Disavowing Links: Over-optimized Anchor Text
-
If a site has been effected by Penguin, and the main issue is over-optimized anchor text. Would the disavow file take care of this?
If there is a no-follow added to the link when Google next crawls the site, wouldn't you still have the optimized anchor text in your profile?
-
No manual action. I have seen some fluctuation in rankings, and I am trying to figure out if it is Penguin related.
Thanks for the help.
-
How do you know the main issue is over-optimized anchor text? Did you get a manual action notification in GWT or is this effect your assumption? This would be an important distinction because you'd get some good info from the GWT team about what happened to your site. Some sites take a temporary hit after new algorithm updates, so if this just happened I'd give it a little time before making drastic changes to your site.
It's unclear whether it's your site that's hosting the links or if other site(s) are linking to yours. Follow Googles guidelines about linking https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en and read up on how and why to disavow backlinks here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en. Being honest to yourself is the best policy here, so if you're taking or paying money for these links, you or your associates should use the nofollow attribute according to Google's guidelines. You can learn more about anchor text here on MOZ http://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text. It's believed that links with the nofollow attribute won't pass PageRank, so the anchor text of such links won't hurt or help with search engines but may be valuable to your readers. More about how to use the nofollow attribute here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en.
Now if you actually got notified of a manual action, then you'll need to submit a reconsideration request in GWT. We don't have enough information here on how Google will deal with your site on the next crawl, but I would recommend a consistent, site-wide approach to SEO rather than just changing a few links you think might be hurting you.
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
-
Internal no follow links
I have just discovered that the WordPress theme I have been using for some time has no follow internal links on the blog. Simply put each post has an image and text link plus a 'read more'. The Read more is a no-follow which is also on my homepage. The developer is saying duplicate follow links are worse than an internal no follow. What is your opinion on this? Should I spend time removing the no follow?
Technical SEO | | Libra_Photographic0 -
Huge Drop in External Links
Hello, My total external links dropped from 900 to zero on a site that I've had running for about 10 years. What could possibly cause this? Thanks, Joe
Technical SEO | | Joe20130 -
Webmaster Tools Manual Actions - Should I Disavow Spammy Links??
My website has a manual action against it in webmaster tools stating; Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole I have checked the link profile of my site and there are over 4,000 spammy links from one particular website which I am guessing this manual action refers to. There is no way that I will be able to get these links removed so should I be using Google's Disavow Tool or is there no need? Any ideas would be appreciated!!
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
About google Disavow tool
My website is attacked by spammed link method, so should i use Goolge disavow tool to remove that links? And i have an question that when i use google Disavow to remove backlinks, but i still not remove it on the webpage that placed my links. Does Google index that backlink again? or never?
Technical SEO | | magician0 -
Links to Website Author
I'm a website developer, and in the past I have usually added a tiny backlink to the footer of my clients' websites like this: Website Design by MyCompanyName I understand that Google sees this as a low-quality backlink. However, I was wondering if such links can hurt my rankings. Does Penguin sees these links as spam? If so, should I add a rel="nofollow" to the links? Is there anything else I should change? I do not want to remove these links completely because they are good for marketing my business. I just want to minimize any negative SEO impact of the links. I appreciate your input. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SiteWizard_LLC0 -
Affiliate links
I have a wordpress blog and was wondering the best seo practice for doing affiliate link redirects? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Diagnostic says too many links on a page and most of the pages are from blog entries. Are tags considered links? How do I decrease links?
I just ran my first diagnostic on my site and the results came back were negative in the area of too many links one a page. There were also quite a few 404 errors. What is the best way to fix these problems? Most of the pages with too many links are from blog posts, are the tags counted as well and is this the reason for too many links?
Technical SEO | | Newport10300 -
Value of Twitter Links
Let's ignore the "social metric" value of Twitter links and mentions and look at it from the pure link juice point of view. Twitter accounts such as http://twitter.com/randfish used to have their own PageRank and were treated as separate URLs. Twitter changed that to http://twitter.com/#!/randfish consolidating all their content to a single URL. When I search for "randfish" in Google, however, the result is the first URL version. Some clarification on this matter would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0