Is this still considered true about INTERNAL anchor text? "Penguin seems to be targeting overly aggressive anchor text (both internally and externally), especially from low-quality sources."
-
Recently I've heard a few people say now it's okay to be aggressive with internal linking. So a link from mydomain.com/news to mydomain/widgets can use spammy anchor text like "best green widgets in California" that are an obvious problem for links coming in from external site.
Which is accurate?
-
Here's Matt Cutts on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ
Basically he's saying that you are perfectly ok to have exact match anchored internal links. But, if it becomes really obvious that you're overdoing it to try to manipulate Google then you're at risk for a manual penalty.
Look at wikipedia. They are the perfect example of a site that has a LOT of exact match anchors. And they do pretty well.
-
Me either. Previously you asked, "Is there any difference in Google's treatment of aggressive anchor text between internal and external?" Externally, if every link pointing to your 'green widget' page or home page said, 'green widget' you'd likely get penalized by Google. Internally, linking to your page as such navigationally and in context like EGOL mentioned is fine. So there's a major difference right there. I don't think it's a question of 'being aggresive with it' just that you can refer to your own pages more precisely within the context of your own site.
-
Im not sure we're communicating. I am well aware of how aggressive anchor text from external links causes problems with Google.
I need to get an idea of how approximately how much leeway there is for internal anchor text. I was told by two people I respect that internal anchor text can be much more aggressive.
-
Read: http://moz.com/blog/most-important-link-penalty-removal-tool-your-mindset. Very much so. Google knows what a natural link profile looks like so well that you're best bet is gaining external links as naturally as possible. Sites with super high percentages of anchor text links, followed links, and conversion page specific links are running red flags in front of Google's eyes. Take Eric's advice from above. Cheers!
-
Thanks for reply. Is there any difference in Google's treatment of aggressive anchor text between internal and external?
-
Like EGOL mentions, going after unnaturally long links--and the type of copy that falls afield of some of the Adwords policy--is likely to cause issues in your work to aggressively link internally. What is fine is remaining factual and linking to your 'green widgets' page with the link, 'green widgets'. Just look at Wikipedia's level of internal linking...
Leave the best of stuff to review sites or pages.
-
I use anchor text like "green widgets" in persistent navigation and in paragraph text on all of my sites and have no problems.
Now, if you are using chest-thumping anchor text like... "best green widgets in California"... then you might be asking for it.
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
-
When using long-tail keywords, should you exactly match for the url or delete "in" "to" etc.?
long-tail keyword - "seizures in adults with no history" Should you include "in and with" in the url?
On-Page Optimization | | Moleculera0 -
How to handle "app" pages.
Hey guys, We've got an app - a drag & drop email builder - and we are looking to improve our seo efforts. That being said - we're not sure how to treat pages of the app that wouldn't tell google nothing at all basically (loads of duplicate content, lorem ipsum, etc). They're pages that are used by the clients to build their own templates ex: builder pages they are extremely useful for our clients, but GGL wouldn't prolly make too much sense out of them. That being said - rather randomly, before we nofollow noindexed them, some of them started ranking (probably given to the really great analytics data we have on them. Loads of clients, loads of time spent on page, etc). Can we harness them in a better way, or just nofollownoindex them? I don't really see how they can be "canonicalised" since they don't really provide any quality content for Google. Much like MOZ's keyword explorer tool for ex. Mucho quality for us - but not a google fan favorite content-wise. Thanks for your help 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes0 -
ECommerce Website Internal Links
We run an ecommerce website... approx 8K products. When using the page grader, MOZ tools consistently tell me that I have too many Internal Links on the page.
On-Page Optimization | | Ampweb
These are caused from our fairly large menu system, and probably from the sub-category links on the category landing pages as well. I was reading an article that mentioned a no-follow on these Internal links would not really solve the "Too many internal links issue", so wanted to check if anyone has ideas or should I just dis-regard this MOZ suggestion that there are too many in this type of environment?0 -
Site appears to rank very low
Hi, A site we manage is ranking very low for it's main key phrases. The site is www.moremouse.com. For example for the phrase "orlando vacation rentals" it ranks around page 12 which seems very low considering the DA, PA, links, etc. compared to many sites ranking much much higher. Can anyone see anything obvious that is causing it to rank so low? Thanks Pete
On-Page Optimization | | QbicIS0 -
Rel="canonical" link should they be to or from an "SEO friendly" url
Thanks for taking the time to review this. So for our example, lets use the following SEO friendly link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry-and-biblical-studies/BA-biblical-studies We'll call this link the SEO VERSION The title of the college is" Pacific Christian College of Minstry and Biblical Studies" The title of the program is "BA Biblical Studies" The QUERY version of the link to this page would be something like: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/index.php?collegeid=22&programid=34 Keep in mind that the meta title, description, and keyword tags for the page are all administerable The SEO VERSION is automatically created from the title of the college, and the title of the program. Each one of these titles can be overidden with a URL slug individually. For instance, the admin could make the link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry/biblical-studies by changing the slug for the college to "pacific-christian-college-of-ministry" and the slug for the program to "biblical-studies". Let's call this version the SLUG VERSION So now we have multiple ways to get to the same content. The question on the table is what is best practice for the rel="canonical" link to keep from getting dinged for duplicate content. Let's say that our SEO VERSION is the canonical link for 1 year. Then the choice was made to optimize the links thru the slugs creating the SLUG VERSION. My assumption is that we would keep the SEO VERSION as the canonical link. But then let's say 6 months later that the title of the program is changed in the admin. Now the SEO VERSION has changed and so has the canonical link. Do we lose the link juice garnered over the last 18 months? It would seem to me, that if we use the QUERY version as the canonical link, then any optimizations or changes affect everything except the canonical link, thus keeping the previous link juice earned. But is having an ugly URL as the canonical link detrimental to SEO? Please advise.
On-Page Optimization | | robertdonnell0 -
How would you target alternative names for your product with the use of internal/landing pages?
Recently, there has been some new industry names that have emerged for the type of software we provide and we want to make sure that we rank for those terms (of course!). The 3 names combined are too long for a title tag and would look odd to incl all 3 in the homepage. Any suggestions (or examples) of how this could done without looking spammy? I also don't really know where to put this within our website. e.g. enterprise portal, enterprise information portal (EIP) or corporate portal Any suggestions would be most welcome
On-Page Optimization | | alexpeps0 -
Are these considered duplicates?
http://www.domain.com/blog/sample-blog-post/#more-0001 http://www.domain.com/blog/sample-blog-post/ The first URL is coming from a "click here" hyperlink from the excerpt of the 2nd URL in my homepage. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | esiow20130 -
Image alt attribute vs. plain text in link?
I'm building a product category browsing page for a high-falutin' jewelry retailer where we display only product photos linking to individual product pages, without any text in the links. From an SEO and link-juice-passing perspective, is it most effective to embed the product titles as the alt attribute in each image, or to leave alt="" and use text substitutions (i.e. an inner which is css'd to display: none) within the <a>to help search engines accept my product titles as the link text with the most credibility?</a>
On-Page Optimization | | cadenzajon0