What is a healthy ratio of keywords being used as anchor text in external links to our site?
-
Hi,
One keyword is being used as anchor text in way more external links to our site than any others and I'm getting a lot of mixed advice whether or not to do anything about it. The agency we previously used had managed to remove about 1500 links (out of 6000) however our rank for that search term is still very poor.
**We have 4500 external links with the anchor text "ABC" and the next highest amount of external link anchor text is the term "XYZ" which has about 400 links. That is over 10 to 1. What is a healthy ratio of anchor text between different search terms to aim for? **
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-
Try not to focus on percentages. most SEOs try and build a certain % of each type (branded, naked URL, exact match keyword, random anchors, synonym keywords, etc).
The problem with trying to do this is you're manipulating your link profile. The key to building a natural link profile is letting the link type do the work.
Take your Moz profile as an example. You're allowed a link to multiple sites - the NATURAL link type for this is naked. Other sites will let you add an anchor - if you do, use a branded one.
Blog comments are another example. Most platforms will allow you to create an anchor, but it's unnatural. Use a naked URL for blog comments and you can diversify easily.
There's a really good article that goes into detail about it here: http://webris.org/anchor-text/
-
In my opinion the best way to deal with it is to leave it up to them as you want things natural so play it the natural way!
-
Hi Moosa,
Thanks so much for the reply to my question, that makes things a lot more clear for me.
What are some good ways you can suggest I request for natural-sounding anchor text? Or should I just leave it up to the webmaster/blogger/writer who is linking to us?
Luckily I've built some decent relationships these influencers in my industry via networking and social media but I'm still very new to link building and SEO so I'm not sure how to approach these conversations without coming off as spammy. I feel like its awkward to ask anyone for a share/link/mention let alone asking for a specific anchor text.
Please share your thoughts if you have time, I greatly appreciate your opinion so far, means a lot that you took the time to help!
Syed Raza
-
Hi Patrick,
Awesome, thanks for your answer and for the articles, they were very helpful. I am still very new to link building/earning and inbound marketing in general so I truly appreciate you reaching out to help.
The over-optimized anchor text I'm dealing with is a non-branded, competitive search phrase for our market. Theres about 4500 ext. links with that keyword anchor text out of approx. 10000 total inbound links.
At 45% non-branded anchor text, is it likely the reason we are no where to be found in the SERPs for that phrase?
Apparently the previous SEO agency tried:1-contact individual webmasters to remove links 2- submit a disavow file to google and 3- emailed google reconsideration request. There were able to remove 1500 links, bringing the number from 6000 down to 4500. So when Penguin originally hit the site it was more like 60-65% of this one no-brand anchor text. This what I've been told by the business owner.
What else can I do to clean up these bad links? Should I be looking at tools like LinkRisk or LinkDetox as a solution?
Thanks again so much for your time
Syed
-
I don’t think come up with any number or percentage would be a good idea but when I use to deal with these kinds of things… I just make sure that the anchor text should be as natural as possible. I mean if I got 15% of the links pointing back to my site with the Brand name, I probably will be fine with it but if it is a keyword that makes no sense in natural piece; in that case 3% is even a high number.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Syed,
There is no exact answer to your question as if you ask 10 SEOs, you very well may get 10 different answers. As Google hasn't defined this ration, the answers and opinions on this subject are widely debated and subjective to the industry.
That being said, a good anchor text ratio to consider is roughly 30% branded anchor text, 70% non-branded keyword anchor text. This is information we've looked into and had discussions about with other SEOs and a source of some quality research and data on this can be found here http://sundayseo.net/penguin-2-0-what-should-your-anchor-text-ratios-be/ and another great article here http://moz.com/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization, which does a fantastic job of breaking it down even further. So, a solid anchor text ration should be 7:3 to emulate the Moz blog written by Geoff.
Hope this was a helpful answer! - Patrick
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
-
What is an example of good anchor text?
Hi, I'm sorry to ask yet another question but the advice I get here is always so accurate and friendly that it's almost addictive. After Penguin I'm constantly thinking about what looks natural to Google. With regards to link building I can't really envisage any situations where natural anchor text would be anything other than either the name of our company or 'click here'. The only exception to this I would have thought would be if a customer was referring to a particular product on our site. Even in this situation I would have thought they'd have said 'I bought my cheap cartridges at Refresh Cartridges' with the company name still being used as the anchor rather than 'cheap cartridges'. I think if we're stripping it down to what works best from a human rather than search engine perspective then using 'cheap cartridges' rather than the company name would be just a little odd. Therefore my question is whether, when link building, I should just use my company name for all anchor text rather than trying to artificially mix it up to make it look ‘natural’. While I could vary the anchor text by saying 'cheap this', 'high quality that' and playing around with the text, almost certainly when used in context with whatever I am writing this would look unnatural no matter how many combinations I used. Is this correct or would my overuse of the company name make what should be a natural looking linking strategy look unnatural and harm results by not conveying the potential content of the page by using targeted anchor text. Thanks for your help. Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Links not showing up in Site Explorer?
Why aren't some backlinks showing up in Site Explorer? I have links to my home page (www.mortgagesbymark.com) from Trulia at http://www.trulia.com/blog/mortgagesbymark/ but they're not showing up in Site Explorer. Thanks for your help!
Link Building | | MortgagesByMark0 -
Link Buildinf for new sites
Hello friends, I would like to know what link building strategies you recommend for a newly created websites? Thanks a lot!
Link Building | | pasape0 -
Anchor text internal links
Hello, I read about a practice (also suggested by EasyWP SEO plugin) whereby I should place on my current page (call it page A) an internal link to another page (call it page B) using as anchor text the keywords I want page A to rank for. I dont really understand this and it is a cause of great confusion in my head... Can someone explain this to me and why this would be good practice? I would have thought that having as anchor text to page B a keyword I want page A to rank well for would steal juice from page A and give it to page B? Or am I missing something else? Thanks !
Link Building | | dpaq20110 -
Using an SEO Agency to build one-way links for you via link exchange
There are a number of SEO agencies which offer link building as part of their SEO offerings. I believe they build one-way links to the client site, by offering another link in exchange to the liking site. So, if the client site is "C", and link is being requested from site "A", the site "A" owner is offered a link from site "B" in return. Is this a good and/or recommended practice?
Link Building | | thinkvidya0 -
Is there way to identify all back links throughout a site or do I have to check one site page at a time? Thanks!
Sorry if it is obvious, but I can't seem to figure it out. I'd like to be able to run a report that will list all of the back links on every page of my site.
Link Building | | TRCCommunications0 -
Any good content sites with good quality links?
I have some content which is still relevant and interesting but not really suitable for my current websites. I have been thinking of using this on an article site to generate some links back to my sites, but I am wary about this due to Google's targeting of content sites. I currently have good PR's on Squidoo and Hubpages which link back and work quite well. Can anyone suggest any others or any ideas how to use this content for SEO purposes? Is using it for article submissions to get links short sited?
Link Building | | JohnW-UK0