I have heard that having many backlinks to your site with exactly the same anchor text can hurt you in the SERP’s. Has anybody experienced this? If so, does anyone have an idea how many is “too many”? 100? 1,000? 10,000?
If my site sells green widgets and I’m only interested in that phrase, should I still mix up my backlink anchor text with alternate versions such as “green widget,” “buy green widgets,” “green widget thingies,” etc?
The more the merrier, Jason. Each backlink is effectively an editorial vote for your site. So the more backlinks you have about “green widgets” pointing to you, from as many unique sites, the better. That being said, don’t get spammy with it. Never have you links on an FFA or on a site that publicly advertises link selling. Also, if you have more than one link on a page, make sure that those backlinks point to different pages on your site.
Happy Linking!
Interesting. Why?
I know, right? Well, as it turns out, if the link points to the same page, Google will only give credit for the first backlink. Furthermore, the link juice applied to each backlink falls as you go further down the page. So, make sure that your top money keyword anchortext and link appear first if you’re posting multiple links.
Hm interesting. Never thought of that… I usually have more backlinks pointing to the root from one page
I think the point is that if all of your links are exactly the same then it looks very much like you’ve seeded those links rather than them having developed naturally, which might trigger a spam warning. Google isn’t interested in how many links to your site you can get, they are interested in how many links to your site other people want to give. And the chances are that if other people are linking to your site, they won’t always use exactly the same wording as each other.
I don’t think it’s a big thing to worry about, but it might be worth varying the words slightly from time to time. This might also help you when people search for different terms other than the exact phrase that you have optimised for.
I don’t think it is a problem at all as long as the websites that link to you are considered “good” by google…
Simple rule:
If it makes sense to you, it probably makes sense to Google…if you feel that you are “tricking” the system, then Google probably feels the same…
Thanks for the replies, all. I only go for links from high-quality sites and will work on mixing up my anchor text a little bit.
Not quite an answer to the question you asked but…
Don’t cannibalise your keywords though. To get the most SEO juice from your “Green Widget” link - to continue the example - make sure it points to a page you’re optimising for the key phrase “Green Widget”.
If you do link to multiple pages from a page, to get the most from each of them, use keywords and phrase appropriate to each target page.
If my site sells green widgets and I’m only interested in that phrase, should I still mix up my backlink anchor text with alternate versions such as “green widget,” “buy green widgets,” “green widget thingies,” etc?
Yep. You don’t have to go crazy with mixing it up, but the odd variation here and there looks more natural and means you want trip Google’s spam alarm.
As for how many is too many, it’s hard to say in general. But your best bet is to download a backlink analysis tool and check out the anchor texts on the links to the #1 Google spot for each keyword you want to rank for. If all their anchor texts are identical and they have 1000 links with that text, you can assume it’s safe for that keyword at least - but keep in mind it’s not just the quantity of links, but also the time it takes to acquire them, so don’t rush it.
Agreed. I try to keep my anchor text pretty tightly focused on the KW I’m targeting. I use forum posting, articles, social bookmarking, blog commenting and media buys for promotion. So across all those mediums, the link profile looks natural anyhow.
In my long study time, I have heard that a good percentage for its main anchor in backlinks should be approximately 70% and the remaining complementary.
Try variations of this main keyword, placing upper and lower case
Well very good question asked by the consumer.Actually what happens when you use one anchor text many times or only one anchor text is getting more and more backlinks.then google will panelized that site due to spamming.Google will not decide the ratio with the no of backlinks but it is measure by percentage.Google will crawl and see how many times you have used that keyword in your site and whether you also have used different keywords or not.Suppose you have a website and you used that keyword in your website, so the density of that particular keyword will not more than 2%.Thats we call keyword density.And more keyword density will effect the SERP’s.
I think its good if you have you main keyword in anchor text most of the times in your link building,but it shouldn’t be all the time there must be variation after some time.
This ties in a bit with LSI (latent semantic indexing) and I agree. I did an article and interview with Bruce Clay earlier this year on it (and site siloing): http://www.mrewin.com/search-engine-optimization/step-by-step-search-part-ii-keyword-research
Be careful mentioning LSI with regards to SEO:
And people who use percentages as rules of thumbs should be looked at with skepticism as well.
StevieD gave the best response above:
Multiple links from the same anchor text might invite trouble in the form of penalization from Google for that matter.
Hi,
I don’t think this would hurt your rankings though using 15% of variants or phrases of your main targeted keywords as anchor text would appear more natural in search engines’ eyes.
Also, I would like to recommend using deep linking strategies since this would not only help in ranking of your inner pages but also make your backlinks more naturally.
all the best,
Why? Can you give any evidence for that?
There no evidence of this, i have had sites that were 2 days old and had over 5k links pointing to the site and the site ranked well for over 2 years. So the more marketing you do the better. I would mixup the keywords to get more keywords ranking well in google