Anchor text after the recent Panda update
-
Hi everyone,
I just read this article: http://goo.gl/GkgUr and I can confirm this is true because one of my websites drastically lost its rank last week due to high percentage of targeted keyword within back links.
Thus, what I'm worrying about is the anchor text within back links. I'm about to launch a new web site soon that will be publishing lots of landing pages for a travel niche. What I initially thought is to optimize landing page by page, so when the current page ranks well to move on to next one and so on. I thought that, by ranking a single landing page well, will have some positive impact to the rest of landing pages.
But, after a lot of time spent on studying link building strategies, I decided to spread back links among landing pages equally. I will try to get as much as possible back links from the relevant content and high quality sites (press releases, guest posting, link exchange, social networks promotion). Please correct me on this one if you disagree.
According to the above article, the recent google panda update calculates a percentage of keywords among anchor text and it would be the best to keep those at less than 30%, including "link", "here", "domain.com" etc.
For instance, lets say that my website counts 500 landing pages and every single one targets a different low competition exact keyword. So, if I start building back links equally for each of the landing pages and I want to cover each one with a back link from a relevant content, what should I use for the anchor text? Initially I thought the keyword should be the anchor text, but after I read the article I'm not so sure any more.
I guess search engines would say something like: "Ok, there are 500 landing pages and 500 different anchor texts pointing to different pages that belongs to domain.com", perhaps this should increase TLD's authority but what will happen to the landing pages? Would search engines (primarily google) see them as a 100% single anchor text and harm the rank?
I really appreciate your help.
Thank you!
-
It's hard for me to translate that into what the real anchor text would look like, but I think that targeting "/landing-page1" with "landing page 1" every time you build a link is definitely not a good idea.
-
Hi
Thank you for the explanation. Please take a look at the attached example displaying exactly how I was thinking to structure the links. I'm talking links from guest posts and other relevant content I might have influence on. Besides that, I hope I'll get enough links from people who likes the content.
The question is, what if no one actually links back my landing pages and I'm left with all those pages linked from a single relevant page (anchored with 100% exact keyword). Is it going to harm the site and do you think my strategy is wrong? Any better advices?
Thank you!
-
So far (and this is based on very limited data), it appears that Penguin 2.0 targets many of the same tactics that Penguin 1.0 did, just on a deeper level, across more pages, and probably with a bit less forgiveness. So, I think it's safe to say that anchor text manipulation is still a factor in the new Penguin update.
I agree with Mark that it's dangerous to think in terms of pure percentages, as it's probably more complex than that, and may be dependent on a mix of factors, including the SERP "neighborhood" you're in. The problem with any aggressive manual link-building is that it's prone to looking artificial, so it's important to look for ways to both build and attract links, which naturally creates a variety of anchor text. As long as you're building by hand, it's going to be hard not to "over-optimize" (for lack of a better term).
I definitely think it's a good idea to diversify across landing pages. If you're going to build links manually, I'd just be careful not to use the same tactics on every landing page. That pattern is going to look more obvious when Google sees it across the whole site. Mix it up as much as you can, not just anchor text, but the actual link sources and types of links. It's really easy to carry one tactic too far that's ok in small quantities.
-
If you post shortened URLs in a forum a lot of people will not visit them because they are uncertain of their distination.
... just sayin'
-
So again I would look at the competition and look at ratio of their deep link to home page links. I have focused much more on using internal links to pass juice on and use of anchor text, I have found the pages I deep linked to suffered the most, the pages that had no or very few back links to seem to have done better if I have good internal links to them.
-
Thanks a lot for the advice. Any thoughts on the other question is spreading money kw back links among landing pages better or it's more useful to rank page by page?
-
Each industry / keyword is different, what works for one industry does not mean it will work for another. % of brand vrs money making kw's vrs white noise (click here, etc) will really depend on what sector you are in. My advice would be look at the link profile of the top 3 sites in your industry and match what they do then slowly improve on it.
If the top 3 ranking sites on average have say 7% White noise links, 60% branded and 33% money making kw's, then that would be what I would aim for. I have learned over the last 12 months that one brush does not fit all!
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
-
More than 2K dofollow links, from one site with one anchor text?
A week ago one person of our team added a link with anchor text on a web directory website PR5, but from this one link, Google indexed more than 2K links from this website with same anchor text, and then our keyword ranked first on SERP. The problem is that this clearly look like SPAM to Google, so which way is better to remove this link, with disawow tool, or to contact the web directory site owner?Could anyone give me any advice for this?
Link Building | | cvissi0 -
Google webmaster tools Who links the most updates?
Has anyone ever seen in the section in GWT "Who links the most" actually update. I have sites listed in there that had me on a blogroll so I had 93,000 links to me and they removed those links months ago but GWT still shows that number of links. Does anyone else actually see those numbers go down as links are removed?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Exact match domains and overuse of exact match anchor text
If your domain name is a exact match keyword and you have a really high percentage of your links with the anchor text of that keyword, are you at high risk of getting penalized by Penguin or does Google's algorithm adjust for this. For example if your site name was AuethenticBaseballJerseys.com and people usually linked to your site at "Authentic Baseball Jerseys". Thanks!
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Can a sitewide backlink with exact anchor text penalize my website?
A few years ago, I exchanged a link with another website. In the meantime, this other website grew quite fast and now they just added a forum. The backlink from their website is sitewide and is using the anchor text "best web hosting". According to Google, this backlink now appears on 117,000 pages of the same domain. Yesterday, I just got a warning from Google: "We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines..." Could that sitewide link be one of the causes? Of course I know there are tons of bad links to my site but I'm wondering if I should get this one removed. Thank you for your help and sorry for my english. Stephane
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
Would notifying visitors that they can put text link ads on your site destroy you in terms of Google?
I am debating buying this product for Joomla on that note: http://www.jv-extensions.com/content/_/joomla-extensions/jv-contentlinks-r52 Would you advise for or against this purchase?
Link Building | | Uramark1 -
Are Guest Post Anchor Text Links Evil?
Hi, In the recent free SEOMoz webinar about What's Ailing the Linkgraph, Rand Fishkin says that corporations try to get anchor text guest posts on his wife's blog and he suggests this is manipulative. Do you agree that anchor text links in guest posts are manipulative? Do you think that Google will take action against this tactic in the future? Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
How Long for Google Directory and Search.com to update with Current Dmoz.org Data?
So I recently had a site added to dmoz.org and I'm wondering if anyone knows when Google Directory & Search.com update their site with new Dmoz.org data? They both use dmoz.org for their directory listings. Regards,
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0 -
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