Are gallery sites ok post Penguin?
-
We're getting ready to re-launch a redesigned site and I was hoping to use the opportunity to get some quality links. Are some of the higher-quality web design gallery sites still ok to submit to? Did Penguin have any effect on these?
Just looking for opportunities for a little boost from our re-launch.
-
Would the same hold true for comments on blogs? If I'm leaving comments on relevant blogs, would it be ok to leave a link to my website in there, just as long as I'm not using exact-match keywords everywhere?
-
What Google is trying to do with Penguin is to take away (or penalize) any benefit that a website would get from self building links with anchor text.
In the past, if I wanted to rank for "green widgets" I could build a bunch of links containing the anchor text "green widgets", such as "Check out this website about green widgets!" This type of thing would really work well. But, Google has now caught on that this is a blatant attempt to manipulate the search results. They don't want you to rank #1 for green widgets just because you've got good SEO skills. Rather, they want the site that best represents green widgets to rank #1 for that term.
Sites that are getting affected by Penguin are generally ones that have overdone it with their anchor text. Now, no one knows exactly how much is too much (although you'll read lots of theories.) But what we do know is that a natural backlink profile has the majority of their links being their url or their brand name.
The problem is that the brand name is sometimes a tricky thing. If your website is www.greenwidgets.com you could say that your brand name is "green widgets", but to Google, building a bunch of links using the anchor text of "green widgets" may still be anchor text manipulation. For an example, see this post on how WPMU got hit by Penguin for having a bunch of footer links pointing back to them using the anchor text "Wordpress mu".
So, if you're building links (as opposed to earning them totally naturally), be careful not to go overboard on a keyword. Ideally, build links using your url as an anchor. The odd one with a keyword is ok, but until we have more data on what exactly is acceptable I would be very careful in using keywords as your anchor.
-
Can you please explain what it means to "be careful about your anchor text." Regarding anchor text, what is the difference between good and bad anchor text?
Best,
Christopher -
Be careful about your anchor text and I really think you should be ok. If you submitted to a pile of sites using keyword rich anchor text then you are likely to be penalized. But if the majority of your links use your url or brand you should be ok.
Be careful with your brand though if it is something that could be interpreted as a keyword. I've seen a couple of sites get hit by Penguin when they were targeting their brand as their brand was a competitive keyword.
-
Check out the Alexa ranks for the top sites you are considering submitting to and see what kind of an effect Penguin had on their rankings & traffic.
In general, if people are using the website (not just bots/spammers), then it is fine to submit to. Bonus points if it is relevant to your website.
Note: This is not meant to be a complete link building strategy. If the only links you are building come from "web design review" sites, you're gonna have a bad time ranking.
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
-
PWA for Desktop Site (Ecommerce)
Hi Folks, Need guidance about using PWA on desktop site. As I know PWA is basically used for mobile site to engage visitor more and let them surf your site like an app. Would it be good SEO practice to use PWA on desktop site(E-commerce site) by calling everything through Javascript and let google Crawler cache only site logo and Hide everything else?
Technical SEO | | Rajesh.Prajapati1 -
Sitemap submission for site migration?
Hi mozzers, We're about to migrate 4 domains into 1. Is there a particular way I should generate and submit the sitemap or should I just follow the same protocol as for one domain? Should I even worry submitting a sitemap when the site has this drupal module? I have access to the webmaster tools of all domains, should I do something specific on the accounts that are migrating besides submitting a sitemap? Thanks for letting me know!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
What is wrong with my site?
I have been working hard for over two months on my sites in seomoz and have seen some nice results in some (www.etraxc.com/ and www-my-etraxc.com for instance. Still I am really frustrated by www.classroomconnection.us/. I cant even get on the first page with the search term "classroom connection." i would love some help on this one. On a related note, does it help to have links to YouTube videos about the content? If so, how do I ensure that this piece is working well for me? Thanks a ton!
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Quoting From Another Part of Your Site
Suppose that you wrote an awesome piece of content and want to feature short segments of that content on your product pages. Is there any risk (such as duplicate content problems) to quoting a paragraph from another page of your site?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
How does Ping services help your site
Hi i am trying to understand how services such as pingler.com help your site. I think i understand about the google ping service which tells google that you have updated a page but how does pingler work. Pingler claims that it sends traffic to your site but i do not understand this. Any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Can a site be removed from alexa?
let's say you have complete control over the webserver, and the hosting server. is there a way to set it up so that alexa statistics CANNOT be gained?
Technical SEO | | highersourcesites0 -
The course of action to move my macro site to some mini sites- justin if you can help
We have a site that we want to break up into mini sites but keep the old site for the major brands. Empirecovers.com is the major and we want to break it off into Empire Truck Covers and Empire Boat covers. What I am thinking of doing is linking from the home to Empiretruckcovers.com instead of a mini page on the site and 301 redirect the mini page to empiretruckcovers.com. Than (there wont be duplicate content) making a small page for truck covers on empire just so people do not get confused. Is this the best way to go or what do you suggest? We are doing this because I feel there is seo value in having mini sites and also the user experience will be cleaner and people will trust it a lot more than inside a big site. The other problem is I have some great rankings on the pages so I want to do it so there is as little damage as possible. I guess once I start I will do all the free directories, yahoo directory and try to get links as fast as I can. Any suggestions would be great. I am going to do a/b testing to see if my adwords convert better on mini site or on the big site for certain keywords too
Technical SEO | | goldjake17880 -
Best SEO strategy for a site that has been down
Because of hosting problems we're trying to work out, our domain was down all weekend, and we have lost all of our rankings. Doe anyone have any experience with this kind of thing in terms of how long it takes to figure out where you stand once you have the site back up? what the best SEO strategy is for immediately addressing this problem? Besides just plugging away at getting links like normal, is there anything specific we should do right away when the site goes back up? Resubmit a site map, etc? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OneClickVentures0