Bad links or poor content?
-
Hi all
I have a meeting with our seo company tomorrow.... Our sites have dropped considerably for our main keywords. My opinion is that the links that have been built for us have focused on too few anchor text and many "money making" keywords. Also to deep pages rather than the home page. They are saying it's poor content (I guess they would). We copyscape check all content before putting live.
Has anyone any evidence I could present to them to back up my argument?
-
Hi
We had top listings for the main anchor text used, these are the terms which we have dropped out all together for....
The drop happened on the 28th Sept...
-
Another thing you can do is take a look at your analytics sorted by organic search traffic. Then, take the dates of the known Panda updates and Penguin updates and see if any of them correlate to the time of your traffic drop. If it correlates to Panda then it's a content issue, and if it correlates to Penguin it's a links issue.
It could be both though...if you've got 70% of your links having keyword anchor text this is a risk for Penguin.
Another thing you can do is sort your analytics according to anchor text. Let's say your top search term was "blue widgets". If your organic traffic for "blue widgets" dropped drastically after April 24 then it's likely Penguin.
But it's tough to know though as there were Panda updates on either side of Penguin.
-
Yep - thank you.
-
That is far too high Jason - with 300 links, I would want to see no more than 15-30 using that anchor text alone. There should be variations such as:
- New mobility scooters
- Used mobility scooters
- Mobility scooter review
- Best mobility scooters
- Mobility scooter parts
- Electric mobility scooters
Then take some of these longer such as:
- Where you can buy mobility scooters
- If you need a mobility scooter
You get the idea
Andy
-
An example being "mobility scooters" anchor text forms 209 links out of a total of 318.....
-
Then I would be looking for that to diversify in some order. If you had 100 links, to have 5-10 with the same anchor text is acceptable, as long as they form part of a sentence. You don't really want links that just sit there on their own amongst other links and that serve no real purpose. There are exceptions to this rule, however.
Would have to see some to give you more of an idea.
Andy
-
I've used the Open Site Explorer and it's showing that in some cases 70% of the links are based on one anchor text...
-
Try Open Site Explorer here Jason.
Also, building links to a wide selection of pages, and not all to the home page, is a positive, not a negative. However, diverse anchor texts and related referring sites play a big part in this and as long as a link has a good reason to exist on a page, I am sure Google will see this as a plus.
Andy
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
-
Spam Links
Hi everyone, I've just joined the Moz community and after completing our first site crawl I've discovered that we have approximately 200 links with a spam score of over 50%. Should I just disavow all these links or is their a formula to deciding which links to disavow? Thanks in Advance Steve
Link Building | | StevenWalley0 -
Bad Links to New Domain - Do I Disavow?
About 2 months ago a new client of mine bought a domain and we built him a nice new site; however, it appears the previous owner of the domain used some spammy SEO tactics. I've had to redirect about 30 pages and now I've found some spammy links. I've only discovered a few of them, but he doesn't have that many links yet so I'm wondering what kind of impact this will have. Is it worth disavowing a half dozen links? The sites are in Chinese and appear to be unmanaged link farms so getting the webmaster to remove them is unlikely. Also wondering what else is lurking out there that I haven't discovered yet... I suggested to the client we consider a different domain since the site is new, but he's become pretty attached to it. Any ideas?
Link Building | | Dino640 -
Linking to press coverage, reciprocal links?
We have been generating decent online press coverage with links to our site thanks to our PR agency and I have been asked to link to the online coverage from our website in a 'press coverage' section. My question is would google consider links from our site to the online press coverage as reciprocal links? Thanks
Link Building | | gavinr
Gavin0 -
How much time does it take for the links to be forwarded to redirected link?
Hi there,
Link Building | | MoeezLodhi
Thank you for taking out some time for this question; I have changed the permalinks last week for a website.. I forgot to redirect old permalinks to the new one.. So I did 301 redirection, it has been 4-5 days since I did that but the links are not forwarded to the new Permalink so far.
How much time should I wait for the links to be forwarded to the new permalinks? Secondly, I am sure I have done the 301 redirect correctly, as when I go to the old url / permalink it directs me to the new permalink. So I am sure 301 is done correctly. Do I need to submit the sitemap again?0 -
Content Marketing - Getting Webmaster to Link to Article
Hello, We're doing a niche article and we want to do a link building campaign around it. I'm not as interested in being linked to in resource sections - that will happen - but my question is for other links. What types of links am I looking for, is it guest posts - is that the best? If so, how do convince them to allow a guest post around an article? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Penguin Recover: Remove links vs Burry Links
The best is to do both. However with those with limited resources, would building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links be a better solution than painstakingly asking every webmaster to remove links.
Link Building | | reprisemedia10 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Link Churn - where have all my links gone?
I am sure most of you have asked yourself the question I'm asking right now.. Where have all my links gone? I am starting to get twitchy now. I would estimate we have lost around 60% of our links in the past 3 weeks. Does anyone have any comeback stories? Feel like I am back to the start again. I have made a number of changes on the site not least removing a reciprical link page.. that had over 200 links on it but from reading one of Rand's tweets is it true that linking out could be good again?
Link Building | | robertrRSwalters0