Optimized Anchors question

Paul Bryant

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I was reading something about the "Link Scheme" document Google put out.

So will you get penalized now if you use optimized anchors?

Example:
For example, if a site wants to rank for the term “top mobile phone,” it would use the anchor “top mobile phone” to link to its mobile phone site.

Will that get you penalized? Basically this is an exact match keyword. I thought you can still do this!
 
Paul Bryant said:
Will that get you penalized?
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In a word, no.

But every link you point shouldn't be using that anchor. Typically you want your anchor texts to be pretty diverse. I personally try to make sure no keyword is being used more than 6% of the time.
 
That's one of many factors used by Google algorithms such as the popular Penguin. It's always a combination of factors for the algorithms and a combo of algos for ranking.

As a starting point for more info on the topic, you could check out this Google search patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US8250114B2
 
Like others have said, it's not that they're off-limits, it's just that there's more focus on them being used "unnaturally".

The idea is that links naturally created by visitors and fans would have a diversity of targets and anchors, including lots of raw URLs (since most people tend not write in HTML tags). So no link-spamming your homepage with your main keyword!

But no, a few "top mobile phone" links to a relevant page from different sources that make sense in context aren't going to get you penalized.
 
Like the other responses advise, you can still use exact match anchor text but you really need to know what your doing and to avoid an over optimisation slap.

I am personally risk adverse when building sites/links and typically avoid exact match anchors. Instead I prefer to create a solid ranking signal using onsite SEO. Original LSI content, markup and robust internal linking (SILO).

This is then backed up with links from topically relevent sites. These links are filtered to ensure the are punchy and the anchors are typically conversational, benign or branded co-occurences and relevent to the page I'm linking to.

I build a few links to page im trying to optimise and the hits each supporting page within the silo with a fee links following the same format.
 
^^^ This man knows what's up!

These days, I'm doing KW research for each individual page/post on my site. I always go brand/raw url anchors at first. The KW research is going to help me find related keywords, LSI keywords, industry jargon, keyword groups, etc...that well help me create a very relevant piece of content that is hyper focused to my niche. I, personally, do not want to have more than 5% on any single anchor besides my brand and raw url keywords.



Mark Sharron said:
Like the other responses advise, you can still use exact match anchor text but you really need to know what your doing and to avoid an over optimisation slap.

I am personally risk adverse when building sites/links and typically avoid exact match anchors. Instead I prefer to create a solid ranking signal using onsite SEO. Original LSI content, markup and robust internal linking (SILO).

This is then backed up with links from topically relevent sites. These links are filtered to ensure the are punchy and the anchors are typically conversational, benign or branded co-occurences and relevent to the page I'm linking to.

I build a few links to page im trying to optimise and the hits each supporting page within the silo with a fee links following the same format.
Click to expand...
 
I'm making more and more of an effort to not repeat the same anchor text twice, unless it's a raw URL or branded anchor. Instead, use random phrase match anchors that include your main keyword combined with other words, to make it more natural looking. (I.E. Finding blue widgets is easy, try a blue widget, honest reviews for blue widgets, buy blue widgets from abc.com).

Another tip - try creating links with branded anchors, then power up those pages with 2nd tier links using your main keywords. That way your tier 1 anchor text is still clean, and you're sending topical relevance signals via your anchor text on tier 2.
 
Some good advice here! One small thing I would add is if you are going to use exact match or optimized anchors as you put it, make sure you use them on the most powerful links. You can dilute your percentages with other crappy links so that it doesn't trigger a penalty. The goal is to show what your site is about with the better links and avoid over optimization with the lower quality links!
 
ddasilva said:
I'm making more and more of an effort to not repeat the same anchor text twice, unless it's a raw URL or branded anchor. Instead, use random phrase match anchors that include your main keyword combined with other words, to make it more natural looking. (I.E. Finding blue widgets is easy, try a blue widget, honest reviews for blue widgets, buy blue widgets from abc.com).

Another tip - try creating links with branded anchors, then power up those pages with 2nd tier links using your main keywords. That way your tier 1 anchor text is still clean, and you're sending topical relevance signals via your anchor text on tier 2.
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Two things in this post made me say HELL YEAH in agreement and then HELL NAH in disagreement. Great post.

Not repeating the same anchor twice. I agree 100% Future-proofing your website from penguin. The caveat is that it's temping to do exactly as you said, throwing in your main term over and over. But if you begin to look at anchor ratios in terms of single words and phrases, your main term is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Google will undoubtedly eventually target this.

I think having a few instances of your main term done unnaturally by you is more than enough if your on-page is right. That's if you want to keep your site forever or not have it tank. If you're churning and burning, I'm all about what @ddasilva says, which is slam those terms in there safely but not too safe and make your money while you can.

Powering up untargeted tier 1 anchors with targeted tier 2's. With quantum computing on the horizon, i'm sure google is going to be able to sort this out and eventually hit the money site with a penalty. I'd say ALREADY that they can at least see that your tier 1 is spammed with targeted anchors and penalize it from ranking (who cares) but also dampen the link flow through it (we def care here).

I'd say that most of the relevance needs to come from on-page, with very very very very sparse off-page relevance. It doesn't take much for google to know what's related. I don't think it's a matter of percentages. I think they are just using percentages for penalizing.
 
Devil Anse said:
Not repeating the same anchor twice. I agree 100% Future-proofing your website from penguin. The caveat is that it's temping to do exactly as you said, throwing in your main term over and over. But if you begin to look at anchor ratios in terms of single words and phrases, your main term is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Google will undoubtedly eventually target this.

