Ask a QuestionBacklink Anchor Text Profile
-
I'm looking to clean up my back link profile as we have a Google penalty for unnatural linking. Any pointers on what I should be looking for in terms of what makes a link bad? We have a massive percentage of links under the anchor text of "workwear" and this is the keyword we have the penalty for. Is it better to get the links removed or the anchor text changed? Thanks
-
That looks like a penalty to me.
-
Daniel sorry for your negative experience. Not all SEO company's work that way.
It is a great idea to first try to get those links removed yourself, but if you cannot, Google has recently released a disavow tool, which allows you to tell Google what links you want to disavow from your website. Here is the URL to the disavow tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Hope this helps.
-
Hi, thanks all. We actually employed a so called reputable seo firm to improve our rankings and 12 months on and several thousand pounds lighter this is what we are left with. I've noticed that many of the sites are almost identical in terms of their design and domain name. Even some ip addresses are the same so it looks like a content farm to me. I think I'm better trying to get them removed, hopefully some key somewhere can delete our site from their db and remove all of them in one go, it's never that easy tho I suppose. Amazing that you can give people money in good faith to promote your site and secure quality links and this is what we and up with. Thanks for your input tho guys
-
Hi Daniel,
If you have a penalty for "workwear", most likely many of the links that have the anchor text "workwear" were built unnaturally. I would anaylize all of your links with this anchor text and remove the ones that are unnatural or spammy.
Google implemented this penalty to find unnatural link building tactics from bad sites, and one easy way to spot unnatural link building is if an anchor text is repeated. Google uses this measure because that is not how a quality website link to another website. Quality links do not have a standard anchor text, and the anchor text often includes the brand name.
The links that are worth keeping are the links from sites with a high domain and page authority and were not built automatically.
As a rule, the links that matter now and in the future are built by communicating with people and doing "link worthy things" not by pressing a submit button.
-
Well I guess my next question in that case is 'did you buy or source links from a link farm?!' My understanding is that it's very rare for there to be manual intervention in this fashion, and if you have received a penalty, it's probably for good reason.
Having looked through OSE there's nothing that's massively obvious (for me), but will probably be more obvious for you. Bear in mind that data in OSE could be some weeks old.
Cheers
Matt
-
The answer to if it's better to get the links removed or just change the anchor text is maybe to both. If there's an inbound link that seems spammy or doesn't really fit in well with the topic of your site (ex: your site is about cars, but a site about oranges is linking to you), then removing the link could be the better long term plan.
If it's a quality link from a credible source, you want to keep that link so look for anchor text diversity as far as the keywords used.
-
This is the latest message we have from them from webmaster tools. We never had an actual notification of a penalty but our 1st page ranking for Workwear dropped to page 20 overnight. All other rankings suffered as well:
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www../,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www../ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
-
Hi Daniel,
Have you received a notification from Google (in Webmaster tools) that they have penalised you? In theory, they should not penalise your website for receiving links from dodgy sources, just not pass on any link juice from the dodgy site.
If you think about it, why wouldn't every business just set about getting loads of dodgy links to their competitor's website? Then google will penalise their competitor and all will be good with the world, right? Wrong.
If you have not received an official notice from Google, it is very unlikely (near impossible) that you were penalised for getting spammy links.
If you're hell bent on checking backlinks, use SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer. This will tell you the domain authority of the websites you receive links from. I would cull any backlinks with extreme caution though... Domain authority may not tell you the whole story.
Good luck
Matt
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
-
Online press coverage: publications asking for fee to add backlink. Should I pay?
For the last few years I've been gaining steady backlinks for my clients by producing online press releases for them (e.g. publishing results of a survey they commissioned, or their expert opinion on recent news, etc). The online coverage included a backlink naturally or by me just asking the publication nicely. But recently I'm finding that publications are asking for a fee to publish the article (with a link) or they will publish the article for free, but will add a link for a fee. Note: these publications aren't link-building-sites, they're good DA sites such as https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/ and https://www.moneymagpie.com/ (MOZ DAs of 80 and 56 respectively). The fees are around $200 each. The clients can afford to pay for this type of coverage, but is there a risk in these cases with Google?
Link Building | | AndJH0 -
Alt text from an external site
We have a relevant external website that is linking to our site through an image. What ideally should the alt text of this image be? Should it just be non-commercial as generally advised with the anchor text of an external link? Or should it include where suitable relevant keywords? Keen to know people's thoughts here! Thanks.
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Does a text URL (without hyperlink) provide any SEO value?
Our clients use the link shortener of our service software to share their job offers. Sometime the job baords they post to do not allow hyperlink and thus post the url as text only. Do these url texts offer any benfits in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | rflores0 -
Should you "rel=nofollow" picture links if you also have anchor text going to same page?
On our pages we are having icons that link to different pages. In order to make it more user friendly we are also having some anchor text that also link to the same page as the icon. Is it bad to have two links pointing at the same page. We have multiple icons on the homepage and don't want to pass double of the link power! Thanks!!
Link Building | | Restore0 -
Should we Have Our Anchor Text Changed?
Unfortunately, we used a SEO company to do some link building for us and they used a lot of marketed keywords as anchor text instead of branded. About a month into the project, we saw a drop in ranking for those keywords. From what I've read, Google is cracking down on marketed keywords in anchor text (when it is done in a spammy looking way). I have contacted the company that did the work and they said they could update the anchor text. So my questions are: Should we asked them to change the anchor text to branded keywords or should we just leave them? 2) If we do have them changed, do you think Google will look at that as another spammy move? Any input would be great. Lesson learned not to used a reputable SEO company and for us not to monitor how they were submitting links. Ron
Link Building | | dustyabe0 -
Asking dealers for links if they sell your products:
Should you ask your dealers for links back to you? For example, if you are a laminate flooring manufacturer, should you ask all your retailers to link to you? If so, how do you go about it? Emails? A form letter? Should I create a page on the site for banners and let them grab the code? Any creative ideas would help.
Link Building | | kbloemendaal0 -
What do the "best" backlink profiles look like, in terms of percentages from quality content, bookmarks, social media, directories, etc?
I recognize that there is no such thing as one ideal link profile, per se, but I am curious, if you sampled 100 high authority sites, what would their inbound links look like on average, broken out by source type? Some sites would have a ton of social sharing due to their funny pop-cultural content, while others might be quoted and linked in context for their brilliant insights. A very technical resource might gain a lot of links from forum discussions. If I can complete this exercise on my own, I welcome your advice on how to do that with OSE or the like.
Link Building | | withoutthestress0 -
Asking other websites to link your website when the want to be in your directory
Hello, We have 3 web directories, and I wonder if it is legal for search engines to ask people who want to be in the directory to link to a particular website in order to be in our directory. I mean, it is free adding the url in the directory but if they lwant to be in the directory they have to ink to a website we have decided.
Link Building | | teconsite.com
Is this correct, or is punishable? Thanks!0