Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com (google penguin)?

[lcourse]

I have a couple of partial match domains in the format KEYOWRDdiscount.com and also the website name resembles domain name.

"Car Discount" is not my website but just an example to illustrate: 
Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com?
Should I try to modify existing external anchor texts to "CarDiscount" or "CarDiscount.com" instead of "Car Discount"

Do you know of any cases where such anchor texts coinciding with partial match domain were likely reason for penguin penalization?

Thanks.

[AndyKuiper]

You'll want to make sure you have 'varied' anchor text for your backlinks. Too many of one type will be seen as 'unnatural'by Google and may result in less than rewarding behaviour by the algo.

Lately (since Penguin) many have found it safer to focus on the most natural anchor text backlinks, for example, http://www.domainname.com.

Having an exact match domain name and matching backlink anchor text is a recipe for trouble.

There are many posts and articles about Penguin and exact match domains, which you may want to look over to be certain this advice is the best for your situation.

[AndreVanKets]

I've always wondered about that...

I think that especially for commercial terms, you would want to diversify your anchor profile were possible.

But then you have a case were the brand name is not commercial, in this case i would think using your brand name in your anchor is best.

I remember cleaning up our link profile by changing commercial anchor text to just using our brand name which helped, but then what about the exact match domains? Does this apply for them as well? Is it possible to have a "brand" with a term like "Cardiscount.com" without Google mistaking it for a commercial term?

As you say, mix and match is the best approach just a bit confusing building a brand when the brand itself is a commercial term.

Greg

[AndyKuiper]

Good points Andre

Google sometimes does gets confused with emd's combined with exact match backlink anchor text. I once had a domain (I sold the name and website) where I hadn't done any backlinking; it was strictly a non-monetized information site. It had the words "cellphone" and "barcode" in the domain name, and it naturally got "cellphone" "barcode" type anchor text backlinks. ---> it got hit by the 1st iteration of Penguin and traffic dropped by over 50%. The backlink portfolio was predominately exact match anchor text. People need to be extra careful with emd's now IF they are deemed to be keyword rich by the algo. Kraft or Michelin are not keyword rich, but something like "CarDiscount" might be

[lcourse]

Andy, thanks for sharing.

The special point here is that "Car Discount", "CarDiscount" and "CarDiscount.com" are actually the most natural anchor texts that an independent site owner may choose apart from full URL anchor you mentioned.

To give some context, I do not plan to build now many links with exactly this same anchor text. But these 3 anchor texts are actually the most frequent that other websites have chosen to link to me.

So my doubt is now, whether there is need for action and whether I should reach out to other websites to change the anchor text, if my aim is to rank well for "Car". Actually I dropped significantly in ranking on one of my sites for "Car" keyword, so I wonder whether it may be related (even though for date of ranking change it may rather be panda than penguin).

Also any experience whether CarDiscount or CarDiscount.com maybe better than "Car Discount"?

[AndyKuiper]

http://www.cardiscount.com is as safe as you'll get in this case. If you can't get that term, than vary what you can to words other than "car" "discount", but with similar intent; eg. auto deals, auto incentives, special automobile rates, vehicle cost reductions... the types of anchor text one might see naturally. If you try to game Google, the algo will likely recognize it

*this is one of the dangers of having a keyword rich domain name

[jws8118]

I think Google is smart enough to recognize that one of your top anchor text terms is your actual brand name but may still penalize you if those links are coming from spammy sites.

[AndyKuiper]

Daniel, have a look at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data

and read some of the responses... this will give you some ideas

[lcourse]

Andy, James: thanks for your input and suggestions.