What is the best way to make use of internal anchor text links without appearing to be a 'spammy' webpage?
-
I've recently been spending some time going through all the content on our website, henstuff.com, adding internal anchor text links to product copy with the link following back to the product's generic catagory. I've been focusing on the search term 'hen party accessories', but have also been using 'hen do accessories' and 'hen night accessories'.
I know that internal linking has value when it comes to SEO and rankings, but was keen to find roughly at what point usage of a certain search term for anchor links is seen as spam by the engines. Is there a certain formula to follow when it comes to internal anchor text links?
You can see some examples at:
http://www.henstuff.com/hen-night-accessories/hen-party-accessories/willy-bubbles
http://www.henstuff.com/hen-night-accessories/hen-party-devil-horns/hen-night-pink-devil-horns
Many thanks
Oli
-
Great answers thanks. In terms of where to link to, is it necessary to divide equally between different pages on the website, or does it help for SEO purposes to have lots of links to one particular page?
-
I agree with Mark, that seems like a safe ratio. I also suggest mixing up your anchor texts with synonyms and reworded phrases if it still sounds logical. For instance "cat toys", "toys for cats" "toys made for cats" etc. While some people are concerned about the internal anchor texts and overdoing it, you need to think about the user. If clear and distinct anchor text is good for conversions and helps your visitors find what they are looking for, you should do it.
That should also give you an idea of how many links are good. 5+ links in each paragraph or content would be confusing for users, and bad for SEO.
-
Thanks for that! For instance, I've added inlinks to around 45 products thus far, with just over 20 each for 'hen party accessories' and 'hen night accessories', is that a correct sort of balance?
And also, is it detrimental to have lots of internal links back to one specific page?
-
I try and keep it to 1 link every 300 words (or page) and I mix up the anchor text so its not always the same to prevent it from looking spammy.
Rememeber you need to link across all your pages, not just have a load of anchor text links heading to the home page
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
-
Linking Out To External Sites
Hi, All If I have created a (website, logo, email campaign) for a client and written an article about it with screen shots on my website and link to them with a (do-follow) link how does Google see the (do-follow) link? Regards to the sites they have one link in the footer on the home page, which is a (do-follow) back to our site. Also, the websites are not in my Niche.
On-Page Optimization | | deskjet0 -
Can I use the same text in my meta description as I put in my post excerpt?
Hi, I'm just trying to understand the right way to optimise my blog posts and this is likely a dumb question... but to what extent should the text in my meta description differ from the text in my post excerpts? cheers, Andrew
On-Page Optimization | | seowhiskey0 -
Not using H1's with keywords to simulate natural non SEO'd content?
There has been a lot of talk lately about making a website seem like it is not SEO'd to avoid over optimization penalties with the recent Google Algorithmic updates. Has anyone come across the practice of not using Headings (H1's, H2's etc..) properly to simulate that the current webpage isn't over optimized? I've come across a site that used to use multiple keywords within their headings & now they are using none. In fact they are marking their company name & logo as an H1 and non keyworded H2's such as our work or Contact. Is anyone holding back on their old SEO tactics to not seem over optimized to Google? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | DCochrane0 -
What is the best way to integrate our blog into our ecommerce website?
Hi all, We run an eCommerce website at www.oursite.com plus a blog (including news / articles / reviews / how-to guides etc.) at blog.oursite.com (those aren't really our site URLs, BTW ;-). For SEO reasons previously discussed on here, and for ease of use for our customers / browsers, we now want to integrate the two more closely. This will mean: Our blog will move to www.oursite.com/blog We will try to feature the blog content in places where it is relevant to customers (so e.g. news and blog posts about shoes would appear on our shoes category page, a review of some Adidas XL1000 shoes would appear on the Adidas XL1000 shoes product page) The blog is currently run on a wordpress.com site, so we'll need a new CMS (or wordpress.org) to get more control of the data. My issues are that, although it's good from a users point of view, having blog articles appear in lots of different places on the site might cause issues with duplicate content from a search engine's point of view. Has anyone got any pointers on how to integrate the two in a way that will make most use of the good original content coming out of our blog, while not "watering it down" by spreading it around too much? Can anyone point to examples of shops that do this well? Is there any software (other than Wordpress) that people would recommend using? As always, any help greatly appreciated! Alex
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
Best Way to Add Google Map to Site
My site is built with WordPress. I want to add our business location in the contact page using Google Map. What is the best way to do this? There is many plugins out there for Word Press do I need to use one ? Hopw about Webmaster tools, does it need to be submit somewhere in there? When it is done properly, will Google show our store location with a map in Goolgle search results? I saw some store result showing the map & business hours, How to do this? Thank you for your help. BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050 -
What is the best way to manage industry required duplicate Important Safety Information (ISI) content on every page of a site?
Hello SEOmozzer! I have recently joined a large pharmaceutical marketing company as our head SEO guru, and I've encountered a duplicate content related issue here that I'd like some help on. Because there is so much red tape in the pharmaceutical industry, there are A LOT of limitations on website content, medication and drug claims, etc. Because of this, it is required to have Important Safety Information (ISI) clearly stated on every page of the client's website (including the homepage). The information is generally pretty lengthy, and in some cases is longer than the non-ISI content on each page. Here is an example: http://www.xifaxan.com/ All content under the ISI header is required on each page. My questions are: How will this duplicated content on each page affect our on-page optimization scores in the eyes of search engines? Is Google seeing this simply as duplicated content on every page, or are they "smart" enough to understand that because it is a drug website, this is industry standard (and required)? Aside from creating more meaty, non-ISI content for the site, are there any other suggestions you have for handling this potentially harmful SEO situation? And in case you were going to suggest it, we cannot simply have an image of the content, as it may not be visible by all internet users. We've already looked into that 😉 Thanks in advance! Dylan
On-Page Optimization | | MedThinkCommunications0 -
Post Title - Use the blog's name or not?
In the tile of my post, shoudl I used my blog's name in it at the end or emit the blog name. EX: title of post with keywords | name of blog OR EX: title of post with keywords The site's name is 3 words long, so I'm worrying that those extra words are diluting the keywords in the post's name that I'm trying to target.
On-Page Optimization | | gregalam0 -
Link Product Thumb & Product Name with same anchor link?
We have an issue on one of our sites we're monitoring a campaign for that seems to have TOO many links on each page. I think the biggest reason is that each product listing on each category page has two separate anchor links into that page. One for the thumb and one for the name. So even though there should only be 60-70 links on each category page, that amount is being inflated because each product listing technically is being split into two separate links. Question is, should I place the thumbnail and name within the same anchor link? We do this on a lot of other sites we operate, but I'm not sure what's a better strategy. It would seem to me that it would be better to have a single anchor link that shares the thumb and product name.
On-Page Optimization | | AarcMediaGroup0