Hit hard by that stupid penguin!

[bwaldon4]

Up until the last few days my site was ranking withing the top 3 positions for all my main keywords then BAM! Now I am on the sencond page... The main keyword I was trying to rank for was 17% of the total links going to my site.... OUCH!

Do you think it would be a good idea if I drip some article diectory backlinks to my site with only generic anchors and my web URL over the next month? And while I'm diluting the links I have maybe I should start building link pryamids to the relevent links that are already going to my site to enhance the credibility?

I have less than 1,000 links going to my site.

 

[Adam718]

Are you sure it's a backlink penalty? 17% main anchor isn't that much.

 

[jascoken]

For a compehensive breakdown of the typical anchor metrics post-penguin, read this:

http://www.backlinkbanzai.com/GooglePenguinPart2.htm

17% isn't huge - but it could easily be enough to trip a penalty in some niches. Also, if that keyword is included in a decent percentage of other anchor keywords, then they will also be contributing to an over-density of the original keyword.

i.e. if you had 17% 'weight loss', but another 10% with 'weight loss tips' and another 10% with 'weight loss help', then you have an effective density of 37% for the phrase 'weight loss', as another 20% of your terms contains 'weight loss' in a phrase-match term.

Read the above article for a more in-depth explanation.

 

[bwaldon4]

Are you sure it's a backlink penalty? 17% main anchor isn't that much.

I have no critical issues in my webmaster account, nor have I made any significant changes to the site. I did scan my competitors that rank in the first two positions and there top keywords are mostly their name and randomness. You would think they aren't doing any SEO but I know for a fact one of them is.

 

[bwaldon4]

For a compehensive breakdown of the typical anchor metrics post-penguin, read this:

http://www.backlinkbanzai.com/GooglePenguinPart2.htm

17% isn't huge - but it could easily be enough to trip a penalty in some niches. Also, if that keyword is included in a decent percentage of other anchor keywords, then they will also be contributing to an over-density of the original keyword.

i.e. if you had 17% 'weight loss', but another 10% with 'weight loss tips' and another 10% with 'weight loss help', then you have an effective density of 37% for the phrase 'weight loss', as another 20% of your terms contains 'weight loss' in a phrase-match term.

Read the above article for a more in-depth explanation.

That makes sense. I compete for:

Online personal trainer
personal trainer online
online fitness
fitness online
online fitness trainer
fitness trainer online
etc.

So if your analysis is correct my anchor density would easily reach 40%... Uh oh :O hahaha

 

[jascoken]

As the article explains, it's not as cut-and-dried as simple 'exact-match' over-optimisation, but I've seen countless cases where companies have showed me their 'diverse' link-profile of 100+ different anchors, and it ended up with 70% of them 'containing' one exact-match phrase.

The Google algorithm works with the individual words that make-up a phrase, so this has to be taken into account when creating diversity in your anchor-profiles...

After all, if you had 100 links and they were all 'weight loss XXX' - where XXX was a different word, then you'd theoretically have 100 different anchors - but obviously you'd be over-optimised for 'weight loss'.

 

[bwaldon4]

As the article explains, it's not as cut-and-dried as simple 'exact-match' over-optimisation, but I've seen countless cases where companies have showed me their 'diverse' link-profile of 100+ different anchors, and it ended up with 70% of them 'containing' one exact-match phrase.

The Google algorithm works with the individual words that make-up a phrase, so this has to be taken into account when creating diversity in your anchor-profiles...

After all, if you had 100 links and they were all 'weight loss XXX' - where XXX was a different word, then you'd theoretically have 100 different anchors - but obviously you'd be over-optimised for 'weight loss'.

Thank you for the extremely valuable information! Just this smal piece of information will seriously change my SEO blueprint.