Internal anchor text penalty?

[ryuken]

Everyone knows about Google Penguin hitting sites that have a bad % of anchor text backlinks, so obviously it's important to have a diversified anchor ratio.

However, I may have read the other day that apparently Penguin's algorithm also includes not only external backlinks, but also looks at the anchor text ratio for INTERNAL links as well.

Can anyone who knows their SEO confirm this?

 

[Peter Ngo]

Yes internal anchors text plays a big role, but penalty is a bit of a stretch, more like an overoptimization ranks demote.

I did a testing on 1 of my authority sites a few years ago, what I did was simple:

1. Pointed exact match anchors to 2 inner pages using sidebar widget, that website has over 3k indexed pages. I also surrounded the anchor with plain text to make it looks contextual.
2. I then waited for 2 days, rankings dropped from page 2 --> page 7 for both pages and those are only 2 pages that had issue.
3. I waited for 3 weeks with no signal of bouncing back.
4. I then quickly removed both links.
5. Rankings bounced back to its original positions for both pages after 3 days.

Just my personal experience, hopes that help .

 

[ryuken]

Interesting, thanks so much for that insight and feedback. Helps a lot understanding how Google works.

 

[Elon Snup]

Yes internal anchors text plays a big role, but penalty is a bit of a stretch, more like an overoptimization ranks demote.

I did a testing on 1 of my authority sites a few years ago, what I did was simple:

1. Pointed exact match anchors to 2 inner pages using sidebar widget, that website has over 3k indexed pages. I also surrounded the anchor with plain text to make it looks contextual.
2. I then waited for 2 days, rankings dropped from page 2 --> page 7 for both pages and those are only 2 pages that had issue.
3. I waited for 3 weeks with no signal of bouncing back.
4. I then quickly removed both links.
5. Rankings bounced back to its original positions for both pages after 3 days.

Just my personal experience, hopes that help .

That's very interesting indeed because what we usually hear is that there is no penalty/de-ranking for such a thing.

Were the anchors directly related to the topic of the page? What was the previous anchor that worked?

 

[Peter Ngo]

That's very interesting indeed because what we usually hear is that there is no penalty/de-ranking for such a thing.

Were the anchors directly related to the topic of the page? What was the previous anchor that worked?

Yes it totally relates to the topic of the page, it is the #1 main keywords that I tried to rank, so it was pretty interesting for me to see that happens too.

I usually keep my EM anchors very low, less than 10% mostly.

 

[don chino]

Just like it's bad to over optimise your content, it's bad to stuff keywords to interlinks. It should be logical and meant for the visitor. You can do it, just don't over do it.

 

[ryuken]

The thing is, for example, the links on a wordpress menu bar - these will be displayed across every page.

So if a blog has 1000 posts, it means you're gonna have at least 1000 same anchors. Is this an issue?

 

[ryuken]

Anyone?

 

[ryuken]

The thing is, for example, the links on a wordpress menu bar - these will be displayed across every page.

So if a blog has 1000 posts, it means you're gonna have at least 1000 same anchors. Is this an issue?

Bump.

 

[Peter Ngo]

Bump.

No that is not an issue, since it falls into the category of menu links.

 

[ryuken]

No that is not an issue, since it falls into the category of menu links.

But why does Google differentiate between a siidebar and a menu bar?

 

[nakamura]

Yes internal anchors text plays a big role, but penalty is a bit of a stretch, more like an overoptimization ranks demote.

I did a testing on 1 of my authority sites a few years ago, what I did was simple:

1. Pointed exact match anchors to 2 inner pages using sidebar widget, that website has over 3k indexed pages. I also surrounded the anchor with plain text to make it looks contextual.
2. I then waited for 2 days, rankings dropped from page 2 --> page 7 for both pages and those are only 2 pages that had issue.
3. I waited for 3 weeks with no signal of bouncing back.
4. I then quickly removed both links.
5. Rankings bounced back to its original positions for both pages after 3 days.

Just my personal experience, hopes that help .

Same experience over here. How about writing an unique article and linking to with a longtail keyword anchor to the page you want to rank, then putting the exact match anchor link on the sidebar widget linking to the new unique article. So the article is like a "puffer".

 

[nakamura]

But why does Google differentiate between a siidebar and a menu bar?

They can't and they don't, but what they can do is seeing if a link is contextual or just a plain link.

What happens if you have a website with 1000 pages and suddenly create a sidebar with a exact match anchor contextual link is:
a) you create duplicate content on 1000 pages, since it shows the exact same writing on every single page of these 1000 pages.
b) You create 1000 exact match anchor internal links to one page all of sudden. Which will be over-optimization and at least end in a Google Dance.

What would work, but would be extremely time consuming is you write a unique sidebar text and link with a different anchor (keep anchor ratio in mind) to the page you want to rank on every single of those 1000 pages. So you always get unique content and you always have a different anchor.

 

[ryuken]

Okay, I get the part about suddenly creating a sidebar (which in my opinion shouldn't be penalised, because it's just to help navigation).

But lets talk about the original menu - what you're essentially saying is, if a webmaster changes or updates his menu, say one year down the line, to reflect a more meaningful title or titles for his readers... this could well be punishable by G.

 

[ryuken]

Okay, I get the part about suddenly creating a sidebar (which in my opinion shouldn't be penalised, because it's just to help navigation).

But lets talk about the original menu - what you're essentially saying is, if a webmaster changes or updates his menu, say one year down the line, to reflect a more meaningful title or titles for his readers... this could well be punishable by G.

Bump.