Percentage of brand links if brand is exact match

[cakelady]

I'm dealing with a website that received a partial links penalty with no example provided the first time around. Clean up was done and we submitted for reconsideration. We were notified that the penalty is still in place and given 3 example links that are all from blog rolls. The puzzling thing is they are all natural links using the brand name. The domain name is an EMD, so it seems the logical explanation is that when your brand is and EMD, it's no longer the natural type of link it used to be. If this is the case, does anyone have any recommendation regarding a "safe" percentage of  external links using the brand as the anchor? Thanks.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Very curious Google would send you those links. Is there any reason to think they are non-editorial? Perhaps they were placed as part of automation or copy and pasted from another site template? Is there any relationship between the tree sites?

In my experience, there's no safe level of anchor text ratios. And exact match branded links can cause you trouble, especially for sites with lower Domain Authority. Mix these with low quality links and it's a headache combination.

Unfortunately, even if the links are editorial, your best bet may be to get them removed.

You could also try submitting another reconsideration request and explain why those links are editorial. By definition, most blogroll links aren't editorial (as they are placed by a CMS automatically on each page rather than a human) so this may be an uphill battle.

Keep us updated. Best of luck!

[gazzerman1]

I am not sure your use of the term "natural links" is the same as everyone else?

A natural link is one that you did not place yourself. I have a feeling you are using it in the context of it being brand related? Would I be correct?

Regardless, remove those blog roll links ASAP they are an totally no no regardless of the anchor text. Google hates them and were a huge target in the recent Panda Update.

If you have an EMD its a hard thing to market now. Google does not care so much about anchor text when it comes to ranking, it cares about the link itself and will get the information it needs from the landing page. That's why good on page SEO is vital.

Try to use your url as much as possible as anchor text and various other generic anchors like "click here", "more info" etc...

But I would advise if you have a Manual penalty from Google? That you disavow or remove as much of those links as possible.

Hope that helps?