Can Silos and Exact Anchor Text In Links Hurt a Site Post Penguin?
-
Just got a client whose site dropped from a PR of 3 to zero. This happened shortly after the Penguin release, June, 2012.
Examining the site, I couldn't find any significant duplicate content, and where I did find duplicate content (9%), a closer look revealed that the duplication was totally coincidental (common expressions). Looking deeper, I found no sign of purchased links or linking patterns that would hint at link schemes, no changes to site structure, no change of hosting environment or IP address. I also looked at other factors, too many to mention here, and found no evidence of black hat tactics or techniques.
The site is structured in silos, "services", "about" and "blog". All page titles that fall under services are categorized (silo) under "services", all blog entries are categorized under "blogs", and all pages with company related information are categorized under "about". When exploring the site's links in Site Explorer (SE), I noticed that SE is identifying the "silo" section of links (i.e. services, about, blog, etc.) and labeling it as an anchor text. For example, domain.com/(services)/page-title, where the page title prefix (silo), "/services/", is labeled as an anchor text. The same is true for "blog" and "about". BTW, each silo has its own navigational menu appearing specifically for the content type it represents. Overall, though there's plenty of room for improvement, the site is structured logically.
My question is, if Site Explorer is picking up the silo (services) and identifying it as an anchor text, is Google doing the same? That would mean that out of the 15 types of service offerings, all 15 links would show as having the same exact anchor text (services). Can this type of site structure (silo) hurt a website post Penguin?
-
Hello EGOL, thanks for the resources. I bookmarked both for later reference, especially the article written by Marie Haynes.
I like to take a moment and update my findings. Earlier this morning, as I explored the subject site's hosting environment, I found several backup copies of the site stored in "/home/alias". On a local host I restored the last backup and found that it did in fact undergo a restructuring of the URL's, not once but several times. Without looking further I suspect the site went through several (8) phases of restructuring and all within a period of 8 months making for linking and fluctuations in the SERP's.
This leads to another question which I posted here on this forum.
-
Hello Cody, and thank you for responding to my question. Yes, I've examined all inbound links and the inbound links of the link grantors and found no purchased or low quality links on their sites.
-
Here's Matt Cutts on internal anchor text...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ
Check out this YouMoz post for penguin and panda information...
-
I wouldn't think so. I have several sites that are 50,000+ pages with exact match links in the menu and footer that haven't had any problems.
Have you looked to see if any of the sites linking to that site have obvious purchased links?
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
-
Massive Influx of Total Links - But External Links are Dropping?
Hey Moz Community, I was checking out the Links on one of my client's sites, as they were hit with spammy external links about a year ago, and noticed a large influx of Total Links to the site. According to Moz, external links have actually dropped over the last few months, so I can only assume they are internal links. But, I don't see how my client could add so many internal links over the past 5 months, as they don't do much besides upload new products (they're an ecommerce clothing retailer) via Shopify. They haven't added much over the past half year either. Total links were about 130K in Oct 2019; today, the site has almost 1 million. I've attached some screenshots for reference via Moz to better illustrate the issue. Appreciate any insights into this. Thank you in advance! hhCCUsk lyGltZD
Technical SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Selling same products under separate brands and can't consolidate sites...duplicate content issues?
I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites. Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website. What would you do?
Technical SEO | | jluke.fusion0 -
Will a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for a specific niche being seen as negative by google for too many links?
SEO newbie here, I'm thinking about creating a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for my specific niche. It'd be 300 links or more, but with comments, and categorized nicely. It'd be a useful resource for my target audience to bookmark, and share. Will google see this as a negative? If so, what's the best way to do such a blog post? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ericzou0 -
Off-site company blog linking to company site or blog incorporated into the company site?
Kind of a SEO newbie, so be gentle. I'm a beginner content strategist at a small design firm. Currently, I'm working with a client on a website redesign. Their current website is a single page dud with a page authority of 5. The client has a word press blog with a solid URL name, a domain authority of 100 and page authority of 30. My question is this: would it be better for my client from an SEO perspective to: Re-skin their existing blog and link to the new company website with it, hopefully passing on some of its "Google Juice,"or... Create a new blog on their new website (and maybe do a 301 redirect from the old blog)? Or are there better options that I'm not thinking of? Thanks for whatever help you can give a newbie. I just want to take good care of my client.
Technical SEO | | TheKatzMeow0 -
Links below linking (not sitelinks)
Hi All, Please can you let me know the name and / or point me at an article / blog / directory on how best to achieve additional links under a search engine listing (I don't mean site links) e.g. I do a search for 'home insurance' on Google.co.uk and under the listing for Compare the Market it has - home insurance, building insurance and landlords insurance. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Vodafone0 -
Confused on footer links (Which are best practices for footer links on other websites?)
Hello folks, We are eCommerce web design and Development Company and we give do follow links of our website to every projects which we have done with specific keywords. So now the concern is we are seeing huge amount of back-links are being generated from single root domain for particular keyword in webmaster tools. So what should be the best way to practice this? Should we give no follow attribute to it or can use our company logo with link? LtMjHER.png
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Merging multiple sites and contacting linking domains
This is strictly academic but I am having a friendly debate and I am hoping you guys could help me. If I decided that I wanted to merge several websites into a single new URL doing everything I am supposed to (page to page 301 redirects, etc), will I still need to reach out to those important websites that link to my different sites to have them change the links and anchor text to point to the new site? I know that 90% of the link juice is supposed to transfer and that you are SUPPOSED to contact linking domains, but is it really worth it, especially if there are literally hundreds of sites to contact?
Technical SEO | | Mike_Davis0 -
Feedburner - Why Sending My Blog Posts A Day After I Post Them?
I have my feed setup through feedburner for my wife's blog ktlouise.com. Whenever she posts a new blog post, it doesn't get emailed to her subscribers until the next day. Does anyone know how to change this so that the updates go out the same day? Thanks for the help! REF
Technical SEO | | FergusonSEO0