Sculpting anchor text percentage through disavow?
-
Hi there, should less-than-optimal links be preserved, if those links contribute to a more attractive anchor text percentage profile?
I'm working on a client who spun a bunch of articles, using keyword word anchor text. No surprise, the strategy worked great up to the penguin update. About 90% of the client's links come from these spun articles. The other 10% of links are naturally occurring, quality links. Furthermore, these quality links are also keyword rich.
Now, it occurs to me that if I remove / disavow the links coming from the spun articles, I'm left with the 10% of quality, anchor text rich links. I'm concerned that Google will see this percentage as too high, and lower the rank.
Furthermore, I have a vague memory of watching some YouTube video, where an ex-Googler says that your brand name should be about 60% of your anchor text, and everything else lower. Finally, when I examine the anchor text in links coming into the ranking sites, they have 5-15% anchor text density on their keywords.
So, I feel a bit of a contradiction: I should clean up all of the crappy links from the spun articles, but then that risks having only the keyword rich anchor text links active? Therefore, I'm considering leaving some of the crappy links active on non-relevant keyword text, such as the good 'ol "click here" link.
Also, before answering this, I can already predict some of the answers on philosophical grounds: those crappy links from spun articles are not natural and garbage, so get rid of them. Fair enough, but I'm also interested in an answer on only the dimension of what will produce the highest rank for my client?
-
Was the hit from Penguin, or a manual penalty? If it was not a manual penalty, then in theory, you might be safe enough to keep some of those to maintain some diversity.
I would caution you though that there's no way to know what threshold exists for how many need to be cleaned up in order to address the penalty vs. how many can remain while working on obtaining higher quality links.
This is further complicated by the notion that if it was not a manual penalty, some of the losses could be to current on-site failings that were caught up in other algorithm changes before, around the same time as or immediately after Penguin.
For example, what if there were 5 problems with the on-site SEO, and the Penguin update caused a "trigger" due to link anchors? And what if it turns out that you might only need to do some link clean-up but simultaneously also do some on-site work?
There's just no way to know in advance. Especially without a full evaluation across the board.
Very interesting concept though.
And for the record, there truly is no secret percentage formula regarding brand instances in anchors. With hundreds of factors to SEO, one site could have only 20% anchors with the brand in them and still have higher trust than a competitor site that has more brand anchors but weakness in other signals.
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
-
Is the flow of page rank through anchor text links diminished if hidden using tabs
Hi there, Whilst there is plenty of information online regarding the devaluation of hidden content using tabs, it seems to be more difficult to get a clear answer as to how page rank is impacted when anchor text links are hidden. If an anchor text link is hidden using tabs, will the flow of page rank to the page the anchor text leads to be negatively impacted? If so, why? To add further context, whilst the anchor text link would be visible in the HTML, the tab would be dependant on JavaScript to function. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Disavow files and net com org etc ....
When looking at my backlinks if I see something like this: www.domainPizza.net
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk
www.domainPizza.com
sub.domainPizza.com
www.domainpizza.org
domainPizza.net
https://domainpizza.com
https://www.domainpizza.net What is the actual list of disavows that I put into the file if I want to disavow this domain? I am seeing so many variations of the same domain. Thank you.0 -
What Links to Disavow?
I am looking through my website's link profile that I pulled directly from Google Webmaster Tools. What is the best way to determine the links to disavow? Maybe the Webmaster Tools list is not the best list for this process but I really need to clean up the links that are hurting the site's SEO. Does anyone have any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Does changing Anchor text of old built links raise a red flag in Google?
I have lot of links (10000+) built against Exact match anchor text so what is solution to that now? Other than disavowing them all, May I change the anchor text of those links (From Exact Match To Brand Name or naked URL)? Does Google have algorithms to detect anchor text changes and if so, do those algorithms detect these sorts of changes and raise a red flag on sites doing it. I respect your opinions but please only comment if you are sure about it because I am already facing a penalty so can't afford to get another.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan1 -
Thoughts on Proactive Link Disavow
One of my newish hobby sites has began to attract some crappy links - as per Google Webmaster Tools, Links To Your Site report. The typical .ru and .pl kind of crap that seems to seep into all somewhat successful sites' link profiles. I have not received any notifications or penalties, BUT I am considering proactively disavowing these, but wanted to bounce this idea off some other SEOs before proceeding. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | David_ODonnell0 -
Easiest way to disavow single links on an on-going basis?
We frequently get random super-sketchy looking blogs linking to us with no author or contact information. I believe we are being targeted by a competitor setting up garbage links to us. I am hoping to use the Google disavow links tool to deal with this but is it: Safe to use or does it flag us as link spammers by using it Possible to use on an on-going basis for single links (as them come in, as opposed to a bunch of backlogged links) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
New domain or wait - Anchor Text Penalty
Hi We are confident we have an anchor text penalty and have removed nearly all offending links about 3 months ago, and since have only engaged on 100% natural linking with good content and simply asking people to share our site. However we have made no progress all in terms on position for our main keyword - we now thinking of starting a fresh on a new domain as Google doesn't seem to be able to forgive us... Any ideas please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Are disavowed links removed from the GWMT?
Hi, I am disavowing some links. Does anyone know if Google removes them from the WMT?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is interesting for followup purposes. Thanks0