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
-
Can you keep you old HTTP xml sitemape when moving to HTTPS site wide?
Hi Mozers, I want to keep the HTTP xml sitemape live on my http site to keep track of indexation during the HTTPS migration. I'm not sure if this is doable since once our tech. team forces the redirects every http page will become https. Any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Should I nofollow Geo-located links on a site?
I run various sites that use Geo-location to place related links in navigation menus on a page. For example, if you land on the home page, we will see that you are in Florida and then in one of the content boxes on the page, show job listings that this site has in Florida. We also give the option to search for other jobs or use other navigation options. The idea is to try to help the user along the best we can, but ..... What opinions do persons have here on if these links should be nofollowed as GoogleBot will always see links to places in California etc. - wherever Googlebot is crawling from? Would this then be confusing as we are a site that focused on the entire US and not just California etc Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Pros & Cons of deindexing a site prior to launch of a new site on the same domain.
If you were launching a new website to completely replace an older existing site on the same domain, would there be any value in temporarily deindexing the old site prior to launching the new site? Both have roughly 3000 pages, will launch on the same domain but have a completely new url structure and much better optimized for the web. Many high ranking pages will be redirected with 301 to the corresponding new page. I believe the hypothesis is this would eliminate a mix of old & new pages from sharing space in the serps and the crawlers are more likely to index more of the new site initially. I don't believe this is a great strategy, on the other hand I see some merit to the arguments for it.
Technical SEO | | medtouch0 -
How do you find bad links to your site?
My website has around 900 incoming links and I have a Google 50 penalty that is sitewide. I have been doing research and from what I can see is that the 50 penalty is usually associated with scetchy links. The penalty started last year. I had about 40 related domains to my main site and each had a simple one page site with a link to the main site. (I know I screwed up) I cleaned up all of those links by removing them. The single page site still exist, but they have no links and several of them still rank very well. I also had an outside SEO person that bought a few links. I came clean with Google and told them everything. I gave them all of my sites and that the SEO person had bought links. I gave them full disclosure and removed everything. I have one site that I can't get the link removed from. I have contacted them numerous times to remove the link and I get no response. I am curious if anyone has had a simular experience and how they corrected the situation. Another issue is that my site is "thin" because its an ecommerce affiliate site and full of affiliate links. I work in the costume market. I'm also afraid that I have other bad links pointing to my site. Dooes anyone know of a tool to identify bad links that Google may be penalizing me for at this time. Here is Google's latest denial of my reconsideration request. Dear site owner or webmaster of XXXXXXXXX.com. We received a request from a site owner to reconsider XXXXXXXX.com for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We've reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines. In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from XXXXXXXXXX.com may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines. If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en and resubmit your site for reconsideration. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
I have found this on a site that i have seen many times where can i get one from
Hi i have seen this great map system that i have seen on many sites which i think makes a site look great but i have tried looking for the past few weeks but cannot find where i can get one from. http://www.hypnoslimmer.co.uk/consultant.html does anyone know how these sites do it and where you can get the product from. I use joomla for all my sites Any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
The impact of homepage link compared to site-wide backlinks
Hello, I was wondering as to how much a bigger impact a backlink has when its linked site-wide as opposed to homepage only? What if the PA/DA of the homepage was good enough (mid 80s), would just a homepage link give a decent result? I just want to mainly know the difference in the impact of each, regardless of the DA/PA, as long as it comes from one domain. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | micfo0 -
Minisites - 301 Redirect or Links to Main site
Not sure whether this is considered black hat or not but I know it is done and I would like to know which is the most effectrive method. If you were to acquire multiple sites in the same niche to your main site (either by buying existing sites or perhaps registering expired domains) which already had strong aged backlinks, is it better to either: a) 301 the new domain to the main site (or a subpage perhaps) b) create 'minisites' on the new domains (trying to mirror the URL structure of the previous incarnation if possible to scoop up and remaining inbound backlink juice, on seperate IPs to the main site as well) and then place several links to the main site & subpages. Would the decay of link juice through 301's mean you lose benefit that way or is it the same as a normal link? Would the 301 method mean any IBL's into URL's other than the homepage be lost? The homepage of the minisite will likely have 4 or 5 internal links so will this dilure the effect of the links to the main site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | OzDave0