Does changing Anchor text of old built links raise a red flag in Google?
-
I have lot of links (10000+) built against Exact match anchor text so what is solution to that now?
Other than disavowing them all, May I change the anchor text of those links (From Exact Match To Brand Name or naked URL)?
Does Google have algorithms to detect anchor text changes and if so, do those algorithms detect these sorts of changes and raise a red flag on sites doing it.
I respect your opinions but please only comment if you are sure about it because I am already facing a penalty so can't afford to get another.
-
If you have a lot of links that you can control the anchor text on, that's a pretty sure sign that you should remove them. These aren't the links that Google is going to reward or ignore in the long term. Whether you're currently being hurt by them would require a very thorough review on an expert's part, but I'm sure that links you place manually are links Google doesn't want to count.
There are thoughts that Google is using its "link churn" patents to use the rate at which anchor text or links change as a part of rankings, but it's not known exactly how the mechanism works. Regardless, if the links are spammy and you're subtracting spammy links rather than adding, you won't get hit by any mechanisms designed to flag artificial rank manipulation.
Do try to remove links before you disavow them. Disavow is a last-ditch option, and Google still won't accept it if no effort has been made at removal.
-
first of all: you won
t get an answer here that you can rely on like a guarantee! The only thing you
ll get are opinions and maybe experiences... that might sounds a little bit frustrating but that`s it.What I can tell you from my experience is that changing the anchor text of such a high amount has a very big chance to raise a red flag. Officially it
s not known that google has an algorithm to detect that BUT I won
t rely on that!If Google has already marked those links as "bad" the only way to overcome this issue is nofollow or to disavow them... if they were just a few ones this wouldn`t be such a problem but according to your numbers I would not recommend to rename them
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 20 % of exact match anchor text... can it be the reason ?
How do I know if i got it by penguin because my external anchor text is over optimised ? I have 80 external links and 22 of those are exact match, could it be the reason why I went from ranking 1 st for years on a keyword to ranking on 2 nd page for about a year now... Do you recommend trying to get new links or asking to change the existing one... I read that google doesn't treat links the same way if you change the anchor text, is it really the case ? For internal links should I also worry about exact match percentage or not ? is it better to have exact match internally or not ? PS : I redid my website in the meantime so it is hard to say where the issue is coming from. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
When the site's entire URL structure changed, should we update the inbound links built pointing to the old URLs?
We're changing our website's URL structures, this means all our site URLs will be changed. After this is done, do we need to update the old inbound external links to point to the new URLs? Yes the old URLs will be 301 redirected to the new URLs too. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jade1 -
Does Google index language flags/links in header, even if only 1 is visible at a time?
Hi, I want to pass link juice from my English website to my other languages. Does Google index language flags/links in header? Only 1 flag is visible at a time, and from what i´ve read, Google does not index content that is not visible to the user without clicks, like content behind tabs. I´m guessing language drop downs could fall under the same category as well...? Any knowledge on this... thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
Anchor text penalties and indexed links
Hi! I'm working on a site that got hit by a manual penalty some time ago. I got that removed, cleaned up a bunch of links and disavowed the rest. That was about six months ago. Rankings improved, but the big money terms still aren't doing great. I recently ran a Searchmetrics anchor text report though, and it said that direct match anchors still made up the largest part of the overall portfolio. However, when I started looking at individual links with direct anchors, nearly every one had been removed or disavowed. My question is, could an anchor text penalty be in place because these removed links have not been reindexed? If so, what are my options? We've waited for this to happen naturally, but it hasn't occurred after quite a few months. I could ping them - could this have any impact? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
About to launch a new e-commerce site need help with anchor text's
Hey guys, I need some advice regarding the keywords I want to target for a new website. The website is e-commerce and is about 60% done but i wanted some advice. home page - http://www.diamondengagement.com/ For link building purposes I only want to target the domain name for the anchor text "diamond engagement" and "diamondengagement.com" for internal pages like .... http://www.diamondengagement.com/engagement-rings/ I want this page to rank for "engagement rings" but that's a very competitive keyword. I was thinking for the first 3 or 4 months I only build links to this page with the domain name again "diamond engagement" and phrase anchor text's using "diamond engagement" than just out right building "engagement rings" or "engagement ring" to start off. What are your thoughts??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harrykabadaian0 -
Changing Hosting Companies - Site Downtime - Google Indexing Concern
We are getting ready to switch to a new hosting company. When we make the switchover, our sites will be offline for a couple of hours and in some cases perhaps as long as 12 hours while DNS is configured -- should we be worried about Google trying to index pages and finding them unavailable? Any fear of Google de-indexing pages. Our guess was that Google would not de-index anything after just a short period of not being able to find pages -- it would have to be over an extended period of time before GOOGLE or BING would de-index pages -- CORRECT? Just want to gut check this before pulling the trigger on switch over to new hosting company. We appreciate input on this and/or any other thoughts regarding the switch over to new hosting company that we may not have thought of. Thanks, Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Impact of slight character variations in anchor text
Does anyone have experience of how Google deals with slight character variations, e.g. Facade v Façade? From an SEO perspective, are these treated as two completely separate words or is Google clever enough to determine the intent of the searcher & the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjalc20110