Link Anchor Text post Penguin 2.0
-
I have heard a great variety of views concerning the anchor text used for link building post Penguin 2.0 but have yet to hear some consensus. Some say the anchor text for external links should be different than internal. Some say brand should be used on external and keywords on internal. Some say brand and a variety of keywords on external. Any thoughts on a strategy consistent with google expectations and guidelines?
-
Hi Jesse,
aHrefs does an awesome job visualizing their anchor text reports, I agree. We're working on updating how we visualize data in Open Site Explorer in our long term plans. Lots of cool things in all of our products.
That said, the quality of the data in the OSE anchor text report is damn fine
-
I'm going to sidestep this question and say that the profile Google prefers is one that is earned, and not built.
Anytime you are able to choose the anchor text of your external links, this is a "built" link and no matter how much you diversify, you risk creating a pattern that Google can detect - if not now, then in the future.
The external sites that allow you to choose your own anchor text, in most cases (but not all) often are not the best link targets.
Is this realistic? For a lot of link builders, probably not. But the key is to diversify as much as possible. A lot of folks will tell you silly rules like 20% branded anchor text, but those rules have changed so much in the past 2 years, where will they be a year from now? Google keeps changing the rules to crack down on unearned links.
Regardless, I'll get off my soapbox and leave you with a couple of posts/videos I made about the subject of anchor text:
http://moz.com/blog/high-value-tactics-futureproof-link-building-whiteboard-friday
http://moz.com/blog/click-here-seo
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
It should be a combination of all of the above, in a ratio that normal citations would give you - just like the Nike one is
There is no perfect or correct answer. Look at what natural looks like and model that
Stephen
-
This makes sense Stephen if you have a recognized brand. What about a real estate agent who is licensed through an agency and who works in a specific market? Should the "brand" be name only, name / agency, or name / agency / market area? This one I think is a bit tougher?
For example: Joe Blow, Joe Blow; XXX Realty, or Joe Blow: XXX Realty / market area?
thanks
Brett
-
Am I the only one who finds OSE anchor text report to be a bit... lacking? I mean.. compared to ahrefs.com anyway?
Why does ahrefs so handily win this battle? I don't want to have to convince my boss to buy me an ahrefs membership so I'd like an excuse not to.
-
I thought of recommending that Oleg, but often the people in a niche may also be ranking on the basis of spam, or may not yet have been caught.
If you have well known brands in a niche, then I think that is OK, otherwise I think the megabrands that have no need for linkbuilding are better signals to follow
-
I would replace Nike, Amazon, etc. with competitors in your industry that are ranking for the keywords you want to. Different industries have different definitions of "natural" and seeing link profiles for sites who rank for your keywords would give you a better idea of what you should shoot for.
-
Do what Stephen says... then...
Go look at the backlink profile of people who come in here cryin'.
-
Go to open site explorer and put in the worlds top brands Nike, Amazon etc
That is how Google will expect a natural backlink profile to be
Stephen
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
-
Spam sites republish a article with 'money keyword' anchor text and causing a pentalty.. how to prevent.
About 6 weeks ago we had a DA50 / PA50 homepage site publish an article on our company which included a money keyword anchor text to our site.. Great. Once this happened we shot up the SERP for this term, but quite a few other spam / crawler sites seem to automatically republish everything this DA50 site publishes. This didnt seem to be a problem up until a couple of weeks ago, but now with the new penguin update it seems we have been slapped with a penalty, for having 20 sites all with the same article and anchor text. (the rest of our profile is pretty natural, so this is the main culprit for the penalty) Im now going to write to all the webmasters apart from the DA50 site, and ask them to remove the article, failing that ill have to disavow them. For future reference what is there a way of avoiding this issue of spam sites republishing a propper article and triggering a penalty.
Link Building | | jpeg800 -
Been offered a no follow link on a blog post ?. Is it worth it ?
Hi All, We are having a go at doing our own link building and just wanted some advice on a couple of questions I've found some industry related blog sites which could be good but alot of them only offer a no follow link ?. Is this worth it ? And if ,so what is the advantage of having a no follow link ? as it won't directly help with our DA etc ? I've also noticed some of these sites link to each other or recommend each other (i.e other blog sites) which may be some sort of link network ?.. I take it this is bad ? and could be penalized by google ? thanks pete
Link Building | | PeteC120 -
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Individual keyword pages or single page with backlinks and anchor text?
Hi, I was wondering which is the better strategy? People say the keyword dig is the basis for any SEO strategy, which i totally agree with, however, traditionally the strategy for these keywords has been to write fresh content based on sometimes very similar keywords / terms to attract specific keywords traffic... With google getting smarter and smarter, would you say it is safer (if you know you have a very tight and stable backlinking strategy) to backlink a page that has a number of your similar keywords present, with the relevant anchor text on the inbound sites? So in essence the site ranks for multiple keywords..? I hope this makes sense, it's a very difficult one to get out onto paper! 🙂 Many thanks in advance!
Link Building | | turnips
Turnips0 -
Inbound links vs. internal links
Which scenario does more to help SEO - A) An inbound link from a low traffic/low page rank site to my site B) An internal link where one page of my site links to another page on my site
Link Building | | DVanSchepen0 -
Is it even worth getting a link from PR0-2 , unrelated themed sites?
Is it even worth getting a link from PR0-2 , unrelated themed sites like http://www.area-rug-news.com/ or http://www.denvercohomerentals.com/ to my PR4 health training site that has been around since 2007? Can getting a sitewide blogroll link do more harm than good?
Link Building | | gundogs0