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
-
SEO-optimized Data Visualizations (e.g. Charts) Tools
Hi there! We are currently evaluating data visualization / charting tools for rich content. Are there any open source solutions that work best in your opinion? Why? Some specific questions: Are static image / svg rendered images better than a javascript dynamic chart (canvas/HTML5)? Which gets indexed better? Is there any proven or perceived benefit to using Google Charts API that gives you an SEO boost? Are there tools for progressively enhancing HTML raw data tables to generate charts? Looking at a couple of solutions: Google Charts API C3.js Chartjs Thanks for your feedback!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insurifyusa0 -
SERP cannibalization
Hi Moz Community, Recently I've been seeing multiple pages from my eCommerce site pop up in the SERPS for a couple of queries. Usually I would count this as a good thing but since both pages that generally pop up are so similar I'm starting to wonder if we would rank better with just one page. My example is the query "birthday gifts" Both of the URL's below show up in the search results one after the other on the first page. The URL on the top is our family page and the one below it is our subcat page, you can find both in the top nav. of our site. www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/birthday-gifts/birthday-gifts (family) www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/birthday-gifts (subcat) Both of these pages have different PA's and the subcat page that currently lives in our site nav is actually: **www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/birthday-**gifts?view=all. ****This url doesn't show up in the serps and is rel=canonicaled to the subcat page without the parameter listed above. We use this page in the nav because we think it's a better user experience than the actual subcat page. If we were to condense all three pages into one would we rank higher? Any thoughts here would be appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
What is Google supposed to return when you submit an image URL into Fetch as Google? Is a few lines of readable text followed by lots of unreadable text normal?
I am seeing something like this (Is this normal?): HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Autoboof
Server: nginx
Content-Type: image/jpeg
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:23:04 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:55 GMT
X-Request-ID: v-8dd8519e-8a1a-11e5-a595-12313d18b975
X-AH-Environment: prod
Content-Length: 25505
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:24:11 GMT
X-Varnish: 863978362 863966195
Age: 16
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive
X-Cache: HIT
X-Cache-Hits: 1 ����•JFIF••••��;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 75
��C•••••••••• •
••
••••••••• $.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C• ••••
•2!!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222��•••••v••"••••••��••••••••••••••••
•���•••••••••••••}•••••••!1A••Qa•"q•2���•#B��•R��$3br�
••••%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz���������������������������������������������������������������������������•••••••••••••••••••
•���••••••••••••••w••••••!1••AQ•aq•"2�••B���� #3R�•br�0 -
We are looking for an SEO Company to hire to assist in upgrading a site to Wordpress
Does anyone have a good recommendation or better yet personal experience with one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCMotors20 -
What is the best text font for health website
What is the good text font for health website, font size, inline spacing, character spacing etc.? Is there any study on it? what font looks to good to eyes? (on what font user stay for long time etc) I personally like apple website text font.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker0 -
Is it possible to get job pages in the SERPs to compete against the likes on Monster and Indeed?
Is it possible to get job pages in the SERPs to compete against the likes on Monster and Indeed? I'm looking to build specific pages for jobs that are posted on our website, but I feel it's a tough challenge for any site to compete? Are there better options?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hughescov0 -
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 -
If your analytics show you something like this, what is your next strategy?
What is your thought if your site's analytic is showing you something like that graph? is it "DAMN!!! it is not supposed to be like that, the X are supposed to be greater then Y by at least two or three" And what is your next strategy? is it "okay, i need to put on backburner for my link building kungfu now immidiately...." Please share your thought.. because i dont know if i should be happy or not looking at something like this showing up on my analytics... Please do share your opinion GoodBad.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IKT0