Penguin: Do On-Site Anchors Hurt in the Same Way?

8 replies
  • SEO
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Hello

I got hit by penguin and I have worked my butt of to recover a site.

I've fixed most of the site.. long story.. but my first steps back in the early days was deoptimziing the site.

I removed a lot of my inner-page anchors that linked within my own site.

But I've recently wondered if this was a good thing to do or a bad thing?

Perhaps Google WANTS us to use on-site anchors to tell them what pages are ? Perhaps its just the off site stuff that seems too manipulated?

What are your thoughts?
#anchors #hurt #onsite #penguin
  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    I think like everything you should not over do it.

    I see people linking with anchor lists like:

    computer services new york
    computer services houston
    computer services boston
    computer services texas
    computer services baltimore
    etc.

    That would be like kw stuffing, and I don't think you get much benefit from that so yes I do think you can over optimze your internal anchor links. Just act smart and natural.
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    • Profile picture of the author zecke
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      I think like everything you should not over do it.

      I see people linking with anchor lists like:

      computer services new york
      computer services houston
      computer services boston
      computer services texas
      computer services baltimore
      etc.

      That would be like kw stuffing, and I don't think you get much benefit from that so yes I do think you can over optimze your internal anchor links. Just act smart and natural.
      I got to agree. I think I got "-950 penalty" for couple of my silos because of that. I changed all internal links anchor-texts to look not spammy anymore.

      My KW density was above 10% for my main keyword that was in about 50-80 internal links anchors. Now it`s no more than 2%. Waiting for recrawl and see if it will bounce back
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      • Profile picture of the author The Oilman
        Thanks everyone.

        What I had was about 50 articles around different topics that linked back to the money page (home page) with the anchor that I wanted the money page to rank for.

        What are your thoughts on this? Good or bad?
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  • Profile picture of the author Trevor
    Internal linking is a good practice in SEO, but it shouldn't be overdone.

    Also, make sure you are not using the same anchors all the time as that look kind of weird to Google. Use some variations of the target keywords, too.

    Last but not least, you don't have to link from every page to every other page on your site. Don't over-do, I do think you could get penalized for doing so.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    You should have focused on offpage factors first like too much targeted anchor text and any sitewide links, etc - rather than making a bunch of changes on page.

    As far as internal links go, I think as long as you're not linking multiple times excessively from one page to the same page using the exact or variants of the same keyword, you're fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I'm not sure how internal links can be over optimized If you rank a single page per keyword, I don't get it?

    I can run a single anchor-text link on 1,000 internal pages & still not over optimize.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I'm not sure how internal links can be over optimized If you rank a single page per keyword, I don't get it?

      I can run a single anchor-text link on 1,000 internal pages & still not over optimize.
      If you put a list on your homepage or any other pages like I just posted above, isn't that just plain kw stuffing although it's used as anchor txt in a link?
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  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    Internal linking should be letting Google know what the page is about. So its perfectly fine to have target specific anchor text as long as you're not manipulating anything. By that I mean as long as the anchors you use accurately describe the page. Google recommends doing this.
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