What should my optimal anchor text look like, given cannibalization risk?
-
We have a content page with the explicit goal of ranking highly for "raised garden beds". We drive traffic from this page to our various types of raised garden beds in our store. The "FarmsteadRaised Garden Bed" is one such product.
http://eartheasy.com/grow_raised_beds.htm
Should we avoid using "raised garden beds" in the anchor text of the internal links pointing to the products in our store because of cannibalization?
We recently changed the anchor text of the internal links to have keywords instead of just "click here" or "more info" - was this a good idea?
What should our optimal anchor text look like?
-
I am not certain of the mechanics of exactly how the tool works. Please change the page title as I suggested then you and I can try running the tool again and see if the results change.
The words in your title are supposed to indicate your targeted keywords. All those extra words could be confusing the tool.
-
"raised beds"
-
The "explanation" offered in your message is perfect.
Please provide the URL for the page along with the keyword you used.
-
The one thing that contradicts with this is that SEOmoz report cards keep stating that our anchor text on links is considered cannibalization. How do we "modify our anchor text" without using "raised beds" or "raised garden beds" and risk this issue of cannibaliation?
"buy a raised bed", "raised garden beds", "Composite Timber Raised Beds", "Cedar Raised Beds", "Farmstead Raised Beds", "Cedar rectangular raised beds", "raised beds and supplies", and "Complete Raised Garden Bed Kits"
Explanation
It's a best practice in SEO to target each keyword with a single page on your site (sometimes two if you've already achieved high rankings and are seeking a second, indented listing). To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. Note that using modified versions is just fine (for example, if this page targeted the word 'elephants', using 'baby elephants' in anchor text would be just fine).
Recommendation
Unless there is intent to rank multiple pages for the target keyword, it may be wise to modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match
-
Thanks for these observations! This page as well as many on the site are legacy pages from 10 years ago which do not adhere to modern best practices, and the bold characters and header mis-use are great examples.
-
There are over 200 factors that ultimately determine a page's ranking. A page could choose to not follow many of them and still rank well. In your case it seems Sunset ranks as #1 which is largely due to their very strong DA and PA. Yours is good, there's is better.
With respect to the title, it is given a weighting based on how many words it contains and the position of the words. When you add additional words to your title, your weight is diluted amongst those other words. Your focus is not as strong and you will not rank as well.
As I look at your site I see other opportunities for improvement. Some of your alt text may be seen as inappropriate such as "Build your own raised garden bed with anchor and stacking joints". The ALT tag is supposed to offer you an opportunity to describe the picture in a few words.
Your site also has 9400+ bold characters on the page. That is definitely too much. You can use CSS or other means to make the text appear darker. Bold should be used for words which need to stand out on the page. If you use bold for the entire page, a search engine will most likely view it negatively and at best disregard the weight and at worst penalize you for abuse.
-
Great points.
We used to rank #1 on Google for "Raised Garden Beds" forever, until just a few days ago and now we are last on page 2. If you look at everyone who outranks us they are a bit more specific with page title.
Why would reducing the amount of information in the page title help us, when the top dogs seem to be doing otherwise?
-
Hi Aran.
A few suggestions regarding your page:
-
Your current title tag is "Raised Garden Beds: How to build, and where to buy a raised garden bed or planter | Eartheasy.com". Change it to "Raised Garden Beds | Eartheasy.com". Move the rest into your meta description.
-
While you are making this change delete your meta keywords as it is rather large and offers no benefit.
-
Your current H1 tag is Eartheasy and your H2 tag is Navigation. Change your large "Raised Garden Beds" message at the top of the page to an H1 tag. Your navigation should not be presented with a H2 tag. The H# tags are page headers indicating important topics discussed on the page. Think of it in terms of newspaper headlines where H1 is the main title.
As to your questions, changing "click here" and similar tags to actual anchor text is a great move.
Cannibalization happens when you have multiple pages on your site competing for the exact same keyword or phrase. As long as you vary the text and remain consistent, you are fine. You can refer to your "Farmstead Raised Garden Bed" page using that phrase as anchor text as long as you always point to the same URL. You are welcome to reuse "raised garden bed" in other anchor text as long as you include another brand or text with it.
