Do we know if inbalanced anchor text distribution also applies to internal links?
-
I have the pages of my site linked together very well with editorial links in my copy and blog posts. But now I'm starting to wonder post-penguin if it's a problem if all my internal links to a certain page have the same anchor text? Or is my internal link juice not powerful enough to set off a red flag? I don't think I've seen this addressed anywhere or if we even know the answer to this or can only speculate.
-
That's a good theory. It's not like I've loaded internal links in every other sentence of every blog post. I only did it where it would help the customer by giving them more information. Between all my blog posts, I think each post ranges from 0-4 links, 4 being a rare occasion, one or two being the most common. I guess I'm not too worried, since post-penguin we are now #1.
-
This is a great question, and from some posts I've seen it seems that plugins like SEO Smart Links have caused issues with Penguin: http://www.itechcode.com/2012/05/19/vital-seo-tips-after-penguin-algorithm-update/
So I would say yes. Be careful using things like SEO Smart Links or KB Linker, as they can cause you to unnaturally link certain words all the time, in a way that is not good for user experience either.
It's harder when you are talking navigation, etc, but I posit (and I have no proof of this) that menus and such are not as at-risk to be hit with Penguin as overdone in context links.
As we always say, what would users expect to see? Give them that.
Hope this helps
-
Hi Marisa,
This is a good question and one I could only really speculate on but here is my thinking:
We know that Google likes links to be natural (or at least look natural) hence the focus on over-optimization in the recent update. So it would be natural to assume that Google will be looking for the same thing with internal links. This then raises the question what would look natural for internal links? Of course, as the website owner has control over the internal links, it would be safe to assume that most (if not all) internal links are going to have the same anchor text. This is just natural. However, external links are completely different and it would certainly look unnatural if all the anchors were the same commercial term.
Anyway, that's my thoughts.
Adam.
-
Hi Marisa,
from everything I've read about Penguin and it is quite a bit I would practice the same best practices for internal links as I did for external links. Never make a link over 115 characters is the rule from Google I would just make sure you avoid them thinking your keyword stuffing even though you most likely are just building your site correctly. On page anchor text aside from the length are not yet part of Penguin. Here's a list of some of the on page things they look for.
- Pages Where The Title is Missing or Empty* Duplicate Page Content Analysis* Duplicate Page Title Analysis* Pages That have Long URLs (> 115 characters)* Overly-Dynamic URL Analysis* Meta Refresh Analysis* Pages Where the Title Element is Too Short* Pages Where the Title Element is Too Long (> 70 Characters)* Pages Containing Too Many On-Page Links* Missing Meta Description Tag Analysis* Robots.txt Analysis* Meta-robots Nofollow Analysis* Meta-robots Analysis* Canonical Tags Analysis* Indexed URLs Analysis* Total URLs Receiving Traffic* Total Keywords Sending Traffic
I will look in detail for you on this and get a much better answer I apologize things are hectic right now.
Sincerely,
Thomas von Zickell
-
Thanks. That's good basic information about anchor text in general, but says nothing about how it relates to Penguin.
-
I hope this helps http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link
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
-
Multiple Common Page Links
Hi everyone - I've taken over SEO for a site recently. In many cases, the reasons why something was done were not well documented. One of these is that on some pages, there are lists of selections. Each selection takes the user to a particular page. On the list page, there is often a link from an image, a name, and a couple of others. Each page often has 30 items with 4 links each. For some reason, the 4th of these internal links were no-followed. When I run this site through several different site evaluation tools, they are all troubled with the number of no-follow links on the site. (These instances from above add up to a 5 figure number). From a user perspective, I totally get why there is a link where each of these links exist. If I wanted to click on the image or the name or some other attribute, that totally makes sense. Its my understanding that Google / Bing are only going to consider the 1st instance. If this creates excessive links, wouldn't you want 3 of the 4 links in each set no-followed? If its only excessive unique links that really matter, then why would any be nofollowed.
Technical SEO | | APFM0 -
Sitemap links
Hi, I´m running a sitemap using pro-sitemaps and I find several pages that shouldn´t be listed. How do I find how are these pages being generated? Can´t find the links the robot is following to get to those pages..
Technical SEO | | ceci27100 -
No follow links on a blog
Hi On our blog, we have a section called 'Tags'. I have just noticed that these links are all "no follow" links. The tags section does appear on every single page on the blog - is this recommend to have them as 'no follow' links or should I get our developer to change them. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Cant find internal links on one of my pages.
When I run open site explorer for www.kingremodeling.com/ss.php?pid=5 it says there are 40 links to it on my site. However, I cannot find these links on any of the pages that open site explorer lists such as my homepage www.KingRemodeling.com. Totally confused!
Technical SEO | | allb830 -
Image Alt Text: Do I Need to Link my Image for it to Count?
Hi I learned from a very senior SEO that I must link my images if I want Google to read my alt tag for my images. I don't believe this though... is it true? If the answer is not true (which I suppose it is), then maybe you can help me answer this: 1. was he confused or why would he tell me this? 2. i didn't know what i should do so now, whenever i embed an image on my blog posts, i just link them to the blog post in which the image shows... in essence, by clicking the image, the page gets refreshed. does this sound like a good strategy for images? thanks in advance!!!
Technical SEO | | seo.owl0 -
Jquery image - hidden text?
I'm working on a site that has a jquery image rotation. Wondering if how the developer set it up is consider blackhat or spammy at all. The jquery has 3 images that rotate. Each image has text in it - which is then placed in a H1 or H2 tag behind the images. When viewing the site with images and javascript turned off it looks like the text is the same color as the background and not lined up nicely so that it is visible to anyone who has images and javascript turned off. Let me know if this is a bad practice. If so, what is the best practice to handle this? If the text were another color and aligned neatly visible behind the image would it be safe? Should we just be using an image alt tag instead? What about losing the H1, H2 power then? Any other suggestions for improving the SEO for jquery image rotations where important text appears? I can PM the site URL if you want to take a look. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | IvieDigital0 -
#hashtag Anchor text within content
Hi, i have a question about anchor text within my sites content. It 'jumps' to content displayed further down the page via a side navigation at the top. These links don't take you away to any other page, instead take you further down the page to the relavent content. My question is this: I've noticed in the URL that the anchor text - #jumpnavlink is placed at the end of the pages URL like so.. www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php#jumpnavlink Is this creating a problem for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | SeoSheikh
Is it creating a new URL for viewers to use?
Is it ok to have lots of these running throughout my sites content pages? Many thanks for any light that is shed on this one! Cheers
Alex0 -
Competition links make no sense
Hello everybody, I used the open site explorer to check where my competitor has links and try to put mine there too. However I am extremely confused with the results. Eg the first link to my competitor coming from a domain with authority 91, is a download file. The other one is a link from ups, the courier service. When I click on it I get an access denied.The other one comes from samsung and when I click on it, I download an swf file. Next one, fcc.gov and it downloads a wp file. If I keep clicking on these links, in the end I am going to get a virus or something and learn nothing about what my competitor does. Any one have a clue how they managed to get linked like that?
Technical SEO | | polyniki0