Anchor Text - How many and what do with our old posts
-
Hello,
I have a two larger established websites that achieve over 1000 unique views a day. The sites have done well but we have always had problem with SEO. The vast majority of traffic is from our social media accounts -- we rank low on the SERP - below competitive pages that have less updates and much lower traffic.
When I set the sites up I misunderstood a number of key issues but with over 4500 posts and 600 pages it has takes a huge amount of time to change things.
I have now realised another issue -- we did not use Anchor Text to link to provide internal links to our keywords on our site. We are now adding them.
My question is two fold:
- How many internal links should we add? From what I read on Moz - 5 to 6 internal links should be the right number. Comments?
2) We have numerous posts ie over 4000 that go back over 4 years. Should I change them all at once or will this flag a spam issue with Google? Believe me after years of problems I do not want another set back.
Suggestions and advice would be welcome.
Thanks
-
Kristine,
Thank you for your post. I do appreciate the time
- You mentioned that you want to rank for xxxx - that's going to be tough. Think about what makes you unique and go for those keywords.
ANS: For the alternative key words and productions - films etc. We do well in Google. Our own site brand xxxx or xxxx we rank either 1 or 2. And a number of the productions we do extremely well until the big news organisation start posting. We have been involving this strategy. But the search volume just isn't there for the alternative keywords. I'm just dismayed when I see sites that haven't updated in months ahead of our site by 10 or 15 postes
- It looks like a lot of content on your site is timely, and you mentioned that you get some information early. In that case, I'd argue that you should get Google News status. I've never personally set that up for a client, but there are a lot of people on Moz who do.
ANSWER: We did try this a while back -- But were originally rejected. I assumed this was due to the crawl erros -- We will be trying again soon. We have eliminated our 404 on Moz and are just waiting for them to expire on Google.
- You said that you don't want to ask for links, which is why you've had a hard time increasing your DA. Rather than asking for links, focus on what you can do to make other site owners' lives easier: offer to guest post, syndicate content, create some partnerships. Think of link building as PR that Google can track.
ANSWER: we do all these things already. I actually think the problems is the lack of understanding from the others we have relationships with. OVERALL COMMENTS:
I have made some mistakes in the past but the site is looking cleaner and cleaner I resolved them. The lack of internal linked anchor keywords was a big one. We are getting there. However as you said it is
It is just easier for us to get to a premiere red carpet event then it is to rank on Google.
I do appreciate everyone's comments. Thank you all for the time. We will continue to slog onwards]
Susan
-
Hi Susan!
I'm sorry that Google's been tough for you to crack, but glad to hear that social media has paid off for you! To be honest, this may be the best bang for your buck. David Tennant is kind of a big deal online, which means you have a lot of competition.
That's not to say we can't help you here, though. You've covered a lot in this conversation so far that I think I can help with, but let me start with the original anchor text question.
It's not a blanket rule that you can't rank unless you use keyword rich anchor text. Keyword rich anchor text helps pass Page Authority across the site and increase the destination page's relevance to the keyword. This means that you don't need to add anchor text to any links that are pointing to timely posts that are no longer popular/relevant. I'd spend some time identifying the pages on your site that you want to rank well, and only add anchor text links to those pages, not to every post on your site.
I mentioned that links pass Page Authority: the amount that they pass has to do with their own PA. Pages that have inbound links will have the most Page Authority to share. Start by updating the links and anchor text from pages with inbound links to best transfer Page Authority. If the pages that you want to rank aren't already in the top or side navigation, add them.
Other than that, you don't need to change links on historical posts. Google can see the date, and if a post has 0 inbound links and a date 2014+, my guess is Google is barely paying attention to it. Rather than worrying about doing a big audit, you may want to focus on changing your practices moving forward.
You brought up a lot of other issues in your posts, so I have a few other comments:
- You mentioned that you want to rank for "David Tennant" - that's going to be tough. Think about what makes you unique and go for those keywords.
- It looks like a lot of content on your site is timely, and you mentioned that you get some information early. In that case, I'd argue that you should get Google News status. I've never personally set that up for a client, but there are a lot of people on Moz who do.
- You said that you don't want to ask for links, which is why you've had a hard time increasing your DA. Rather than asking for links, focus on what you can do to make other site owners' lives easier: offer to guest post, syndicate content, create some partnerships. Think of link building as PR that Google can track.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
-
Susan
Can you publish the url? I love a site with traffic though not appreciated by google. They are my favorites. If not then it is old fashioned hard work, but very rewarding - which you have to do at some stage regardless. I would suggest you work through the below site audit. It is a great Moz article.
https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
Do you publish all your articles on google+ another easy win, if not doing already. On backlinks, are many of your blog posts being re-published? With that many blog posts it is hard to understand why you are not earning many backlinks.
Hope that assists.
-
Susan,
Yes, you got me right. I will not suggest you to do this database global change.
As far as your SEO approach is concerned, you don't beg people to link you. Although, this is what you want but you need to play your cards smartly. If your aim is to build relationship instead of links, all your campaigns will be transformed accordingly and the links will automatically comes.
