Anchor Text Percentage
-
At the linklove conference, many of the speakers emphasized the importance of not having too high a percentage of anchor text for your incoming links, because it looks unnatural. I was wondering whether this applies to your keyword being in the anchor text along with other things, or just exact anchor text matches?
For example, if my keyword is widgets, is it bad to have too many of these:
Please buy widgets from Acme Corp.
or
Please buy Acme Corp widgets.
-
Right, I understand all of that, but it doesn't really answer the question. My question is regarding anchor text that INCLUDES the keyword vs anchor text that is ONLY the keyword. So is it OK to have a high percentage of anchor text that includes the keyword (based on numbers in OSE's anchor text "terms" instead of "phrases")?
-
So it is OK to have a high percentage of the keyword being included in the anchor text, as long as it is not a high percentage of EXACT keyword anchor text?
-
In the process of natural link building I would expect that anchor text will vary and won't always be the exact keyphrase that is being targeted. Sometimes it would be the company name, the site URL, a longer sentence with the keyphrase in it or even "click here".
The suggestion is that if a high % of links are just the keyword that this sends a signal to Google that their acquisition may not be from purely natural means.
-
I'd take a look at the competition and see the anchor text variety that they have, like was shared at LinkLove. Essentially you don't want the extreme. So if you have 40% widgets, 40% acme corp widgets and only 20% Acme Corp that might stand out to Google as being out of whack.
A link without "perfect" anchor text is better than no link at all, especially if you've built a ton of links with that keyword rich anchor text. In Rand's presentation at Link Love he discussed this a bit also, that anchor text is worth less than it used to be.
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
-
Sitemap.xml change to anchor links (converter)
Hi all, I would like import the sitemap.xml to an anchorlinks list. List with links navigatetion html ^^. Is there a posibility to use a tool or in excel? Because I will use 5000 products and 1000 brands.
Link Building | | Dreamgame20160 -
Internal Links - Anchor Text - Strategy
Good Morning... I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts or advice on an internal linking strategy for an e commerce website. I was thinking about adding a link to all of the subcategory pages that says: "View All : main keyword" and having my main keyword hyperlinked back to the home page. This would provide users who have gotten to a subcategory page that may not be exactly what they are looking for simply click that link and go back to the home page to select a different category.... Would having an internal link with the same anchor text on roughly 30 pages hurt my rankings? Wouldn't that help users navigate through my site? As always, any thoughts/advice or strategy tips are appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Anchor Text Choices
Hi There, Looking for some advice on the choice of anchor texts. Is it smart to include your domain name in addition to key words? What are the pros cons of including both vs. just doing a key word? Thank you!!!
Link Building | | MaidafromCureeo0 -
Exact match domains and overuse of exact match anchor text
If your domain name is a exact match keyword and you have a really high percentage of your links with the anchor text of that keyword, are you at high risk of getting penalized by Penguin or does Google's algorithm adjust for this. For example if your site name was AuethenticBaseballJerseys.com and people usually linked to your site at "Authentic Baseball Jerseys". Thanks!
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Deciding on anchor text for content-based backlinks
So you have a decent blog on the other side of the world ready and willing to work with you. Their content relates to your industry, and you're going to be allocated a lovely page of content, once a week, with a link or two back to your site. Do you think anchor text is still as important in May 2012 as everyone said it was three years ago? How do you determine what anchor text to have based on your answer to the question above?
Link Building | | Martin_S0 -
Set a desination url to text that did not have it previously
I have the following question. Is it OK to set a desination url to text that did not have it previously? Can it cause SEO (SERP) issues? For example, I have this sentence: The tool you're using is great, but this template will help you. Say, the "this template" text has been just plain text for like a year. And now I want to add a certain destination url to the "this template" phrase. So, can it cause some SEO issues to me or not?
Link Building | | VinceWicks0 -
Rel="canonical" or text link?
Lets say I have a commercial website that nobody will link to so I create a non commercial website with some awesome content that is highly linkable. I then get 30 - 40 quality links pointing to this site which I then either rel ="canonical" back to my main site to the page with the replica content or do I simply add a text link from the new site to the old sites homepage. Which would benefit my commercial site most? We are seeing the strategy of building a non commercial site for links becoming more and more popular. The second question is is it worth the effort for in effect one backlink?
Link Building | | fazza470 -
How to handle conflicting anchor text in left nav?
Our site provides two approaches for customers to locate the products they're looking for: Brand and Category. Where we're unsure if we're causing confusion for the search engines is when the left navigation filter link anchor text for these pages conflict with one another. For example, let's say we have a Snazzy Brand Type A widget, Blue, Squared. The nav links from a category approach could be: Widgets > Blue > Squared > Snazzy From the brand approach, we have: Snazzy > Widgets > Blue > Squared Where we have the conflict is in the instances of "Snazzy". From a category perspective, we direct customers down to the Snazzy Widgets page at /snazzy-widgets/ (as it's a filter). But from a brand perspective, we direct to the Snazzy brand page at /snazzy/. This means we have two sets of links with the anchor text of "Snazzy" that are going to two completely different pages. Repeat this across a variety of categories, and you have many instances of "Snazzy" all pointing to different Snazzy-related pages, but not to the Snazzy brand page (/snazzy/, /snazzy-widgets/, /snazzy-whatsits/, etc). So what's the best way to make sure we communicate the right information to the search engines, while still keeping the customer's browsing experience intact and enjoyable? Thanks!
Link Building | | ShawnHerrick2