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
-
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Does Google differentiate between a site with spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack?
I've be tasked with figuring out how to recover our rankings as we are likely being hurt by an algorithmic penalty. I have no idea if this was the workings of a previously hired SEO or the result of negative SEO, **how does Google differentiate between a site with bad/spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack? **
Technical SEO | | Syed_Raza0 -
Do bad links to a sub-domain which redirects to our primary domain pass link juice and hurt rankings?
Sometime in the distant past there existed a blog.domain.com for domain.com. This was before we started work for domain.com. During the process of optimizing domain.com we decided to 301 blog.domain.com to www.domain.com. Recently, we discovered that blog.domain.com actually has a lot of bad links pointing towards it. By a lot I mean, 5000+. I am curious to hear people's opinions on the following: 1. Are they passing bad link juice? 2. does Google consider links to a sub-domain being passed through a 301 to be bad links to our primary domain? 3. The best approach to having these links removed?
Technical SEO | | Shredward0 -
Deeper Anchor Link Finding Tool?
Hi! We are still working on removing some paid backlinks from an old SEO company. Used Removeem.com which uses OpenSiteExplorer. Thought we had them all cleaned up. Removed many and disavowed the rest. Submitted a reconsideration request, but our amigos at Google said, "No, no no...." So, the example offending remaining link they gave us was xyzs.blogspot.com. However, the anchor text link that Open Site Explorer was just xyzs.com. Interestingly enough, Google told us to look at their list of links and this sample links was not even there. (neither version.) So, we signed up for majesticseo as it integrates wtih removem via api if you have an account, but that didn't really add any links. Is there a deeper tool we can use? Any ideas on how to locate some of these hard to find anchor links that Google is talking about? Any other tools out there? Thanks!! Craig
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Can anyone show me a good example of Microdata for a site
Hi, i am just learning about microdata after being told that it would be a good idea to have this for my site www.in2town.co.uk as i understand it, if i put this in, then it will allow google to understand more about my page I have been reading about it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 and would like to know if anyone is using it and if it is making a difference, also can anyone show me some good examples on a working website please i work in joomla so as i understand it, i would have to put this in each page to help google understand more about the page and its content any help would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Open Site Explorer - Link Data still not available
Hi, I still cant get access to any data for the URL www.attraction-tickets-direct.co.uk/walt-disney-world-orlando-tickets We changed this URL over two month ago and your site explains that it takes up to this amount of time to start getting data. This is really annoying as we would like this information for us to do a competitor anaylsis. Any idea when we should start recieving this? thanks
Technical SEO | | SEOConrad0 -
Do we know if inbalanced anchor text distribution also applies to internal links?
I have the pages of my site linked together very well with editorial links in my copy and blog posts. But now I'm starting to wonder post-penguin if it's a problem if all my internal links to a certain page have the same anchor text? Or is my internal link juice not powerful enough to set off a red flag? I don't think I've seen this addressed anywhere or if we even know the answer to this or can only speculate.
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Wordpress site, combine Blog without hurting SEO - Need Expert Advice
Hi, I come from the old html days of Frontpage and then moved to Dreamweaver. I first worked with Wordpress at version 2.7 and was not all that impressed, but then recently I worked in the new version and was extremely impressed. So my knowledge of Wordpress is VERY limited and plan to build future sites with it. I need to know the best way to solve an issue for a customer. The client is http://www.nextgenrestoration.com/ Site was built years ago with Frontpage. The popularity of Blogs was hot so someone told them that if they add new content it would be better to use a blog, so they added a blog. So you have the following: www.nextgenrestoration.com (main site) then they installed wordpress in a folder (blog) www.nextgenrestoration.com/blog Original person that built the site quit. New person took over and said the main site needed to changed to Wordpress because they did not have Frontpage and all they knew was Wordpress. Main site was converted to Wordpress. They wanted to keep the original design so they did not use a stock template, they just built it with their design. I guess from looking at the Editor, they manually went in and put the design in to match. Now.. this last month, the person that had changed
Technical SEO | | Force7
the site to Wordpress quit. So I got involved because the new person they hired could not add content to the main website. If you add a page, it does not show up, you have to manually go in the php and add the link to the category. The new person knows how to use Wordpress but she knows nothing about PHP so is lost when it comes to manually adding content to the site. Here was my Thoughts. The main site needs to be rebuilt in a stock template so it automatically creates new pages, blog posts. I have to make sure that if we change the
main website that we could keep all the same links and page names. The girl
that built the site, if you hover over the links that she put it under ‘florida’,
that must be a category. But we would need to keep the same page names. I know
we could do a 301 redirect but this guy cannot lose traffic. He is already down
in hits after the last Panda update. My thought was, rebuild the main site in a stock template so
someone can actually add content easily to the site. Also build a new blog
section so it all matches. (personally the existing design looks old and dated and needs updating) If you look at the site now. The blog looks totally
different and it is not helping if a customer comes to the blog but cannot see
the navigation for the whole site. My thought was to just leave the old blog, it has a LOT of backlinks. But just add a new blog to the main site and all new content goes there. The old blog would stay just make sure we did build in some call to action so it sends them to the main site. Also, we found we cannot create a Blog on the
wordpress we have installed in the main directory. I am guessing because it
wants to name it /blog? I want to be sure we give this client the best advice on what to do without
hurting his existing seo and traffic. As you can tell, I am not qualified to really give the best advice since I am so new to Wordpress. This is a small company that really needs some help. Thanks in advance for your time! Force70
