Can you be penalised in Google for excessive internal keyword linking?
-
I have an online shop and 3 blogs (with different topics) all set up on sub-domains (for security reasons, don't want Word Press installed in the same hosting space as my shop in case one gets hacked).
I have been on the front page of Google for a keyword, lets say 'widgets' for months now. I have been writing blogs about 'widgets', probably about 1/4 of all my blog posts are linking to the 'widgets' page in my shop. I write maybe 1-2 blogs a week, so it's not excessive.
This morning I have woken to fine that the widgets page in my shop has vanished from Google's index.
So typing in 'widgets' brings up nothing. It hasn't dropped in the rankings, it's just vanished. A few weeks ago I ranked 3 or 4. Then I dropped to about 6. A couple of days ago, i jumped back up to 5 and now it's vanished.
If you type in 'buy widgets', or 'widgets online' or 'widgets australia', I have the #1 spot for all those, but for 'widgets', I just don't exist anymore.
Could I have been penalised for writing too many posts and keyword linking internally? They're not keyword stuffed and they're well written. I just don't understand what's happened.
Right now I"m freaking out about blogging and putting internal links on my website.
-
Thanks for the responses.
Within 12-24 hours, I actually bounced back on to the front page. In the last 2-3 weeks I have seen this particular ranking be anywhere between position 3 and position 7 and then not even in the top 200 for a couple of hours.
It seems to be quite a bouncy & unstable ranking. Most of my others sit very solidly and don't move around too much. I now don't think it's the internal linking, but just some weird thing happening and I guess I'll just have to wait for it to settle.
-
Good response and good link
I think its all blown over with the link spamming.
If you got lots of relevant content to support your links then I am sure you would be fine
-
Hello Joanne,
You should not worry about it, unless it's taken to an extreme.
Here's a video from Matt Cutts that explains this very clearly:
Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site's ranking?
So basically you can't be penalized by links similar to breadcrumbs or links used for navigation. Unless their number is amazingly high. And like you said - if the pages are not keyword stuffed and they're well written - this should not be the problem.
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
-
Google not returning an international version of the page
I run a website that duplicates some content across international editions. These are differentiated by the country codes e.g. /uk/folder/article1/ /au/folder/article1/ The UK version is considered the origin of the content. We currently use hreflang to differentiate content, however there is no actual regional or language variation between the content on these pages. Recently the UK version of a specific article is being indexed by Google as I am able to access via keyword search, however when I try to search for it via: site:domain.com/uk/folder/article1/then it is not displaying, however the AU version is. Identical articles in the same folder are not having this issue. There are no errors within webmaster tools and I have recently refetched the specific URL. Additionally when checking for internal links to the UK and AU edition of the article, I am getting internal links for the AU edition of the article however no internal links for the UK edition of the article. The main reason why this is problematic is because the article is now no longer appearing on the UK edition of the site for internal site search. How can I find out why Google is not getting a result when the URL is entered but it is coming up when doing a specific search?
Technical SEO | | AndDa0 -
Google + and Google Knoladge Graph
I am trying to get things to match up for the company brand websearch and the Google + page and we have had it for years now The knowledge graph on Google is showing the map, address and name (shown in attached image), but is not linked to a G+ page, as when i click the "Are you the business owner?" its is trying to make me create a new G+ business page. Anyone have any ideas on this? Also does the wiki name have to be exact for it to show? As for phone number would that be coming from the DNS record as that is nowhere in the markup rich snippet or normal markup Thanks in advance LC9cWdG
Technical SEO | | David-McGawn0 -
Disavow links and domain of SPAM links
Hi, I have a big problem. For the past month, my company website has been scrape by hackers. This is how they do it: 1. Hack un-monitored and/or sites that are still using old version of wordpress or other out of the box CMS. 2. Created Spam pages with links to my pages plus plant trojan horse and script to automatically grab resources from my server. Some sites where directly uploaded with pages from my sites. 3. Pages created with title, keywords and description which consists of my company brand name. 4. Using http-referrer to redirect google search results to competitor sites. What I have done currently: 1. Block identified site's IP in my WAF. This prevented those hacked sites to grab resources from my site via scripts. 2. Reach out to webmasters and hosting companies to remove those affected sites. Currently it's not quite effective as many of the sites has no webmaster. Only a few hosting company respond promptly. Some don't even reply after a week. Problem now is: When I realized about this issue, there were already hundreds if not thousands of sites which has been used by the hacker. Literally tens of thousands of sites has been crawled by google and the hacked or scripted pages with my company brand title, keywords, description has already being index by google. Routinely everyday I am removing and disavowing. But it's just so much of them now indexed by Google. Question: 1. What is the best way now moving forward for me to resolve this? 2. Disavow links and domain. Does disavowing a domain = all the links from the same domain are disavow? 3. Can anyone recommend me SEO company which dealt with such issue before and successfully rectified similar issues? Note: SEAGM is company branded keyword 5CGkSYM.png
Technical SEO | | ahming7770 -
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?
Technical SEO | | UplinkSpyder0 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Internal followed links only 5
Dear members, As I understand the importancy of Internal Followed Links I want to increase them for www.ruijters.nl. What I do not understand that Open Site Explorer only counts 5 Internal Followed Links. These 5 Internal Followed Links must be the hypelinked images on the homepage? But the website in overall definately has more than 5? Any members who van help me out to fix this problem, so www.ruijters.nl can enjopy his linkjuice? Best Regards, Alain Nijholt
Technical SEO | | bmcinternetmarketing0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
Internal linking with Old Content
Hello, I have a sports website in which users write their opinions about the sporting events that take place every day throughout the year. Each of these sporting events generates a new page or URL indicating the match with date. For example: www.domain.com/baseball/boston-v-yankees-04-24-2012-1234.html The teams face several times a year, and each match creates a different URL or page. I would like to link old pages to new pages and vice versa. How would you recommend these pages to be linked? Linking them to each other or linking old pages to new pages that are generated or otherwise? I would appreciate your orientation and help in this case. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | NorbertoMM1