Articles / Balanced Profile

[shandaman]

Hello SEOMOZ,

I have a couple of questions that I am hoping you all can answer for me.

1. We have heard that having anchor text links in article directories that are identical actually hurts our rankings and is considered spam at this point. We have hundreds of articles posted to various article directories throughout the web with this consistent identical anchor text.  If we go into these articles and change the anchor texts, will the search engines recognize this change and give us credit for the new varied anchor text or will the credit stay with the original anchor text the article was posted with?

2. From here on out if we write unique stories with different anchor texts pointing to our website pages is their any gain to it and additionally will this even out our link profile? Or are placing anchor text links in article directories not the way to go?

[EricaMcGillivray]

Having the same anchor text on every link does look funny to Google. Will they penalize you? I don't know. But it does look like you're linkbuilding in a specific way. It's better to have a variety of anchor text because it looks more like natural links as that's what humans would do if you weren't telling them what to put there.

That said, while directories do still provide link juice, the signal from them is not as strong as it once was. Identical anchor text from directories may also be treated differently due to the submittal nature of directories.

[shandaman]

I appreciate the information but I would still like the other question to be answered if possible.

If we go into these articles and change the anchor texts, will the search engines recognize this change and give us credit for the new varied anchor text or will the credit stay with the original anchor text the article was posted with?

- Thankyou.

[shandaman]

Erica, I appreciate the response but I have another question that maybe you can answer. Lets say my URL is www.houserestoration.com and I have 100 directories with the anchor text "House Restoration" in the body of the article.

It appears that with this consistent anchor text I have dropped in the rankings so I assume this has affected me negatively. So I want to make some changes, so now I go into directories and I insert "house" as an anchor text link to my url and in another article I put the anchor text as "restoration".

In another separate article I will put "house" anchor text in one paragraph and in the same article a few paragraphs down I'll put "restoration" as an anchor text.

In your opinion is this mixing it up enough or does it have to be different anchor texts like "housing repairs" or "household restoring techniques"?

I also tend to think that just putting an anchor text like "old house" or "living quarters" is not specific enough to help the url / term I am trying to boost.

So in your opinion what other anchor text words would you use? Also is there anyone else with extensive knowledge about this topic that can help us figure out the best direction to go with this?

[EricaMcGillivray]

Yes, the search engines will eventually recognize the varied anchor text. It will be a slow recognition.

[EricaMcGillivray]

Google says they want a "natural" looking anchor text pattern as they don't want anyone buying links. Thus, you are correct in that they are penalizing you for having the same anchor text in your links.

You need to focus on words that people would actually be searching for to find your site and like what they find. If I was running www.houserestoration.com and drove people via the anchor text "kittens," people would not like my site as it wasn't relevant to their needs/interests as they are looking for information about "house restoration," not "kittens."

Likewise, even words closer to your category might not be the best. People searching for "house" can be looking for a lot of things, but I' d say given a Google search for "house" that more people looking for House (the TV show), Government branches, or Real Estate which have nothing to very little to do with "house restoration."

You know what your customers are looking for. Use those words.