Over optimization of Anchor Text | Consequences, Guidelines, Precautions
-
Hi everyone. I am really worried because of the constant penguin and panda algorithms. I hired two or three SEO agencies and they did some link building for my pages a while ago. And just this time, our rankings dropped almost sitewide some 7-8 positions. I checked our link profile in this site , and we do not seem to have spammy links. I admit that we do have some low link quality, such as directories, blog posts, etc. And it seems to have 10-15 links with overoptimized anchor text, such as keyword exact anchor text, etc.
I have a couple of questions regarding this matter?
- - What entitles an overoptimized anchor text? I mean, i can´t control people linking to me out there, and many of them used the product or brand name. Added to the fact that my former agency used article marketing links with exact keyword.
- - If i "overoptimized" my anchor text, what is the best solution?, I could change some anchor text by asking some people. Should i disavow, delete? What is your best bet here?
- - What is (May 27 2013) best practice for anchor text or link referall. I know it will keep changing, but i want to engage in the right practice right now. should link with www.domain.com/keywordpage.html, or how would one look natural?
- -I saw some recent links that are really strange to me. Could the competition be sending me some bad links in order to augment the situation. Is that something normal?, it sounds strange to me.
Thanks for your valuable advice. I know many people are frustrated with these penalties and hits. Because there are still many sites with Mass EMDs, 3-page content, flash sites, that are ranking better than a high quality and engaging one. Any resource is more than welcome to recover from these dropped rankings.
Regards,
-
I too find it very helpful for all my sites.
Thanks Michael for your help,
Regards,
Sophie
-
Great! Thank you very much for the thorough explanation.
Best Regards!
-
Deleting is generally preferable, but often harder. Short-term, you might disavow so that if Bing isn't penalizing you for those links, they still get counted there. If you run into a manual penalty, Google's spam team will want to see serious effort AND results of trying to get links taken down.
Really depends on the quality of the site. If it's a spammy site, then disavow/delete. If it's not a terrible site, then try to change the anchor text so you retain the link.
-
Great! Thanks for the excellent advice! I will engage on a strategy to mitigate the effects of over-optimizing anchor text.
One last question, What is the main difference between deleting links and disavowing ? Would you try to convince to website owners that link to you on changing some anchor text , or just balance them out with links with site url or and brand name?
Thanks again!
-
First off, I'd get rid of all of the article marketing links. Disavow those domains right away. If you get a manual penalty, you will not get the penalty removed if there are still examples of article marketing out there.
While you cannot control how people link to you, you should expect the vast majority of people who link to you without being coerced by you to link with your domain name or your brand name.
It's hard to know precisely what % of anchor text can be keyword-targeted, especially as an updated Penguin algo came out just a few days ago, making studies older than that come under question :-). But there's a great post here from last year that you should read, where it would appear that you'd be ok keeping your optimized anchor text links at 25% or less (which I would agree with).
But to see if you ARE suffering from a Penguin penalty for over-optimized anchor text, spend a little time in Google Analytics, drilling down into the organic search area, and look at your top 5 or 10 keywords, and see if traffic from those took a hit around one of the Penguin updates. Chartelligence is a really nice Chrome plugin that can help with this.
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
-
Anchor text or inbound link keyword limits
With google's new algorithm, websites can get punished for keyword stuffing or too many of certain back links...so my question is, is there a limit on the keyword/anchortext used for a website containing a keyword you want the website to rank with?
Link Building | | SeobyKP0 -
Homepage outranking subpage for main keyword, but subpage is more optimized for the keyword.
Recently did a site redesign, 95% of the site and keywords are matching up in terms of keyword to what page is ranking for that keyword. All and all was expected and pleased with the redesign, except... A subpage ( PA 1 ) really is a landing page for the main keyword in question is only one jump from the hompage, is it's own category and has the exact match anchor text to its page from the homepage, has a total of 14 total keyword usages. The homepage has a PA of 28, mentioned the keyword once in the body text in form of anchor link, yet still steals the thunder from the main keyword. There aren't a ton of backlinks, but ones we do have 95% of them goto the homepage. Subpage in question has a on page grade of A for the keyword, while the homepage has an on page grade of C. No backlinks at all for this page yet. Subpage even uses the keyword as it's url name, so kinda at a loss to what else I can do, it's a new page, so alll I keep thinking is the issue is the page authority, it's linked to from other pages on the site. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | Deacyde1 -
Anchor text and internal link building very fast
Hey guys, I just posted an article about "Customer Success". After that, I searched in my blog all the articles that contains that keyword and then linked to this new article I want to rank. Is this a bad thing to do, linking all these articles (12) in a row? Also, is it a bad thing to use "Customer Success" as the anchor text for all the articles linking to this new article? I looked for this topic but couldn´t find any. Thanks
Link Building | | amirfariabr0 -
Sponsored posts against Google guidelines?
I'm a bit confused. Every blog I try to outreach on always give me a quote for a sponsored post. Isn't this against Google guidelines because you paying for a link technically even though your paying for a post? Do you guys buy sponsored posts? Should this be avoided? How do you outreach to a blog that offers sponsored posts? They can smell that you want a link from a mile away and give you a nice fat quote.
Link Building | | The_Kiwi_Man1 -
Over Optimised Anchor Text (Internal & external)
Hi First - is it possible for internal anchor text to be considered 'over optimised' in terms of diversity or does that just apply to external backlinks ? For example If you have a main site section/page thats about a service you offer and you call the page this service and the URL this service and then link to it from many internal locations (but in a logical useful manner not just for the sake of it) using this service/keyword as the link anchor text i take it this WONT ever be considered over optimised anchor text since is completely in context, makes sense, is useful and after all is what the page/section is called (so would be strange to call it and link to it via any other term) ? Second - I have a project who's backlink profile is nice and diverse and could by no means be considered over optimised on a domain level. However looking at page level a main site section/page (as above) has only one back link with exact match anchor text from the BOTW directory, so in regard to that page keyword rich anchor text from this one backlink is at 100%. However the anchor text is what the page/section is called (title and url). I presume that this is also unlikely to be considered over optimised (since makes sense, is logical helpful and would be strange to name it anything else) or could it be considered over optimised ? Thanks Dan
Link Building | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
On Page Optimization
Im working with a gutter installation company and they serve 2 states, so i want to optimize the website for these 2 states, what would be best thing to do in this case? create 2 separate tabs for each state and mention them in the content, and build links to each of them? or should i just create one page mentioning these keywords Thanks
Link Building | | vlad_mezoz0 -
SEO Optimization is causing rankings to drop
The more I improve my site and the more links I try to get it seems that my site is just ranking worse and worse. Any ideas? domain name: www.musillawfirm.com Top Keywords wanting to rank for: Melbourne FL DUI lawyer Melbourne FL immigration lawyer cocoa FL DUI lawyer cocoa FL immigration lawyer
Link Building | | musillawfirm0 -
How specific does keyword anchor text need to be?
I'm trying to get to the bottom of something. If you are trying to optimise for a phrase e.g. "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" And your anchor text is something like "Keyword 1 keyword 2 Another word" Does this still provide as much weight for "keyword 1 keyword 2" or does the additional word come into play and dilute the effect? If it does come into play does it have much of an effect?
Link Building | | RodneyRiley0