External Keyword Anchor Links - Always Bad?
-
1) I've been told that other sites linking to my site with keyword-rich text are bad.
2) But Google Console / Analytics shows that we rank extremely high for random, pointless phrases loosely tied to the topic of our site. Like "dht blocker". (its a hair loss site)
3) This week I began analyzing our backlinks. Guess what I found? Literally hundreds of bot-created spammy trackback and pingback text links around the phrase "dht blocker"
It seems to me that keyword rich anchor text on external sites is NOT a bad thing. In fact its an outstanding way to rank better for your desired keywords. Obviously the "bad" is the spam element. Probably the high quantity. On unrelated websites. But guess what? It worked. _We are ranking extremely well for these pointless phrases, thanks to these spam bots. _
Obviously we will be disavowing all these sites. But I want to start building quality links via legitimate, honest means.
So here is my question:
If I begin a legitimate honest link building campaign with other websites, and request that they put the HREF around our most coveted keyword phrase - is this inherently BAD? Or is it actually possibly GOOD? -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts?
-
Keyword rich anchor text on external sites will help your search rankings. But it's also against Google's rules. If an unnaturally high percentage of the links to your site have the same anchor text, you run the risk that Google will ignore their value or will penalize your site. My suggestion would be to get some links with keyword rich anchor text but also get a lot of other links that don't have keyword rich anchor text so your overall link profile looks natural.
-
If you write to me and say... hey.. would you consider adding my new article to your news feed. I would look at it and add it, only if it was outfreekingstanding and highly relevant to my audience.
However, if you write to me and say that you want specific anchor text, then I am going to delete your message and all future messages, I don't care if the Pope is writing for your site. Why? Because you are trying to manipulate the search engines and I don't want to have anything to do with your site because I don't want to be linking to anything that Google will count as spam.
-
I think you want me to give a palatable answer.
If you ask for the anchor text it is manipulative. If the person with the website determines the anchor text then it was not manipulated by you.
-
I feel like you're still not answering my question.
Going by your logic, any link building at all is "Manipulative". Technically, isn't it? Yes.
My question, once again, is whether links containing anchor text are inherently bad.
That was the question: Are they INHERENTLY bad.
I gave two options based on the question:
1) They are inherently Bad
2) They are possibly GoodI posed my question in a very deliberate way. I will repeat the original post so maybe its more clear what I am saying: I have been told that ANY ANCHOR TEXT LINKS ARE BAD.
Any. All.
But I found an example of obvious spam using anchor text links, and we rank well for those.
Therefore: Is ANY (ALL) Anchor text linking bad? (Yes / No)
Since you haven't said a simple yes or no, Im going to go with "NO" anchor text links are not inherently bad and in fact seem to be a very effective way to rank well ... IF ... (this was obvious, and a given) its used responsibly and in moderation.
-
That method is manipulative. The anchor text is being placed to manipulate the search engines.
And, if you get a high number of keyword rich anchor text links you might have a Penguin problem.
-
So the direct answer to the question in bold above, is ........?
-
These are descriptions of manipulative links based upon anchor text that are quotes straight from Google (here).....
" Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links."
"Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites."
There are many other types of manipulative links based upon anchor text.
Although it appears that spam-made links with keywords as anchor text links are an effective way to drive, if you have a lot of those types of link your website will stand out to Google's algos and you could get a Penguin problem. Lots of people who have Penguin problems have lost their rankings for about two years. Google keeps saying... "we are going to run the Penguin update soon" and the owners of these sites have been tormented by the numerous and lengthy delays.
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
-
What Constitutes Keyword Stuffing?
Greeting MOZ Community: I have been attempting to add certain keywords phrases to the home page text of our real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). When I check the keyword density and look at the keyword cloud, the frequency of certain terms appear substantially higher than they should be (see attached keyword cloud and keyword density chart. Certain terms like "office space" have a 5 or 6% frequency which seems high. Last thing we need is a Panda penalty. When I viewed the code for the home page (see enclosed), I noticed HREF tags, SRE tags and ALT tags repeating certain keyword phrases, driving up their density. I have attached a keyword cloud for the home page of a competitor and the use of language seems more diverse. Does Google take the text in these various tags into account? I know the ALT tag is important for SEO, but how about the others? Does the use of text in the tags for this page make the overall page look spammy? Also, there are text and tags for the carousel in the home page that appear in the code for the home page. If this code were somehow concealed, would we be better off from an SEO perspective? Thanks, Alan pkM7CZG 1DFFMZ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
How to detect a bad link and remove ?
As per google penguin, all the low quality back links are going to affect the website SERPS hugely. So, we need to find all the bad back links and then remove them one by one. What I would like to know is, what tool do you use to find all the bad back links ? And how do we know which is a bad back link or bad website, where our link should not be there ? Then what service what do you suggest for back links removal. I contacted LinkDelete.com and they quoted me 97$ for a month to remove all links in less than 3 weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monali123
Let me know, what you suggest.0 -
Link Building with a Scholarship
One of my clients is using a scholarship to build links. We have a nofollow PR campaign getting ready to start and are doing some social marketing for the scholarship page on the site. We are also trying to get backlinks from highschools and colleges that link to scholarship opportunities. So far this has been a slow process. Does anybody have any advice for speeding any of this up? Has somebody ever done a campaign like this before? Is there some kind of database with financial aid contact info for a lot of schools? I contact a lot of schools and always tend to get put on the backburner.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Linking Back
Hello, I have a blog www.digitaldiscovery.eu and I have been working the link building. Now I have a few links pointing into my blog and in Google Webmaster and in Open Site Explorer I can see the URL of those websites. In scale from 1 to 10 how usefull is to have a blogroll in my blog pointing back to those high PR links? How usefull is this in link-building strategy? Tks in advance! PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
How to ping the links
When i do link building for my website, how can i let the search engines know about that. is there any way of pinging?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raybiswa0 -
Two links from one page with different Anchor text
Example Business Name - UberPuter UberPuter targets the keywords "Computer Repairs" right from their home page. UberPuter has the option to place links on 150 of their customers pages that are happy with the service. Would it be best to place two anchor text links one with the brand name and one with the keyword anchor text in "computer repairs" pointing both at the home page or should UberPuter only place one link back to the home page for the Keyword Anchor text? To the best of my knowledge G only counts the first link on a page as a "Vote" so my thought is to only include the single link with the keyword anchor text. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
Dynamic Links vs Static Links
There are under 100 pages that we are trying to rank for and we'd like to flatten our site architecture to give them more link juice. One of the methods that is currently in place now is a widget that dynamically links to these pages based on page popularity...the list of links could change day to day. We are thinking of redesigning the page to become more static, as we believe it's better for link juice to flow to those pages reliably than dynamically. Before we do so, we need a second opinion.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RBA0