Link anchor diversity penalty

[cinereus]

Got a penalty from the big G for one specific keyword only. And yes I know the difference between a penalty and being deindexed - the page shows using [site: keyword] but is dozens of pages down when just doing [keyword]. Used to be between 2 and 5.

It shows up for other keywords just not one.

I'm 90% sure it's because 90% of the internal and external links use [keyword] as the anchor text. If I make lots of low quality links with anchors like "click here" and the URL, will that get rid of the penalty?

Sounds like this:

http://electronplumber.com/my-site-was-sandboxed-and-how-i-climbed-out-of-it/

 

[ljt3759]

I'm not entirely sure I read your post correctly, however have you tried seeing if your competition has got harder to beat, new stats on your keyword, have you ranked for it before? age of site? More info would help.

 

[cinereus]

No, it's nothing to do with competition. As I clearly said, it's a penalty. Top of page 1 for months down to page 30+ only for one keyword!

It's almost certainty over optimised anchor text but how do I get it fixed?

 

[cinereus]

Further research shows this is called "Google BLOOP".

I know of one site that has one keyword like mine penalised for one page only and has the -950 penalty.

Another site is newer and has a sitewide -30 penalty.

 

[cinereus]

Anyone else know how to get out of this penalty?

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

You are going to have to really diversify your backlinking anchor text as well as have naked backlinks with not anchor text at all. Do the click here, look here, this site is good, interesting site, etc... make sure it is real diverse.

You can also hit a bunch of the press release sites for the naked urls as well as wiki sites for them as well and of course all the Web 2.0s that are out there for the taking.

 

[elvis1973]

Yes I have been affected by this, seen a drop from page one and I think it's because 80% of my anchors are for my main kw.

A lesson learned. I need to now start building in as much diversity as possible.

Silly really because it makes perfect sense and is pretty obvious but it takes a slap sometimes to remind you. How many times have you told yourself that things should look as natural as possible and 80% anchor from one keyword is not natural.

 

[forwardedlandlines]

I think you'll be off fine if you do not replace it with worthless 'click here' anchors, but more with variations, like 'click here for keyword', or 'amazing keyword', 'blue keyword', just vary.

 

[elvis1973]

I think you'll be off fine if you do not replace it with worthless 'click here' anchors, but more with variations, like 'click here for keyword', or 'amazing keyword', 'blue keyword', just vary.

I disagree that these are worthless, they are what google expects to see, it's what the majority of white hat links are made up from and google knows this, so if all of a sudden a site appears on the radar and the links are nice keyword friendly links then it raises a flag.

Google isn't stupid and it has billions of pages to analyse and clear patterns emerge of what is normal and what is manipulated.

It's like you are telling a lie to google and the best way to get away with a lie is to tell as much of the truth as possible.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

It's like you are telling a lie to google and the best way to get away with a lie is to tell as much of the truth as possible.

That is VERY Solid!

 

[cinereus]

You are going to have to really diversify your backlinking anchor text as well as have naked backlinks with not anchor text at all. Do the click here, look here, this site is good, interesting site, etc... make sure it is real diverse.

You can also hit a bunch of the press release sites for the naked urls as well as wiki sites for them as well and of course all the Web 2.0s that are out there for the taking.

Thanks for your comment - I know you have some good info. So you think the best idea is to diversify anchor as much as possible?

Do you know what the best services are which allow dozens of keyword variations? Most only allow a max of 3.

 

[Nekojin]

Unique article wizard allows you to input a large amount of keywords and would be worth spinning a few articles through with good keyword diversity.

 

[manny521]

I'm aggressively de-optimizing my anchor text at this time. I hope this is the reason for my penalty as it won't be hard to fix.

 

[christianbed]

Yeah, I learned this lesson late in the game, but fortunately not before getting penalized.

What I do is input my kw into SB's keyword scraper, run it a few times, then use that batch of about 1000...it takes like 5 min to do the whole thing and everyone should consider giving it a try.

While I may have a 'click here' and 'check this out' in the mix, I don't want to dilute my efforts and I figure that I can achieve the same effect by using words that are somewhat related. ;-)

 

[sneakparty]

I agree 100% with anchoring to related keywords rather than just "click here". While either would work well for your problem you may as well benefit from extra relevant traffic. You should never waste anchor links of you have the choice... It doesn't matter what your targeted keyword is, there will always be thousands of variations you could gain from while still maintaining diversity.

 

[manny521]

I agree 100% with anchoring to related keywords rather than just "click here". While either would work well for your problem you may as well benefit from extra relevant traffic. You should never waste anchor links of you have the choice... It doesn't matter what your targeted keyword is, there will always be thousands of variations you could gain from while still maintaining diversity.

I used to think the same thing, but after you get the penalty, you might think otherwise.

At this time, I think any and all variations are good, but there needs to be a good percentage that have nothing to do with your keyword.

What is the percentage needed? Who the fuck knows!

 

[GeeWhiz#1]

You definitely will want good anchor diversity.

With your anchor diversity you want to make it look as natural as possible, so do use generics anchors. Also include your URL: www, non www etc. Try using your keyword within short phrases of up to 5 words as anchor text....

A lot of people have been getting hits on specific keywords that have been used on ALN.

 

[cinereus]

I'm definitely going to try to include junk keywords too. The whole point of this penalty is it's due to UNNATURAL link profile. Even 100s of KW variations and no junk is unnatural!

 

[subster]

Experienced the same. One particular keyword of a campaign dropped out from #2 to #198 from one day to the other. I purchased a xpresss bookmarking order of 200 SBs and used only random keywords like the ones that greg mentioned.
Next day it has been back to the old position.

 

[Kikerinka]

It's a pure theory this penalty... I never had problems with any of my keywords and typically just rotate 1-3 anchors all the time!

I personally believe that it is more complex issue - not just like you have the anchor and are penalized because of it. There must be some correlation, such as the same title, the same content in which the link is located, etc.

Google simply does not have such a simple algorithm, like more than 80% anchor is the same keyword - you get penalty... that would penalize also many sites with completely natural link building.