TL;DR: Focus on SEO
-
Umar,
Thanks for the reponse. All the traffic we have is good traffic. People read our site but they do skip away. Any site with Social Media as it main feed tends to have people jump back away -- the bounce rate is between 70% and 80% depending . And over 55% of our traffic is from phones and tablets.
We don't and have never done blacklist links. In fact that is our biggest issue -- lack of links. I do not have the personality to ask people to link to us. I must admit I find it distasteful to request it. We created problems with a move from Joomla to Wordpress, we broke old links everywhere and had over 15000 crawl issues. As for moving SEO SERP -- I will believe it when I see it. This has a been a two year slog and I have barely seen any improvement on the main key word that we need to rank on.
Back to the questionWhat I was thinking of doing was a Database change on a few key words. i.e. this would link the key word across the full site. Sound like you are suggesting not do do the global change which is really what my question was.
-
Hey Susan,
It's never too late if you're open to accept your mistakes.
Coming to your questions:
-
There is no fixed number for internal links.. It depends on the content length, flow and format. For an average, if the post is 700 words long with 5 sub-headings, I will add 3 links. But again, it depends.
-
You don't need to change all of them. Go to your analytics, filter out your most traffic acquiring pages and fix them first. Then, gradually fix the rest.
Susan, your traffic is indeed very good but I'd see the bounce rate as well. If social media is really driving a potential and good traffic, I believe if you start focussing on SEO, you will get the good rankings soon.
Hope this helps!
Umar
-
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 it worth pursing PR and guest posting just for links?
I'm still new to SEO, but I have a decent foundation on it. To me, it seems like guest posting and earning PR on quality sites is good for the coverage, but will those one-off links really make a difference? I'd have to assume that SEOs earn their worth when they build scalable links (i.e. tools that people link to, guides, etc) So, while PR is nice, I feel as if I shouldn't focus my time there, but spending time on building a product such as QuickSprout.com's SEO audit tool, Cappex's college match tool, CNN's budget calculator, Moz's google weather report, etc.
Link Building | | BrandonPindulic1 -
Google Authorship and Guest Posts
I'm including my google author details at the bottom of guest posts with a link to my site. Is this not giving google a clear signal the that it is a guest post by me and although the site owner has found it worthy enough to include the post on their site it's not really an 'editorially given link' in the true sense of the term?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Anchor text diversity - post penguin.
Hi, It seems that achor text diversity is hugely important post penguin but what's the best strategy? What kind of anchor text should I be going for? As I understand it more that 60% of links with the keywords in trigger a google flag. For example are the following good examples for the term 'wedding singer'? local wedding singer, best wedding singer, wedding singer website, hire wedding singer. Would these cause triggers in google as all contain the keyword 'wedding singer'? Or should I be going for: click here, visit us, listen now, view a profile Obviously these words don't contain the anchor text 'wedding singer' but with a few exact match #wedding singer' anchor texts and good on page SEO will this mix give better results?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Site-wide/Blogroll Anchor Text Linking
I have some blogs that I own with 10,000+ indexed pages of content. I have wondered for sometime if adding anchor text links for my clients on relevant blogs would be helpful or harmful. I realize that having an anchor text link on ONE article page in context is better than 10,000 anchor text links on my blog roll or footer, but I have been reluctant to use this strategy due to the bad press site wide and blogroll links have gotten, What has been YOUR experience with this method?
Link Building | | TheGrid0 -
How often does Google crawls old pages, is it worth to get links from them ?
Let's say there's a blog post in my industry niche that's 2 years old. Is it worth to get a link from that blog post ? How do I know Google will actually re-crawl that page, and how long can that process take ?
Link Building | | pqdbr0 -
Where/should I post my press release/articles on my own website?
I have started a long-term article marketing campaign and press release distribution. I will have about 4 articles and press releases in total every month. Although the press releases will not be self-promotional, sometimes they will be talking about a certain product that we unveil. The question is, due to the high quality of these press releases, should I put them on my website as well as publish them on third party websites? If so, because they target a specific service/product which we already have a dedicated page on our website, wouldn't that put Google in the position of choosing between the two pages? I was thinking to put them on my blog and link internally from there with the keywords that I target on those pages as anchor text. The same question for articles. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | echo10 -
Will redirecting 250 linking domains to a new website from an old website freak Google out?
Prior to my accepting a project, the client decided to change the name of their company and purchased a new domain name to match. They hired a designer to build their new company site which has now been up and running for a little under 12 months. Up to this point they have done a good job of slowly redirecting small handfuls of linking domains from the old site to the new. They want to make one last push and point the remaining 250 linking domains from their old site to their new site. Will redirecting 250 linking domains to a new website from an old website freak Google out? If so, how many domains should be redirected at one time? My main concern is not wanting to upset Google and see the floor fall out on current keyword rankings, domain authority and page rank, etc.
Link Building | | 5outhpaw0 -
Www.text-link-ads.com, worth the trouble?
Has anyone used http://www.text-link-ads.com for link building. It is a service I've been reading a fair deal about and I was hoping to hear everyone's opinion on it.
Link Building | | calin_daniel0