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
-
How not to lose internal link juice?
Hi, I just added some photography content to my site to showcase my skills, specifically 360 virtual tours. I first tried to have those on regular pages and have the 360s in responsive iframes, but it caused usability problems. So I've chosen instead to have a master page with thumbnails that lead to individuals 360's. https://gregmoinephotography.com/360-virtual-tours-hdr-vr-ready/ Links look like that: http://gregmoinephotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/360/maverick-helicopters/ Each pano takes over the whole page. My concern is losing internal link juice as each pano page doesn't link anywhere. Also, external link juice when people start linking to each 360. What should I do to fix that? Should I just link back to the master page in the body & noscript area, even though content won't be visible? Fine with Google? Lack of content problem? Thank you for reading, and for your help!
Technical SEO | | GregMoine0 -
301 Redirect to add juice from Keyword A to Keyword B
Here's our situation: Our company sells Employee HANDBOOKS (the book that explains to employees how the company itself is run, more or less). That's the technically correct term for them. However, many people use this term interchangeably with Employee MANUALS. Employee MANUALS are actually slightly different. (they're more specific, usually a list of common office policies and procedures and how to do them) When doing Keyword research, we learned that many, many people search for Employee MANUALS when they actually are interested in an employee HANDBOOK. We've got our page optimized for the Keyword Employee HANDBOOKS, because in our copy we always refer to it as such. Here's my question: Would it be "cloacking" or some other blackhat nonsense if we did this: #1. Take a copy of the current page, and make a second page for it with a slightly different URL, but optimize the SEO-relevant parts for the phrase Employee MANUAL. #2. That page will also include a 301-redirect towards the original page, which is identical except the SEO bits are optimized for Employee HANDBOOKS. My understanding here is that we'd get the SEO juice from the phrase Employee Manual, without actually having to do the upkeep on two different pages. We also avoid having to have a random page SEO optimized for an improper term just because of the general confusion about what the product is called. Are we on the right track here? Or is this going to annoy Google, or not have the result I'm predicting? Any insight is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | CEDRSolutions0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee
Hi Everyone My site received a notification of unnatural links in Webmaster Tools and the site has had a penalty applied. I can see there are a lot of links from a site : linguee.com .de. nl. ect ..more than 30k of them! I am not sure where did those links come from! The suddenly appeared over the weekend. Does anyone has similar experience before and any suggestion? Thanks Ricky
Technical SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL?
This is for an ecommerce site, and the company I'm working with has started selling a new line of products they want to promote.Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL? One of my concerns is losing a little bit of link value from redirecting. Thank you for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Can Google Anlaytics Segment By Time of the DaY?
Greetings from Latitude 53.92705600 Longitude -1.38481600... Can Google analytics anser this question..."Tell me on the 1st Sept how many visitors landed on my site between 1200HRS & 1300HRS" Grazie Tanto,
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
David0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
Sudden drop in Google with our top performing keywords
Hi, I'm writing about the sudden drop in our keyword rankings from our site www.activitybreaks.com. Our keywords that have significantly seen a drop have been activity holidays was 8th now 16th Adventure holidays was 15th now 71st We have been listed on the first page for a number of keywords but these has suddenly dropped in the last couple of days. We did receive a notice on the 19th May from Google stating that they detected unnatural links. So we spent a couple of weeks getting the links removed and have re-submitted the site on 11th June. When I go into Google webmaster there is no reply from Google as yet and the links are still showing even though we know they have been removed. We also noticed in the last couple of days that we had a duplicate home page but this has now since been removed. Should we re-submit our site to Google for reconsideration or wait to they get back to us. Is there anything else we can be doing to fix this situation. Let me know if you have any ideas! Anything is appreciated, thanks. Naomi
Technical SEO | | activitybreaks50 -
If a page isn't linked to or directly sumitted to a search engine can it get indexed?
Hey Guys, I'm curious if there are ways a page can get indexed even if the page isn't linked to or hasn't been submitted to a search engine. To my knowledge the following page on our website is not linked to and we definitely didn't submit it to Google - but it's currently indexed: <cite>takelessons.com/admin.php/adminJobPosition/corp</cite> Anyone have any ideas as to why or how this could have happened? Hopefully I'm missing something obvious 🙂 Thanks, Jon
Technical SEO | | TakeLessons0