Are these Bad Internal Links/Anchor Text?

[AshShep1]

Hi my site www.over50choices.co.uk is 4 months old and I wondered whether my "Quick Links" section (right hand column) on 95% of my pages with the same/similar anchor text was not best practice ie should I vary the anchor text & the target locations more? ( they tend to point to my top 6 pages)

They were set up originally to make the customer experience easy to find things but from what i have read Google doesnt like too many links looking the same !

I also have 3 Graphics (cross sales messages) just above the foot of most (not the home page) pages, linking to my 3 key value pages, all with similar Alt Text tags, again should i vary the alt text or is not a good idea to have this type of link on every page?

What is best practice, as i am trying to balance the visual/customer experience whilst optimising for search?

Thanks
Ash

[crackingmedia]

Hi Ash

Firstly let me say that I think your site looks good.

On the Quicklinks section, I don't think that is an issue. The number of internal links you have and your use of anchor text is not excessive at all.

This video by Google's Matt Cutts recorded earlier this year may help you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ

The only thing I would be a little careful of is the balance of the visual blocks (which do contain some text) to the main text area of the page. There is more info here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html but having said that the impact of that is only really on the entry pages to your site. Once you get to the pages you are linking to with the "read more" lnks then the balance is fine.

The only thing you may want to give attention to from an SEO perspective is the keywords used in your pages is whether or not you reference the fact that your pages are for "over 50s" enough. I couldn't see much reference to that. Whilst your site is called Over50choices suggesting the content is for over 50s, you need to be able to back that up with content that specifically talks about the "...over 50s..." or "...over fifties...", not in an excessive spammy way - as you need to write for your site visitors not humans - but enough to bring those words into the context of the pages.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[AshShep1]

Hi Peter that's v helpful thank you for your advice.

We are about to change the non searchable graphics to searchable text blocks shortly.

We are just going through an exercise of reviewing the changes we need to make to make the on page optimisation smarter now that things have settled down following launch a few months ago.

your comments about making the copy more over 50s is v timely,!

Do anchor texts in the body text score greater internal google juice than ones in the Quick Links ie the right hand side bar, as we're planning on rewriting some of the text to weave some in pointing to some of our key value pages?

Thanks

Ash

[crackingmedia]

Hi Ash

The value of anchor text for internal links doesn't change as far as I know dependent on where they are used. It's more a case of making sure you use anchor text appropriately.

By that I mean particularly on pages where you have article body text. It's good to have links in your body text, but not too much. Only link text which will help the visitor navigate to where they want to go, not for the benefit of search engines to spider your website. Too many links just disturbs the reader and diverts them from linking through to stuff that's important. It also looks spammy to search engines.

Peter

[AshShep1]

Thanks Peter

When we launched we wanted to present content first & then "buy" later so your comments support this, although there is a temptation of course to stray from this in order  to build traffic quicker!

We have moved from about page 9 to page 2 & 3 of some of our key words and rising weekly, i just need to keep telling myself we have only been live 3 months!

Hopefully with the tweaks we are making shortly with some of  your pointers it shoudl all add value

Many thanks

Ash