Best anchor text strategy for embeddable content
-
Hi all
We provide online services, and as part of this we provide our clients with a javascript embeddable 'widget' to place on their website. This is fairyly popular (100s-1000s of inserts on websites).
The main workings of this are javascript (they spit html iframe onto the page) but we also include both a
<noscript>portion (which is purely customer focused, it deep links into a relevant page on our website for the user to follow) and also a plain <p><a href=''></a></p> at the bottom, under the JS. This is all generated and inserted by the website owner. Therefore, after insertion we can dynamically update whatever the Javascript renders out, but the <noscript> and <a> at the bottom are there forever.</p> <p>Previously, this last plain link has been used for optimisation, with it randomly selecting 1 out of a bank of 3 different link anchor texts when the widget html is first generated.</p> <p>We've also recently split our website into B2B and B2C portions, so this will be linking to a newer domain with much established backlinks than the existing domain. I think we could get away with optimised keyword links on the old domain but the newer domain they will be more obvious.</p> <p>In light of recent G updates, we're afraid this may look spammy. We obviously want to utilise the link as best as possible, as it is used by hundreds of our clients, but don't want it to cause any issues. </p> <p>So my question, would you just focus on using brand name anchor text for this? Or could we mix it up with a few keyword optimised links also? If so, what sort of ratio would you suggest?</p> <p>Many thanks</p></noscript>
-
SamuelScott is 100% right, I only wanted to add, that we should stop thinking about the anchor. It is allways manipulation in the room, when we think about anchor. Thats my opinion.
-
Seeing as this replaces a traditional link, which I'd very much doubt would carry a nofollow (these event organisers would not be aware of it) then would you agree that a 'powered by' link under the box would be ok without a nofollow, as long as we just use our brand as the anchor text?
How about a brandname + keyword anchor text? Such as "ticket sales powered by xyx"
I hate to sound negative, but this part of your response still seems like you are trying to use the widget to build links that will pass "PageRank" and increase your rankings. My recommendation is still: Do not do this at all! Such links are completely artificial and are one of the old tricks that Google definitely looks for today. Just because other sites do it right now does not mean that Google won't hit them at some point.
I stand by my recommendation: Use a no-follow attribute and make the name of your brand the anchor text. At the very most, putting a desired phrase such as "ticket sales" close to the link -- but not included in the actual link -- may help you out of the idea of co-occurance (sometimes called cocitation).
If you want to get more links, I suggest going through Moz's category archive for that phrase to see how to get links that are 99% natural and earned (rather than artificial and built).
-
Great, thanks for the info.
I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be seen badly by Google as it provided a valuable tool for the website - selling tickets. The 'old way' of doing this would be for the event owner to link directly through to our website ('buy tickets here...'), but using the widget we can improve conversions - keeping to Google's rules of designing for the customer, not SEO, I think this fits the bill. Adding a 'powered by' link also enhances customer trust?
An example of another company doing something similar, is
Eventbrite: http://www.outlookfestival.com/tickets/ (they include no on page link, just an iframe but that includes a link)
Ticketscript: http://deershedfestival.com/tickets/ (an optimised keyword, and it's almost hidden (tooltip) which I'd prefer to keep away from.)
Seeing as this replaces a traditional link, which I'd very much doubt would carry a nofollow (these event organisers would not be aware of it) then would you agree that a 'powered by' link under the box would be ok without a nofollow, as long as we just use our brand as the anchor text?
How about a brandname + keyword anchor text? Such as "ticket sales powered by xyx"
-
First, I highly recommend that you do not use widgets on external websites as part of any "linkbuilding strategy." (I'm not saying that you are using the widgets as a cheap way to build links -- they can have a lot of valid uses, so I just hope that you are using them in the correct way.)
Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, said in 2013 that any links in widgets on third-party websites should have the no-follow attribute added to them. In Google's eyes, here's the simple reason why: Why should the search engine give you "credit" for a link that you have given yourself? The only links that Google wants to count are those that are 100% natural and "earned." The Penguin updates -- among other actions -- are all aimed at moving the search engine in that direction. (Here's Google's guide to no-follow.)
Secondly, don't even think about keyword-based anchor text. (No-follow or not, you just don't want to risk incurring the wrath of the Penguin.) If you need a link back in the widget, just make the brand name of the website / company into the link.
In summary:
1. Add no-follow to all widget links
2. Make the brand name the anchor text
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
-
Fix Duplicate Content Before Migration?
