Changing your Anchor Text in 2014
-
Hello I have a series of question,
There was a directory listing we submitted to and got approved. However we got 6 Links total with the same Anchor Text 3 from www and 3 from non www, which is also the Title of our Brand Name. However this is causing an unnatural link.
1. Does Changing the Anchor Text Bad? Does Google have a new way of detecting anchor text changes.
2. Can I change the Title/Anchor to something more generic, so that the anchor text profile is more natural.
3. Since this is a Directory is http://obln.org/ - Does anybody know being on this directory bad?
Or should I just remove this links altogether or Disavow 5 Links and just keep one, because they have a PR5 and has trust flow, losing all the links may not be good as well for ranking.Thanks For your Insight.
-
Hi there,
I'll go through the questions one by one:
1. Does Changing the Anchor Text Bad? Does Google have a new way of detecting anchor text changes.
Google will note the changed anchor text when it re-indexes the pages the links sit on. There is no hard evidence that this is viewed as "good" or "bad", although if the links are otherwise "bad" (from spammy sources), changing the anchor text won't help - the link would be better off being removed. However, if the link is neutral or good, there is no evidence that changing the anchor text will hurt you.
2. Can I change the Title/Anchor to something more generic, so that the anchor text profile is more natural.
Definitely - if you are going to change the anchor, it is best to change it to something related to your brand, e.g. the name of the company or URL of the website.
**3. Since this is a Directory is http://obln.org/ - Does anybody know being on this directory bad? **
Free web directories are not advisable places to build links, so despite this conversation about anchor text, I would remove the link in this case. Yes, they have a PR of 5, but it is the best rule for modern SEO to not use free directories as link building tools because they have been abused so badly for spam in the past.
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
-
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Is it detrimental to make a site wide change from .html to .shtml (all pages)?
We have an established website with decent domain authority. My developer inherited the site from another developer and is recommending that we convert all pages from the .html to the .shmtl From an SEO perspective, would this hurt us? Also, if this is not an issue, would updating the canonical help us, or does the canonical setting only deal with the "www." vs. "non-www"? Any insights will be appreciated greatly. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Should I change or redirect this URL?
Happy Friday everyone! I just noticed that one of our Attorney Profile's url's is wrong. We used to have someone named "Dana Fortugno" as our Family Law attorney, but when he left, (over two years ago) we hired "Scott Finelli." The person who setup the site, just changed the information on the page not url. So instead of it saying "http://www.kempruge.com/scott-finelli-jd-llm/;" it says "http://www.kempruge.com/dana-fortugno-jd-llm/." I'm considering taking all the content on the page with the wrong url, copying it to a new page with the correct URL and 301 redirecting (what would now be a blank page) to the new page with the correct URL. Is this the best way to handle this? Also, I don't believe there are many SEO concerns regarding the pages specifically. The profile pages aren't what we rank for in any of our Family Law related keywords. I am worried about having a completely blank page that just 301 redirects as looking bad to google, but not sure if it would? As always, thank you for your time and any assistance you can provide. Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What needs to be done to tell google my site has moved /changed
Hi everyone, I have a site, which I have re-built on a temporary domain, so that my main ecommerce site can still run.. I have noticed that google has already crawled my temporary domain. The only problem is I now want to transfer the new site back onto its proper domain (www.ourbrand.com). I have changed some of the URL structures of the new site so realize I will need to do re-directs relating to the same domain, but will google get confused that another domain used to have my new website on? I don't plan on using the old temporary domain again and wondered if I need to tell google in some way it was used just to build my site on? Michelle
Technical SEO | | nutjobshell0 -
Should I change hosting / registration when buying an established website?
I am buying an established website that is currently ranking very well for several keywords. I have no intentions of changing anything on the site. My question is, will it matter if I change where the site is hosted, and the whois information (I want to change it from public to private)? i.e., I don't want to do anything to mess up the current rankings of the site - will these changes have any effect? Thanks for the help.
Technical SEO | | red6marketing0 -
Google Indexed URLs for Terms Have Changed Causing Huge SERP Drop
We haven't made any significant changes to our website, however the pages that google has indexed for our critical keywords have changed to pages that have caused our SERP to drop dramatically for those pages. In some cases, the changes make no sense at all. For example, one of our terms that used to be indexed to our homepage is now indexed to a dead category page that has nothing on it. One of our biggest terms, where we were 9th, changed and is now indexed to our FAQ. As a result, we now rank 44th. This is having a MAJOR impact on our business so any help on why this sudden change happened and what we can do to combat it is greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0 -
What is the value of english links with foreign language anchor text for a foreign site?
I have a site in Spanish that is hosted in Spain with a .es TLD. I already have many Spanish-language links from websites in Spain, but I obviously want more and I'm finding I might need to look beyond typical Spanish sites. In talking to some of my link builders who work on my English/American sites, they are recommending that I build links on the normal article sites, blogs and web 2.0 sites that I normally build links on but that I make all the content English and insert the anchor text in Spanish. For example, if my site were about "weightloss", my keyword would be "perder peso" (in spanish). They are recommending that I have articles, reviews, etc written about weightloss in English with the anchor text "perder peso" worked into the English article. Most of the sites are English sites that are hosted in the US (article sites, web 2.0 properties, etc). My question is what is the value of these links? Does anybody have any experience with this?
Technical SEO | | jargomang0