Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com (google penguin)?
-
I have a couple of partial match domains in the format KEYOWRDdiscount.com and also the website name resembles domain name.
"Car Discount" is not my website but just an example to illustrate:
Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com?
Should I try to modify existing external anchor texts to "CarDiscount" or "CarDiscount.com" instead of "Car Discount"Do you know of any cases where such anchor texts coinciding with partial match domain were likely reason for penguin penalization?
Thanks.
-
Andy, James: thanks for your input and suggestions.
-
Daniel, have a look at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
and read some of the responses... this will give you some ideas
-
I think Google is smart enough to recognize that one of your top anchor text terms is your actual brand name but may still penalize you if those links are coming from spammy sites.
-
http://www.cardiscount.com is as safe as you'll get in this case. If you can't get that term, than vary what you can to words other than "car" "discount", but with similar intent; eg. auto deals, auto incentives, special automobile rates, vehicle cost reductions... the types of anchor text one might see naturally. If you try to game Google, the algo will likely recognize it
*this is one of the dangers of having a keyword rich domain name
-
Andy, thanks for sharing.
The special point here is that "Car Discount", "CarDiscount" and "CarDiscount.com" are actually the most natural anchor texts that an independent site owner may choose apart from full URL anchor you mentioned.
To give some context, I do not plan to build now many links with exactly this same anchor text. But these 3 anchor texts are actually the most frequent that other websites have chosen to link to me.
So my doubt is now, whether there is need for action and whether I should reach out to other websites to change the anchor text, if my aim is to rank well for "Car". Actually I dropped significantly in ranking on one of my sites for "Car" keyword, so I wonder whether it may be related (even though for date of ranking change it may rather be panda than penguin).
Also any experience whether CarDiscount or CarDiscount.com maybe better than "Car Discount"?
-
Good points Andre
Google sometimes does gets confused with emd's combined with exact match backlink anchor text. I once had a domain (I sold the name and website) where I hadn't done any backlinking; it was strictly a non-monetized information site. It had the words "cellphone" and "barcode" in the domain name, and it naturally got "cellphone" "barcode" type anchor text backlinks. ---> it got hit by the 1st iteration of Penguin and traffic dropped by over 50%. The backlink portfolio was predominately exact match anchor text. People need to be extra careful with emd's now IF they are deemed to be keyword rich by the algo. Kraft or Michelin are not keyword rich, but something like "CarDiscount" might be
-
I've always wondered about that...
I think that especially for commercial terms, you would want to diversify your anchor profile were possible.
But then you have a case were the brand name is not commercial, in this case i would think using your brand name in your anchor is best.
I remember cleaning up our link profile by changing commercial anchor text to just using our brand name which helped, but then what about the exact match domains? Does this apply for them as well? Is it possible to have a "brand" with a term like "Cardiscount.com" without Google mistaking it for a commercial term?
As you say, mix and match is the best approach just a bit confusing building a brand when the brand itself is a commercial term.
Greg
-
You'll want to make sure you have 'varied' anchor text for your backlinks. Too many of one type will be seen as 'unnatural'by Google and may result in less than rewarding behaviour by the algo.
Lately (since Penguin) many have found it safer to focus on the most natural anchor text backlinks, for example, http://www.domainname.com.
Having an exact match domain name and matching backlink anchor text is a recipe for trouble.
There are many posts and articles about Penguin and exact match domains, which you may want to look over to be certain this advice is the best for your situation.
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
-
Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags
Given that google have stated that duplicate content is not penalised is this really something that will give sufficient benefits for the time involved?Also, reading some of the articles on moz.com they seem very ambivalent about its use – for example http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questionsWill any page with a canonical link normally NOT be indexed by google?Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
How to structure links on a "Card" for maximum crawler-friendliness
My question is how to best structure the links on a "Card" while maintaining usability for touchscreens. I've attached a simple wireframe, but the "card" is a format you see a lot now on the web: it's about a "topic" and contains an image for the topic and some text. When you click the card it links to a page about the "topic". My question is how to best structure the card's html so google can most easily read it. I have two options: a) Make the elements of the card 2 separate links, one for the image and one for the text. Google would read this as follows. //image
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich
[](/target URL) //text
<a href=' target="" url'="">Topic</a href='> b) Make the entire "Card" a link which would cause Google to read it as follows: <a></a> <a>Bunch of div elements that includes anchor text and alt-image attributes above along with a fair amount of additional text.</a> <a></a> Holding UX aside, which of these options is better purely from a Google crawling perspective? Does doing (b) confuse the bot about what the target page is about? If one is clearly better, is it a dramatic difference? Thanks! PwcPRZK0 -
Does my website have an Exact Match Domain or a "brand"?
I'd like to get some input from the Moz community about the domain name I use on a travel website I run as a hobby. I got heavily whacked by an update in September 2012 which some have said was because my site is an EMD. Others said it was because I had poor quality backlinks (but in fact I hardly had any). With the benefit of hindsight, I'd love to know what really happened. The website is www.traveltipsthailand.com (now www.asiantraveltips.com) and the "brand" I use is "Travel Tips Thailand.The traffic penalty I incurred was around 80% and despite a LOT of work overhauling the site and trying to build some better quality links, I don't believe it has really recovered much. It ranks for non-competitive, low-traffic key phrases (which means it's not penalised as such), but struggles to rank anywhere meaningful on any phrase likely to drive traffic to the site. At this stage I really just want to know whether to persist with the site (it's heartbreaking, to be honest) or drop it an build something new from scratch. I monitor the site's progress using Moz Pro, so I can see all the search ranking, authority and backlink data. 5254ab15dcaa91-52423790
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
What counts as a "deeper level" in SEO?
Hi, I am trying to make our site more crawlable and get link juice to the "bottom pages" in an ecommerce site. Currently, our site has a big mega menu - and we have: Home > CAT 1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
SUBCAT 1
SUBSUBCAT 1
PRODUCT Our URL Structure looks:
www.domain.com/cat1/subcat1/subsubcat1/ and here are the links to the products but the URL's look like: www.domain.com/product.html Obviously the ideal thing would be to cut out one of the CATEGORIES. But I may be unable to do that in the short term - so I was wondering if by taking CAT1 out of the equation - e.g., just make it a static item that allows the drop down menu to work, but no page for it - Does that cut out a level? Thanks, Ben0 -
Is text that is burned into the code stronger than text that is retrieved from the DB?
Hi, Do you think that texts that are written inside the file's source code get more attention / more credit from Google than texts that are brought from the DB? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How are pages ranked when using Google's "site:" operator?
Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
What metrics is Google looking for to classify a websites as a "Store" or "Brand"
Our company is both a store and brand as we sell manufacture direct. We are not included in Google's "Related Searches for widgets:" Picture attached as reference (we are not selling computers ... just an example) What is Google looking for to pull these brands and stores? hXSLn.gif
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tatermarketing0