How fast to change keyword rich anchor text
-
Hello,
A client of mine has a site with almost all keyword rich anchor text, The problem is on on a bunch of little blogs and some (mostly sitewide) paid links.
We are working to move into 100% white hat SEO, but we're doing it slowly.
My question is, how fast can we change the anchor text on all of these links? I'm worried that if I do it too fast that it will be a red flag.
Thanks.
-
I'd say the blogs probably aren't doing anything for you algorithmically and I'm guessing they're not what was sending you the non-repeat traffic. If you're paying for sitewides that are not nofollowed, you should think seriously about stopping that. Pay for links on other sites as much as you like but make sure they're nofollowed.
-
I see, I'll be more specific.
The client put up 40 blogs with no backlinks to the blogs and keyword rich anchor text.
The client paid a monthly fee to 8 or so websites for sitewide image ads.
We took off half the blogs and half of the sitewides and non-repeat traffic dropped by about 70%.
Now I am very shy about nofollowing or deleting anything, and I just want to know conservatively how fast do I change the remaining blog/paid link anchor text?
I'm link building with good content and eventually all this stuff will go away.
Thanks for getting back to me, Chris.
-
I don't think of the kind of links you mentioned in your question as "paid links". I think of paid links (of the variety Takeshi describes) as those that you pay for on a monthly basis and I think Takeshi is correct in that if the publisher isn't blatant they can be hard to detect--but not always. Those are the easiest kind to get rid of--you just stop paying for them. The kind of links you mentioned I think of as just run of the mill spam links--either they were free or they had a one time fee or someone was paid to add them to a network of some kind.
-
Hi Chris,
Could you look at something. Takeshi Young, who has gave me some really good advice, told me a couple of days ago:
"In regards to paid links, Google has a very hard time detecting these unless you are being blatant about them, and you will typically receive a notice in GWT if you receive a penalty for it. Check to see if there are any manual penalties on your site in GWT. If not, chances are Google has not discovered that the links are paid (yet).
Just trying to settle the confusion. I need to be very careful, as we took off a bunch of links before and rankings tanked.
I need to go the conservative route, but I don't know what that is. You've always gave good advice Chris, thanks for being in on this one.
-
If they're all followed links with exact match anchor text and you're thinking about making changes to them, I'd just start nofollowing the vast majority of them--maybe even all of them. Google already knows they're their and already knows they're spam and knows to discount them and now you want to go back and change them? I'd say no--as in nofollow. Then spend the client's money building higher quality links and citations.
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
-
Having a Keyword in # is not that important in 2018, Do you agree?
Earlier having a Keyword in was one of the important ranking factor or at least every SEO guru use to suggest this. But, of late, we are noticing that Google is not giving much weightage to it. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SameerBhatia3 -
What's with the Keyword Apocalypse?
Hi, 9 of my tracked keywords have dropped by over 20 ranks since last week. The nastiest drops in ranking are by 36, 38, and 46 places. For the last month I have been chipping away at the duplicate content with 301 redirects and was expecting my keyword rankings to improve slightly as a result of this; not the opposite. I don't have any manual actions logged against my site and am at a bit of a loss to explain this sudden drop. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McCaldin1 -
SEO is changing - how has your day to day changed?
I'm sure we all read on our alternatives to Google Reader that SEO is changing - "here's what we must do to be relevant in 2014". I find these articles boring and uninformative. I suspect I'm not alone. The reason I'm not their biggest fan is because I feel like I've invested 10 minutes into an article that I have no actual guidance from. Therefore, I thought I'd ask the real SEO's, you guys, what has actually changed for you? Are you now not creating content with the aim of getting links? If you run a commercial website, what are you doing different to rank your product pages - directly or indirectly? Please share with the group. I'm sure many like me are still brainstorming and creating content they think will grab people's attention and gain them links, whilst also pushing their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube profiles, etc etc. What has changed about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purpleindigo0 -
Time for Google to change the emphasis?
Why doesn't Google recommend that links are nofollow as standard, via HTML5, etc., with follow being added if the link is on a quality site (defined by PR, or whatever.) and adds value. Wouldn't this save alot of time? Then they could whack all the sites with coding that doesn't comply, couldn't they? Also, instead of enabling negative SEO, why doesn't Google simply focus on wiping out the sites developed simply to pass on PR. I'm sure we could all send them a few thousand suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com (google penguin)?
I have a couple of partial match domains in the format KEYOWRDdiscount.com and also the website name resembles domain name. "Car Discount" is not my website but just an example to illustrate:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com?
Should I try to modify existing external anchor texts to "CarDiscount" or "CarDiscount.com" instead of "Car Discount" Do you know of any cases where such anchor texts coinciding with partial match domain were likely reason for penguin penalization? Thanks.0 -
New Keywords stealing juice?
I already rank on the first page for all 13 of my main keyword terms. Is it possible for me to start ranking for additional key words on those page by adding additional content on the pages? How much impact will this have and will the new keywords still juice from my already good keywords? Also if I am already ranking well for those key words...with really horrible URL's. Would it be possible to add my new key words into the URL's? Since the current URL's seem to have nothing to do with my current rankings maybe I can keep my current rankings but then also get a huge boost for my new keyword rankings? Thank you, Boodreaux the novice. PS. I have already heard the great advice of keeping my old site map up for a while after I change the URL's in order to let google catch up and re-index the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Importance of text above the fold
I am being advised by an SEO that each page of my ecommerce site must have a significant block of unique text "above the fold" to do well in Google post-Panda. This recommendation is at odds with what my design/usability/conversion people want to see. The current site design features eye-catching graphics just below the header and goes right into product listings, with SEO text near the bottom of the page. How important is it to have SEO text near the top of a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhkatz0 -
Service Keyword in URL - too much?
We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure: 1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword] (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control) There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end. 2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail) Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way. 3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants) No real keyword potential but better usability. We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic. Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdcomms1