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
-
Why do SEO agencies ask for access to our Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager?
What do they need GTM for? And what is the use case for setting up Google Search Console?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NBJ_SM0 -
"near me" campaign
I'm looking at running a campaign to get a site ranking for terms that include "near me" so for instance, "personal trainers near me", "yoga lessons near me" I'm wondering if this should be a local campaign because of the the "near me" in the term and Google basing results on IP addresses of the searcher (if that's possible possible instead of town names) or will it come down to words on the page including "near me" Any help or examples would be hugely appreciated, thanks community!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Link Building And Anchor Text Placement
Hi everyone, I can't seem to find a concrete answer on how anchor text is going, so I'm hoping you all can shed some light on it. We were asked to do a few guest blog posts, and I wanted to figure out what's the most effective way to use the backlinks. Granted, I know user experience is most important, but since we have control over the topic, I can tailor it so that won't be a problem. Other than user experience, how should I approach it? Things I'm considering: 1. Should I use branded text or keyword text? Kemp & Ruge Law Group vs car accident attorney? I've seen some reports of exact match anchor text causing some penalties, but I'm thinking that's for like thousands of links. We barely have any. 2. Should we point the links to our homepage to help our domain authority or to the page with the keyword phrase we want to rank higher? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Anchor Text Usage
Hi, I have used anchor text more heavily. I built over 80 links so far, all are quality links like press releases & social bookmarks. I used to be ranking on #7 page for my keywords, then all of sudden i am not even on 50th page. Is this is because of Anchor text usage? Now should i remove those links or dilute my anchor texts by getting more links with different anchor texts. This is because the keyword i am targetting is pretty tough. So i think 80 links is not good enough. Let me know your thoughts. Here is the screenshot of the links i got so far which i think valuable. And the rest are social bookmarks. http://screencast.com/t/TJiDOanxnfZ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitt0 -
Company name often shows in anchor text (important keyword phrase within), can this impact ranking?
Hi everyone, My company is called "Hawaii Job Engine" - www.hawaiijobengine.com - and many sites that link to my site use my company name as anchor text "Hawaii Job Engine". I have heard Google may devalue a certain keyword phrase if used too often in anchor text. Does this mean I may, over time, get a poor ranking for the term "Hawaii Job" since that phrase is part of my company's name. Or, will search engines easily notice it is my company name and therefore it will not have a negative impact on rankings? Example: if the anchor text leading to my company's homepage is company's name 95% of the time (on authoritative sites) could this be an issue? I don't know the %, but just to establish if there may be in % levels to keep in mind. thank you, Kristian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1 -
Is my "term & conditions"-"privacy policy" and "About Us" pages stealing link juice?
should i make them no follow? or is this a bogus method?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0