Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Changing backlinks anchor text
-
Hi,
I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links?
Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this?
Thanks
Duke
-
Thanks for the info. Much appreciated guys.
Duke
-
What's your percentage of exact match links in your overall link landscape? Is it over 20% (I would assume lower, but this is the number I've been hearing)? If so, you are probably over-optimized for your phrase. The best action would be to change the links to either your brand, or more preferably, to a similar phrase.
However, if you have less than 10% exact matching links, I wouldn't change those at all. Exact match is still beneficial for ranking (but I doubt it will be forever), and you would actually have some room to grow with them.
With that in mind, remember to:
- Not focus on just one keyword at a time. Gaining 50 Exact links in a row makes it obvious they aren't natural
- Use variations of your keyword, as well as exact.
- If it's your homepage, get a bunch of Brand links.
- Keep a couple poorly optimized links in there (unless they are from high quality sites!)
-
Hi Duke
Thanks for the further info.
As the objective is to not rank better for brand terms, so rather it is to rank better for Non-brand terms, then it doesn't make any sense to focus inbound links on brand terms within the anchor text. That can be counter-productive towards those important Non-brand terms.
Brand is one of many factors when it comes to Search, which you seem to know already. The more brand mentions and links on brand terms, the more authority that brand acquires, in theory.
However that doesn't necessarily benefit Non-brand search.
So all-in-all, my advice is to focus link efforts on a natural blend of Brand and Non-brand links, catering for both is important. Don't worry too much about changing existing branded links to non-brand, instead, focus on both types of links and anchor text moving forwards.
With best regards
Simon
-
Hi Simon,
Many thanks for your answer. The objective is not actually to rank better for the brand term. I thinking along the lines of the link profile and how many of the achor text used are the brand compared to generic terms that we are trying to rank for. Apparently, there is the move towards rewarding inbound links on brand terms than generic term so the advise to webmasters is to build more links on their brand terms.
Hope this clears my question up.
Best regards
Duke
-
Hi there
Changing the anchor text of inbound links that's already optimized for your non-brand target keywords will risk in reducing your rankings for those keywords; obviously depends on factors such as the quality of those inbound links, competition...
If you are already ranking top for your brand, then this doesn't seem like a worthwhile exercise to do, unless Brand is everything to your business. If your brand is not ranking well, then by all means go for it for some existing inbound links.
If you can identify any inbound links on anchor text such as 'click here' or 'visit the website' then by all means try to get that anchor text changed, if the link is worth it.
In most cases, I'd suggest focusing on acquiring new relevant medium & high quality inbound links (natural links that is, not paid) with a variety of relevant anchor text, including both brand and non-brand. This would be time better spent compared to changing existing links that may not help to achieve your goals; increasing the number of relevant visitors to your site.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Footer backlink for/to Web Design Agency
I read some old (10+ years) information on whether footer backlinks from the websites that design agencies build are seen as spammy and potentially cause a negative effect. We have over 150 websites that we have built over the last few years, all with sitewide footer backlinks back to our homepage (designed and managed by COMPANY NAME). Semrush flags some of the links as potential spammy links. What are the current thoughts on this type of footer backlink? Are we better to have 1 dofollow backlink and the rest of the website nofollow from each domain?
Link Building | | MultiAdE1 -
Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency
Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
Link Building | | wonderd24
Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃
"1 -
Tooltip text
Will adding tooltip text to al my links improve my rankings? I read some article, but it's a hell of a job to add tooltip text to al my links. i was wondering if it's worth the time: A tooltip text appears if the mouse hovers over the image or a link and is provided by using the TITLE attribute. A description of the image or the link then appears in the tooltip in a small yellow box (Internet Explorer). The TITLE text (tooltip text) gives a short description of a link or image. The difference between an ALT text and the TITLE text is that the ALT text is a short description that replaces the image if the image does not load. The number of links (internal and external) and images must be equal to the number of tooltips for every page. The number of TITLE text can be higher because ALT text can also be used for other HTML elements. Add Title texts to links or images for those which do not have them yet. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO3 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
Backlinks from newpapers that requires subscription
Don't know if this has been answered in another post, but what happens to backlinks that requires users to subscribe and/or pay to view the content with the backlink on it?
Link Building | | helgeolaussen
Some newspaper sites has subscription requirement to view certain content.
Does the backlink drop in value? Or is there any negative effect from this?0 -
How to classify backlinks types
HI GUYS, I don't know how to classify backlinks types. Any kind of software can process those backlinks? Thank you.
Link Building | | primomc0 -
Hidden Backlinks
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks
Link Building | | kirstyseo0 -
Remove links or change anchor text?
I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ec9awp0