Ideal number of Anchor text keyword variations
-
Let's suppose that I want to rank for the keyword "hotels". If I put this keyword in ALL of the link anchor texts then Google will very likely penalize the site. My question is: How many keyword variations should I use in anchors (provided I want to rank for just one KW i.e. "hotels")? Would one keyword variation be okay and is it fine to use main keyword in 80% anchors and the keyword variation(s) in just 20% anchor texts, such as : hotels 80% cheap hotels 20% Note: I do not want to rank for "cheap hotels", just want to use it as an anchor variation of my desired keyword "hotels". Thanks!
-
thanks.
-
NP
-
"The easiest thing to do is look at the top 10 in your space. Determine the average percent of exact match anchor text, then make it your goal to match that percentage."
Thanks for suggesting this awesome tactic!
-
This number varies widely based on keyword and industry. In template industries like people who sell wordpress templates or joomla templates, you can safely get 80 and 90% exact match anchor text. In other spaces, you need to keep it less than 10 or 15%.
The easiest thing to do is look at the top 10 in your space. Determine the average percent of exact match anchor text, then make it your goal to match that percentage. More importantly, get your Overall link metrics above your competitors, so while your percentages are in line, you have more in both quantity and quality than your competitors, but all within safe proportions.
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
-
Keyword research
Hi, When you do keyword research and my terms is SEO for example. Do I need in the content to have the word "SEO" by itself and then a related keyword like "SEO tools" as 2 separate keywords or can I have "SEO tools" only and will this be counted as 2 separate keyword. The 1 st one will be "SEO" and the other one will be "SEO tools." Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
301 redirecting to anchor points
A client has just given me a list of redirect URLs as requested of them. However, they're wanting to redirect a bunch of pages to various anchor points within the same page. For example: /pages/about might redirect to: /pages/our-story#our-mission And: /pages/history might redirect to: /pages/our-story#history Is there any problem with this? I've never seen or been asked to redirect like this before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
OK to change the anchor text of a link?
I have built a link on behalf of a ciient in a long, well-written article on a reputable website that accepts contributor accounts. I therefore control the link. I have since realised that the anchor text of the link could be optimized much better than it currently is (while still only being a partial match). Would I be punished by the algorithm for going in and changing the link? I know it's not 100% "natural," but then we're SEOs, and i don't think it's too implausible that a website owner may go in and do the same... Maybe if I add some text as well, it would make things look more natural?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg1 -
SEO Question re: Keyword Cannibalization
I know about Keyword Cannibalization, so I understand why it's generally a problem. If you have multiple versions of the same page, Google has to "guess" which one to display (as I understand it, unless you have a SUPER influential page you won't get both pages showing up on the SERP). To explain why I'm not sure if this applies to our page, we have a blog that we write about employment law issues on. So we might have 20 blog posts over the past year that all talk about recent pregnancy discrimination lawsuits employers might be interested in. Now, searching the Google Keyword tools, there aren't even close to 20 different focus keywords that would make any sense. "Pregnancy Discrimination lawsuit" is niche enough for us to be competitive, but anything more specific than that simply has very little search activity. My suggestion is to just optimize all of them for "pregnancy discrimination lawsuit". My understand of how Panda works is that if the content is different on each page (and it is!) then it will only display what it guesses is the most relevant "NLRB" post, but any link juice sent to the other 19 "NLRB" posts would still boost the relevancy for whatever post Google chooses. And it wouldn't get dinged as keyword stuffing because it's clearly not just the same page repeated over and over. I've found quite a few articles on Keyword Cannibalization but many are pre-Panda. I was CERTAIN I'd seen a post that explained my idea is a totally viable and good one, but of course now I can't find it. So before I go full steam ahead with this strategy I just want to make sure there's nothing I'm missing. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CEDRSolutions0 -
Google drop down - keyword gone, why?
Hi guys, i received traffic off a yearly based term, this year for '2013' i noticed it is nowhere near what the yearly term was for the year before. I believe that Google has stopped the yearly term appearing in a drop-down menu from a big volume related term, my question is how do they determine what goes in the drop down menu for related/relevant searches?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Two Pics, one bit of Text single anchor link?
Hi thereGurus, sorry Aspirants ;-), I have a really nice looking menu used in my standard page template that has some SEO issues now due to possibly causing 'too many onsite links' penalty/downgrade on some of my bigger pages going >120 links. Wanting to keep the nice menu, I want to work around the issues if possible. The menu is comprised of 7 buttons with various keywords pertinent to the site. On the menu, hovering over the keyword in a button eg 'Technology' causes this button with word inside to do an animated slide down and a picture representative of 'Technology' to appear where the button was with the original button directly below it, which then a side menu slides out of to the right to reveal 5 anchor links that represent the 'Technology' menu category. The first option in this sub-menu is supposed to have the same anchor link as the description image and the button/button text that being it is like a category description. Trouble I am having is that the slide out menu requires a separate div for javascript reasons. I have one anchor covering the button and the pop-up image, but then I need a second anchor for the first line of the slide out menu (otherwise fails W3C). This is adding 7 duplicate anchors to the page on a e-Commerce page that already has too many anchors IMHO. I read in HTML5 you can have an anchor holding a div inside, but how about an un'd div? The next four items on the slide out menu go to other anchor links so it first anchor needs to end prior to these, hence halfway through a div. Is there another way of making multiple items (across div boundaries etc) only go to/count as one single anchor link? Thanks for your help, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
SEO Ecommerce Keywords
Hi guys got a question regarding ecommerce seo do you think its a better idea to target more long tail terms and try get links directly to product pages, brand pages and categories. Rather than focus on short keywords that do bring in good traffic but are very broad, i will prob do both, but i would like a second opinion please about other users strategies thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Will_Craig0 -
Missing Suite Number on Google
I realized that we are missing a suite number. It is not on the website or the recently updated Google/Bing/Yahoo revisions I did. Should I go and fix? Or should I go and adjust old listings. Does a suite number matter in the NAP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770