-
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
-
Anchor Test (do follow link)
Hi, I am new to SEO, may I know how many anchor text with a do-follow link I should aim for a 500-1000 words guest post? also, what is the percentage of different type of anchor text per post, e.g. ( 20% Branded, 20% Exact-match, 20% Naked link and more? I know that quality is more important, but is there any magic number and the percentage I should really aim for? Kind regards CHRIS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINSHUN0 -
Looking for Adult SEO company
Hi guys and girls, I am looking for a company that is willing to work with us to improve our SEO. Our website is www.reallovesexdolls.com and we keep on going all the way UP to fall rock bottom hard again (like waves in the ocean). It's really weird, we never invested much in link building and such. We are so busy with other things that it would be nice to outsource this task. You can contact us by phone, or by email. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MartinePeters0 -
What strategies can you use when you're optimizing for 10 locations x 20+ services?
We have a client site (a dentist) that has 10 locations and 20+ services (braces, teeth whitening, cosmetic dentistry, etc, etc.). We're trying to figure out the ideal approach to optimally cover all their locations and services, but each option we consider has drawbacks: Optimize service pages for service name + each location name (or at least the biggest location names), with service name and location names in the title tag. That results in a too long title tag, plus possible user confusion, since they are searching for "braces richmond" but the title tag lists other cities, some of which are in a different state. Optimize service pages for service name + each location name, but don't include the locations in the page title. This is the current option being used, but it appears to be hurting the rankings at least a bit not having the location name in the page title. Create a page for each service + location combo. That will be 200+ pages, which will mean the pages will be deeper in the site, with less link juice. Create new domains for each location/state covered. But then we have to start over building link juice. How have other sites dealt with this? What has worked best and what hasn't worked?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson2 -
Internal Linking from Menu or body text or both with exact match keyword?
I used to have my menu link to every page with my exact match keywords. I am a Magician and have pages for each county / town so I had a link to /magician-hampshire with the anchor text Magician Hampshire in the menu. I recently had my website updated and the developer told me this was very spammy have a menu that said Magician Hampshire, Magician Surrey, Magician Berkshire He suggested that I should now have a menu structure that says Areas Covered>Hampshire - Surrey - Berkshire etc.Google will know my website is about a magician and relate the two together. Is this correct or should I revert my menu back to anchor text of Magician (County) I am running wordpress and he said the title attribute can say Magician Hampshire but the Visible text is for the user and not Google. I also use the technique of doing site:rogerlapin.co.uk magician hampshire and then seeing the top 10 pages google has for me and placing a text link from each of these pages in the body text. When doing link analysis I now see I have two links to each page but understand that google will only account for the first one (from the menu) Questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rnperki
Should I link to every main page from the Menu with the exact anchor text?
Does google only take into account the first link to a page it discovers?
Will it associate a link to a page with just the text of the county (Berkshire) to be related to Magicians in Berkshire as that is what the page is about? A few years ago I used to have at the bottom of each page Magician Hampshire | Magician Surrey | Magician Berkshire | Magician Sussex links - and to date a a lot of other Magicians employ this same technique. I was told google would slap them for it but so far it has not and it seems to be working for them. Many Thanks Roger http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk0 -
Links from music/celebrity based fansites - sitewide images with no alt text
We're currently in the middle of a link audit on our website OneDirection.net and a large part of our incoming links come from fansites such as the following: ladygaganow.net nickjonline.com justinbieberhood.com joejonashq.com harrystylesfan.org brunodaily.org onedirectiondaily.com onedirectionfans.net Now, our previous way of thinking was that these are very relevant websites in the same niche as us, and therefore should be passing some value? However all of the links on these sites come from sitewide images with no alt-text. Some of the sites are passing 1000+ links to us. We've been wary to disavow or request removal of these links as we've usually gone with the thinking that Google applies "common-sense" based logic in its algorithms, and therefore these backlinks should be ok - in our opinion. However we think we are suffering from some kind of algorithmic penalty with our current rankings, and are now thinking these could be the cause. What are people's opinions on these links? Should we stay clear of sitewide links altogether? Should we contact the site owners and try to get them to mix up the alt-text? Or should we get rid of them altogether? Thanks, Chris.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PixelKicks0 -
Optimal ratio of different categories of link
Hello, I know this probably depends on market sector, etc., but are there broad guidelines on the optimal ratio of different types of links - blogs, directory links, citations, etc. I'm working for a tourism business and see nearly all of their links are from directories - both generic and tourism specific. I'm thinking about re-balancing that with guest blogs, PR work, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0 -
Performing Internal Optimization Without Much Anchor Text?
Hi guys. We're in the process of building a new site, and are using a lot of icon based linking, image linking, etc. There is some basic text linking here and there, but not a whole lot. My concern is, because I'm not using actual anchor text, but just images, that crawlers are going to have a more difficult time determining what pages are about. Do I have a valid concern, or am I just worrying about nothing? If this concern is valid, what is the best way to remedy this concern? Alt img tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0