My client has 2 Wordpress sites (A and B). Each site is 20 pages, with similar site structures, and 12 of the pages on A having nearly 100% duplicate content with their counterpart on B. I am not sure to what extent A and/or B is being penalized for this. In 2 weeks (July 1) the client will execute a rebrand, renaming the business, launching C, and taking down A and B. Individual pages on A and B will be 301 redirected to their counterpart on C. C will have a similar site structure to A and B. I expect the content will be freshened a bit, but may initially be very similar to the content on A and B. I have 3 questions: Given that only 2 weeks remain before the switchover - is there any purpose in resolving the duplicate content between A and B prior to taking them down? Will 301 redirects from penalized pages on A or B actually hurt the ranking of the destination page on C? If a page on C has the same content as its predecessor on A or B, could it be penalized for that, even though the page on A or B has since been taken down and replaced with a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | futumara0 -
Effects of pages heavily reliant on CSS for text and image content
We have a new feature that's been live for a couple days here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/cameras/canon/t5/vs/canon/60d/ My concern is that the developer relied very heavily on css for content and image layout. Such that the meat of our pages looks pretty meager: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/b1ccb77914c6722d40bd Google does parse css, but I'm not sure if it does so for content, or just to verify the site isn't doing something nefarious. Will google see our deeper content in the css, or view the page as being very thin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ir-seo-account0 -
What is best practice to eliminate my IP addr content from showing in SERPs?
Our eCommerce platform provider has our site load balanced in a few data centers. Our site has two of our own exclusive IP addresses associated with it (one in each data center). Problem is Google is showing our IP addresses in the SERPs with what I would assume is bad duplicate content (our own at that). I brought this to the attention of our provider and they say they must keep the IP addresses open to allow their site monitoring software to work. Their solution was to add robots.txt files for both IP addresses with site wide/root disallows. As a side note, we just added canonical tags so the pages indexed within the IP addresses ultimately show the correct URL (non IP address) via the canonical. So here are my questions. Is there a better way? If not, is there anything else we need to do get Google to drop the several hundred thousand indexed pages at the IP address level? Or do we sit back and wait now?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ovenbird0 -
How to Best Establish Ownership when Content is Duplicated?
A client (Website A) has allowed one of their franchisees to use some of the content from their site on the franchisee site (Website B). This franchisee lifted the content word for word, so - my question is how to best establish that Website A is the original author? Since there is a business relationship between the two sites, I'm thinking of requiring Website B to add a rel=canonical tag to each page using the duplicated content and referencing the original URL on site A. Will that work, or is there a better solution? This content is primarily informational product content (not blog posts or articles), so I'm thinking rel=author may not be appropriate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams0 -
The Affects of Removing Anchor Texts from Super Menu on Homepage
Hi, Currently we have a div that drops down our super menu which has subcategories, ie. under Shop by Color (super menu) Black Ties, Blue Ties, Brown Ties, et, al. (see Ties.com Anchor Text image attached) If we were to remove these subcategories from the div (in other words, they do not get crawled from homepage, will we loose ranking for those keywords? We are trying to reduce link count on homepage. Thoughts? UBHu8.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ties.com0 -
SEO Strategy for Microsite
I am working on a project to build a microsite of sorts that will represent a joint program between two large organizations with established web presences and strong domains. Each of the organizations has dedicated sections on their sites speaking to the program, but the leadership has decided the joint program deserves it's own site with dedicated content. The two larger sites perform very well for SEO, and I don't necessarily want to jeopordize thir rankings by delivering content that competes directly with them. So I am doing some keyword research to find some opportunities that will alllow me to use the new site to target keywords not yet being captialized by the larger sites. My grand scheme is to have the three sites targeting the broadest array of keywords possible, thus maximizing exposure and avoiding competition. Here is the rub: the content between the three sites will be different but very similar, and there will be plenty of cross linking, especially from the existing sites to the new site, as we grow the brand of the joint program. I'm curious to here some expert opinions on what the puitfalls of the strategy are and what are some of the things I can do to avoid falling in the black hat category - I recognize that proliferating sites around a single topic and cross linking them is black hat. The organizations simply want to build a brand around a joint program and we are striggling to do that without a dedicated website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0 -
SEO Strategy for URL Change
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together. Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_KS0 -
Anchor text
What will I need to make amormensagens.com.br is in position 1 in Google to the word "mensagens"? Only anchor text will?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tibtos0