Can hosting blog posts with keyword anchor text on outbound links cause a penalty?
-
My site received a Google penalty for having inbound links from blog posts with over-optimized ("spammy") anchor text. I spent months getting these links removed.
Yesterday - I received a link deletion request from a site that my site had linked out to (three links via keyword anchor text relevant to their company) in a blog post.
The "unnatural link" penalty still hasn't been removed from my site.
My question is: Does the penalty work both ways? For having inbound "unnatural" links ... AND for having outbound "unnatural" links?
-
If you received an inbound unnatural links penalty then the links going OUT from your blog will not matter. It's possible for you to also get an outbound unnatural link penalty as well but you would receive notice of that just like you did with the inbound penalty.
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
-
Delete old blog posts after 301 redirects to new pages?
Hi Moz Community, I've recently created several new pages on my site using much of the same copy from blog posts on the same topics (we did this for design flexibility and a few other reasons). The blogs and pages aren't exactly identical, as the new pages have much more content, but I don't think there's a point to having both and I don't want to have duplicate content, so we've used 301 redirects from the old blog posts to the new pages of the same topic. My question is: can I go ahead and delete the old blog posts? (Or would there be any reasons I shouldn't delete them?) I'm guessing with the 301 redirects, all will be well in the world and I can just delete the old posts, but I wanted to triple check to make sure. Thanks so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | | TaraLP1 -
Should I keep a website which is outdated or close it down? It has a few links. If I keep it can I redirect people to our newer site?
We are in the process of buying some intellectual property, and it's websites are very dated and only have around 5 external links each. What's the best course of action? Do we close down the sites; then redirect the urls to our current website, or do we leave the sites up, but redirect people to our new site. Reference: current website: www.psychometrics.com Old sites that come with the intellectual property: http://www.eri.com/ plus http://www.hrpq.com/ Thanks, Dan Costigan
Technical SEO | | dcostigan0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Dates in the blog posts - on, off or regularly updated
Hello Moz community, We have a blog where we post what we believe is very valuable, unique content for our niche. The content frequently stays very relevant for our visitor for many many years. In terms of both user engagement and SEO, should we keep the dates in our blog posts? Should we remove them? Should we go through every blog post and edit it slightly every week even if there is no meaningful information we can add? Should employ some kind of plugin that does update the blog post date automatically?
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
Can Silos and Exact Anchor Text In Links Hurt a Site Post Penguin?
Just got a client whose site dropped from a PR of 3 to zero. This happened shortly after the Penguin release, June, 2012. Examining the site, I couldn't find any significant duplicate content, and where I did find duplicate content (9%), a closer look revealed that the duplication was totally coincidental (common expressions). Looking deeper, I found no sign of purchased links or linking patterns that would hint at link schemes, no changes to site structure, no change of hosting environment or IP address. I also looked at other factors, too many to mention here, and found no evidence of black hat tactics or techniques. The site is structured in silos, "services", "about" and "blog". All page titles that fall under services are categorized (silo) under "services", all blog entries are categorized under "blogs", and all pages with company related information are categorized under "about". When exploring the site's links in Site Explorer (SE), I noticed that SE is identifying the "silo" section of links (i.e. services, about, blog, etc.) and labeling it as an anchor text. For example, domain.com/(services)/page-title, where the page title prefix (silo), "/services/", is labeled as an anchor text. The same is true for "blog" and "about". BTW, each silo has its own navigational menu appearing specifically for the content type it represents. Overall, though there's plenty of room for improvement, the site is structured logically. My question is, if Site Explorer is picking up the silo (services) and identifying it as an anchor text, is Google doing the same? That would mean that out of the 15 types of service offerings, all 15 links would show as having the same exact anchor text (services). Can this type of site structure (silo) hurt a website post Penguin?
Technical SEO | | UplinkSpyder0 -
Keyword in Domain or not?
My on page optimization grade is an "A" with the following factors; Factor Overview <dl class="scoreboard clearfix"> <dt>Critical Factors</dt> <dd>4 / 4</dd> <dt>High Importance Factors</dt> <dd>7 / 7</dd> <dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt> <dd>8 / 9</dd> <dt>Low Importance Factors</dt> <dd>11 / 11</dd> <dt>Optional Factors</dt> <dd>5 / 5</dd> </dl> The main thing I appear to be missing is keywords in my URL. How truly important is that in today's SEO world and how much time or ranking would be lost if I do not have control to change the external links to my website if I decided to migrate to a keyword relevant url?
Technical SEO | | classa0 -
Blog post summary pages
I'm wondering post-panda if its wise to block access to blog post summary pages like this one: http://www.howtotradestocks.org/blog/page/15/ Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Can anyone tell me where my site can be improved
My website is www.theradiatorgallery.com I have been trying to get on 1st page for designer radiators. I am currently ranked 21st just dropped to the 3rd page within the past hour, i was 20th before this. There are some sites that i would think i would rank better than due do i have better on page optimization, higher PA, DA and PR based on seo moz reports. Is there something wrong with my site that i am missing? the sites i feel i should rank better than are; radsnrails.co.uk, warmrooms.co.uk and a couple others Any help would be great! Thanks Guys
Technical SEO | | myloseo0