound level meters **Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/ **Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this Thanks James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Antony_Towle1 -
Dynamic Content Boxes: how to use them without get Duplicate Content Penalty?
Hi everybody, I am starting a project with a travelling website which has some standard category pages like Last Minute, Offers, Destinations, Vacations, Fly + Hotel. Every category has inside a lot of destinations with relative landing pages which will be like: Last Minute New York, Last Minute Paris, Offers New York, Offers Paris, etc. My question is: I am trying to simplify my job thinking about writing some dynamic content boxes for Last Minute, Offers and the other categories, changing only the destination city (Rome, Paris, New York, etc) repeated X types in X different combinations inside the content box. In this way I would simplify a lot my content writing for the principal generic landing pages of each category but I'm worried about getting penalized for Duplicate Content. Do you think my solution could work? If not, what is your suggestion? Is there a rule for categorize a content as duplicate (for example number of same words in a row, ...)? Thanks in advance for your help! A.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OptimizedGroup0 -
Confusing penalties
Dear Mozzers, I've been working on a friend's website that is fighting for pretty competitive keywords (+90,000 gms) and has been relying almost exclusively on $1800/mo of comment spam to rank on the first page. Now that I've taken over SEO my first priorities were to: eliminate duplicate content improve site structure optimize internal links build legitimate do-follows add some keyword density fix titles and H tags Essentially just the basics, right? But since cancelling the comment spam, rankings for their primary keyword have consistently dropped over the last 3 months. I'm using the same strategies that I've used successfully on at least 6 similar websites. At the moment their homepage is still almost entirely duplicate content -- which is obviously a huge problem, but it seems a little odd that they could have been held up exclusively by that comment spam for so long, doesn't it? Even stranger, their authority and trust scores are now higher than any of the competition. Needless to say, my friends are getting pretty antsy and I'm starting to second guess myself. Do you think I should continue to push them to improve content, eliminate penalties, and build legitimate links -- or should I give in and suggest buying links as a short term solution? Advice is really appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brevityworks0 -
When to give up on a website with a Google penalty?
I recently had a Google 60 penalty hit my website. The main two issues were that I had a person helping me with SEO and they bought some links. The second issue is that I own about 90 URL's in the my vertical. I created about 60 one page sites for these keyword targeted domains. I then linked these sites to main site. Big mistake! I kept these URL's all on the same server as my main site. In October 2010 I noticed my site hits dropped dramatically. I started looking for the issue. I didn't know which issue caused the penalty. I fixed both issues in November 2010 and asked Google for reconsideration in early December 2010. I kept link building for my site by finding quality links.I was extremely honest with Google. I gave them all of the domains I own and I told them the name of the person that bought links for me and the websites where those links were placed. As of late February 2011 a Google search for my domain still showed up in approximately the 64th position. I recently asked Google again to lift the penalty. I basically told them that I fixed all of my issues that led to the penalty and let them know I have been waiting for almost 3 months. I told them I have put the past 2 years of my life into this website and begged them to forgive me. I also asked them to let me know if my site was never going to be forgiven? I got the typical canned response from the Google team. As of today the penalty is still in effect. I just want to know when you should give up on a site. I have spent about $20,000 on this site and about 2 years of hard work. I don't want to give up, but I don't want to keep putting my hard work and time into the site if it will never escape the dreaded Google penalty. Do you think I should continue to wait and if so how long? Anything else I can do to persuade Google to release me from this penalty hell? If I do abandon the site and start from scratch what steps should I take? Do I need a new server? What if any content can I take from my current site and transfer to the new site? If I can how do I do this without getting another penalty or lose the credit for the original content. I created about 2,000 pages of original content for this site. I'd love to be able to transfer this content if I have to start from scratch. Any ideas or detailed help plans would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tadden0