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.
Naked link anchors or long tail anchors ?
-
Hi,
Do naked link anchors such as "www.mysite.com/my-category" have the same SEO power as long tails anchors? What about the UX which such anchors?
Lately a site published our back-to-school article with this horrible naked link anchor, it does not look friendly to me as a reader, but I am wondering whether I should bother, how important it is for google and for readers?
Thank you in advance.
Isabelle
-
I see the other great responses to your question but wanted to provide some more info as well!
Whether you’re familiar with anchor text or not, if you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you’ve seen it a million times. Anchor text is the keyword or keyword phrase that serves as the link to another web page or web site. Anchor text is typically highlighted like this: anchor text (if you click this example, another window will open up that contains our other blog http://bluecorona.wordpress.com).
Anchor text is important because it gives web site visitors (and search engines) a hint about the web page or web site they are about to visit (if they click the link). This is why you DON’T want to use common calls to action like, “click here” or “our website.” Instead, you want to use keyword rich anchor text. If you’re having a contest to give away a free website makeover for the HVAC industry, make free HVAC website the anchor text! If thousands of web sites link to your site using the anchor text ‘leading residential furnace installers‘ there’s a good chance that you’re in the residential HVAC business and you install furnaces!
-
Put it this way, it sounds clear and obvious, thank you !
-
Thanks VIjay, everythings clear !
-
It is absolutely natural for people to link to your website with your URL. When looking at your backlink profile, you should see tons of links with the anchor text being things like your naked url or "website" or "this". In fact, it would be incredibly unnatural, and potentially a sign of paid linking schemes, if every single link to your website was a keyword rich, long tail anchor.
-
Hi Isabelle,
The links anchor needs to be contextual at all times or to the best extent possible.
What is an Ideal natural looking link?
- An ideal link brings targeted traffic related to page/website it links (target traffic ensures fewer bounce rates, which help further for SEO)
How can SEO and traffic benefit from a natural link ?
- You have to use the right Anchor text, which is in the right context with the target URL.
- Natural linking and getting good traffic combined is the best thing to happen in SEO.
As for whether you should use Long-tail or naked link anchors, it totally depends on the context in which the backlink is being created.
For example, I would use naked anchor text when building brand authority (for the website URL) and Anchor text when I wish to target specific keywords.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have further questions, I will be happy to answer them.
Best Regards,
Vijay
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Disavowing Links
I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually. I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost. In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha! I look forward to your advice
Link Building | | LukeBTDT0 -
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
Reciprocal links
Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites? I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
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 -
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
Link Building | | Vsky0