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
-
Spam sites republish a article with 'money keyword' anchor text and causing a pentalty.. how to prevent.
About 6 weeks ago we had a DA50 / PA50 homepage site publish an article on our company which included a money keyword anchor text to our site.. Great. Once this happened we shot up the SERP for this term, but quite a few other spam / crawler sites seem to automatically republish everything this DA50 site publishes. This didnt seem to be a problem up until a couple of weeks ago, but now with the new penguin update it seems we have been slapped with a penalty, for having 20 sites all with the same article and anchor text. (the rest of our profile is pretty natural, so this is the main culprit for the penalty) Im now going to write to all the webmasters apart from the DA50 site, and ask them to remove the article, failing that ill have to disavow them. For future reference what is there a way of avoiding this issue of spam sites republishing a propper article and triggering a penalty.
Link Building | | jpeg800 -
When's Linkscape update going to go live?
I've been keeping an eye on the Linkscape update calendar and am a bit confused! There was meant to be an update yesterday, but Open Site Explorer is still showing "Last index update: 8/14/12". When will the new data reach OSE? Been doing lots of link building and want to know if my efforts have been worth it! Any info greatly appreciated. Thanks! Alex
Link Building | | reddogmusic1 -
Your Experience with Exact Match Anchor Text Penalties
Hi Moz community! I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a site penalized or dampened because of too many exact match anchor links or know of any examples. I don't want to be overly concerned about it if it is a low risk. Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Link-Building update in SEOmoz
Hello, I have been doing some link-building and Im worried because I still dont see those links pointing to my website in SEOmoz. How long it takes to see those links in SEOmoz? ( I started last wednesday) Tks in advance, Regards, Pedro Menezes Pereira
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
Anchor Text vs Rankings!
Let's say I have a page about houses for sale (which has the biggest number of search queries/month). I want to rank with that page for another variations like house for sale, and house sale. Now, if i build links only with anchor text **houses for sale **(presuming that Google is OK with that) and i will take top 3 for that KW, i will rank very high too for the other two combinations of words? Or Google treats different plural vs singular and the stop word for. This is an example based on site for one client of mine. His site is about Hotels in Mamaia (hoteluri in mamaia in romanian) and i build links with anchor text hoteluri in mamaia. For this KW i took pos 4 but for hoteluri mamaia i am on page 9 from Google.ro. These two combinations of words are 90% the same in my language. For you to know hoteluri mamaia has bigger numeber of search queries/month (6 600 vs 260).
Link Building | | maldiniii0 -
Over Optimised Anchor Text
Hi. We are new to the seomoz community so just getting the hange of it. We have run a few reports and found that we have to many links with the eaxct match anchor text. We are as a result we feel penalised and held back at no.7 or lower. There doesn't seem to be any other logical explanations why aren't higher besides that. What would the best way to deal with this over optimisation issue? Thanks
Link Building | | GardenGamer
Shannon0 -
Link-building / panda update!
Hi Mozers. WHat do you think, after panda-update, which is the best strategy to build links on Content, or blogspots, and it to website with a minimum PA40 and DA30 . . in which place is better to place, at the begining of article, or at the end of article, tell us some tips, if you are experiences on this section! Thanks,
Link Building | | leadsprofi0 -
Longer Tail Keyword for URL and Anchor text
Hello If I am trying to rank for the term blue widgets as a primary, and also the term shiny blue widgets , and big shiny blue widgets as secondary - would the url /blue-widgets or /shiny-blue-widgets or /big-shiny-blue-widgets be better (all else equal) Would the word shiny / big dilute or affect of KW in the domain for the rankings for blue widgets (all esle equal) Regarding anchor text of inbound links, if the anchor text is shiny blue widgets, is that going to help me rank for both queries "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets" equally? (all else equal), or would including shiny, affect my ranking for "bliue widgets" Or is it better to keep the anchor text as just blue widgets (of course we could vary it) but Im trying to get a feel for how that would work as we are builfing some links I can control the anchor text. I hope this was clear enough Thanks Sam
Link Building | | Impact-2015550