I think having a few instances of your main term done unnaturally by you is more than enough if your on-page is right. That's if you want to keep your site forever or not have it tank. If you're churning and burning, I'm all about what @ddasilva says, which is slam those terms in there safely but not too safe and make your money while you can.
Click to expand...

I'm not advising anyone to slam the same keyword in different phrases over and over. What I meant was that if your goal is to keep your exact match anchors at 10%, I'd just use phrase match anchors to compose of that 10%. I wouldn't advise to just solely use phrase match anchors to compose of your entire anchor ratio. Just as a replacement to whatever your goal is for exact match percentage. That way you're still getting your main keyword in the same percentage of links, but it's going to be safer and more natural.

Powering up untargeted tier 1 anchors with targeted tier 2's.
Click to expand...
With quantum computing on the horizon, i'm sure google is going to be able to sort this out and eventually hit the money site with a penalty. I'd say ALREADY that they can at least see that your tier 1 is spammed with targeted anchors and penalize it from ranking (who cares) but also dampen the link flow through it (we def care here).
Click to expand...

I doubt Google will be able to sort this out, and assess any type of penalty to your money site for tier 2 over-optimization, as long as you're using high quality tier 1 links and your tier 1 anchor profile is legit. With most Tier 1 links, there are other outbound links going to authority sites. There would just be too much collateral damage if they were to penalize everything that is being linked from the article, because there's 50 over-optimized anchors coming to that page. There's no way for them to know who is responsible for those links, or that it's connected to my site.

I would say a link devaluation at worse. But then again, I use lower volume of links on my Tier 2 using a spun content blog network, consisting of high pr/da domains. I know most people prefer to use GSA and blasts 1,000's of contextuals, so maybe that's what you're referring to (I.E. 3,000 links using 10 main keywords only). But either way, it's probably a good idea to mix in generics/random anchors along with your main anchors on tier 2 anyways.
 
Do you guys account for anchors used in internal linking in your overall anchor diversification profile?
 
Yep, it's all about link diversity. Use you url the most, and sprinkle in some related kw anchors
 
stackcash said:
Do you guys account for anchors used in internal linking in your overall anchor diversification profile?
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I don't, when taking the whole anchor profile in account. But if you're linking to the same page on your site over and over, I'd definitely vary up the anchor text as much as possible (even if using generic anchor at times). If you're linking to a page that you ultimately want to rank for 10 different similar keywords, your internal links is a good way to get some juice for all those related keywords that you can't fit in your SEO Title, H1 tag, etc...
 
I honestly let whoever is linking to me decide what they want to use - I barely care anymore. I rely on sick content, perfect on-page optimization and eyeballs to do the work for me.

The way I see it, a link's primary function is to LINK people to your site, not boost your rankings. AKA it's primary purpose is to drive targeted traffic to your site, which you can monetize and provide value to. The secondary benefit is the additional wave of traffic it may bring in aggregate once you start ranking for keywords for that piece of content. I think too many builders think of it the reverse way, which is a bit myopic IMO.
 
^ Good stuff @Kevin. If people would listen to that, all these penalties would be far less of a problem. Linking primarily for traffic that might click through that link, not for the residual traffic that will come through the serps later.

@stackcash I can say that way back in the day I got a site penalized for it's main term by using the keyword as the "Home" link in the navigation menu. This was before all the WMT notifcations, but it was most definitely an internal linking over-optimization problem.
 
Lion said:
Linking primarily for traffic that might click through that link, not for the residual traffic that will come through the serps later.
Click to expand...

Truer words never spoken!
 
Keeping it under 10% is a good rule of thumb, but there's really no point in counting a specific % of exact anchors unless you're doing some heavy automation.
a) Because you don't know what Google will do in the future
b) Because the acceptable threshold of anchor text keywords varies depending on your site's authority

If you're building for the long term, the best way to future proof your site is just to mimic a natural profile so there's no way Google can algorithmically filter out whatever you're doing. And what were links originally designed for?

Referencing other web pages.

For most of my links I just have my writers reference something natural on the target page. E.g. If it's a page about nursing schools, and the link is from a property about Finance, the link might look something like:

"...as unemployment in most industries continues to rise, the health industry continues to struggle to fill job vacancies - especially in rural areas. Nursing school graduates continue to find work placements, with <a href="link to my money page">a graduation placement rate of 95%</a>, a rate that has remained consistent despite..."

Its relevant, has co-occurance, and looks natural - especially if my money page actually quotes a stat about graduation placement rates. And I don't have to worry about tracking my anchor text based on arbitrary %s, I just let my writers work in a reference that makes sense based on context.

For the most powerful links, I'll sometimes work in an exact keyword, but always wrapped in a reference phrase e.g.

"...as unemployment in most industries continues to rise, the health industry continues to struggle to fill job vacancies - especially in rural areas. <a href="link to my money page">Nursing school graduates continue to find work placements</a>, with a graduation placement rate of 95%, a rate that has remained consistent despite..."
 
The threshold, or allowable set of keyword matching anchors isn't what it used to be.
You're best to put more emphasis on something like this to start:
And throw in some non-descriptive generics in the mix;
  • visit website
  • more info
  • learn more
  • ...
Building out like that to start (and maybe 1-2 target anchors per doz) is a good start
 
Getting to the point that like Kevin I barely look at anchors - not really seeing much difference between sentence level anchorrs v exacts - i.e I find that 20 x blue widgets as anchors is now better being 20 x spread of url, brand and long tail sentence anchors
 
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