Penguin: Is there a "safe threshold" for commercial links?

[fablau]

Hello everyone,

Here I am with a question about Penguin. I am asking to all Penguin experts on these forums to help me understand if there is a "safe" threshold of unnatural links under which we can have peace of mind. I really have no idea about that, I am not an expert on Penguin nor an expert of unnatural back link profiles.

I have a website with about 84% natural links and 16% affiliate/commercial links. Should I be concerned about possibly being penalized by an upcoming Penguin update? So far, I have never been hit by any previous Penguin released, but... just in case, you experts, do you know what's the "threshold" of unnatural links that shouldn't be exceeded? Or, in your experience, what's the classic threshold over which Google can penalize a website for unnatural back link profile?

Thank you in advance to anyone helping me on this research!

[signet_int]

Fabrizo,

I think that you are asking the question that every link builder thinks about. When you say unnatural, that can mean a lot of things, so I would ask you to clarify the types of sites you are referring to. I tend to think about link building in a different way. Even if a link is "unnatural", which I define as a link that is built to the website by means of influence or submission, then it doesn't mean that penguin is going to see it as unnatural.

Instead, I consider the types of links that are pointing to my site. For instance, if my client has a scholarship and I reach out to a few regional universities which successfully acquires 4-5 .edu backlinks I wouldn't say that is natural but Google will still reward me for that.

Now, if I find a tool that will auto-create 200 web 2.0 profiles, spin massive amounts of content and then generate 1000 backlinks from various subdomains, then I can see that as being a detectable signal that Google will pretty easily pick up on.

If you are talking about a few fiverr gigs that you paid for or even paying a blogger to write an article and submit a contextual link to your site, I wouldn't be too worried about it if you vet the site and ensure that there aren't any red flags like too many outbound links, the site isn't indexed, the Moz spam score isn't through the roof and they have real credible backlinks pointed to their site as well.

From a perspective of looking at footprints, or possibly a private blog network you may have created, I'd say that everyone has their methods. There is a right way to build a blog network, and there is a wrong way to do that. You have to understand the footprints Google looks for and decide whether or not its the right choice for you.

I think the ratio you described is perfectly fine quite honestly. You have to consider that every backlink profile isn't perfect whether they are all natural or not. Consider if I decided I didn't like CompanyA.com in the serps being ahead of me and I decided to have some fiverr.com guy create 20,000 backlinks with all of the same anchor text pointing at the home page. That would be a negative SEO tactic that might damage their rank. However, Google knows that exists and their algorithm is also built to take that into account. They may still lose rank but if the site has a high amount of authority and trust with Google, it is likely not going to affect them as much and they can always disavow.

When it comes to anchor text, I would think in terms of ratio. I don't like my anchor text to exceed 15-20% and I think about it semantically. I use keyword variations in themes or groups so they are all diverse and then build with branded terms, the url, click here, etc....

It's all about balance. Not all links come from premium editorial content, bloggers, article directories, local citaitons, etc... There's a blend of links that naturally occur when you have a popular website and my focus would just be on ensuring that I am keeping that balanced and using competing sites that perform well to compare.

[ThomasHarvey]

Rand kind of touched upon this with number 3 on here: https://moz.com/blog/weird-crazy-myths-about-link-building-in-seo-you-should-probably-ignore-whiteboard-friday

[fablau]

Thank you for your answer Joshua, in my case I am talking about affiliates links that use often similar anchor texts that look like ads.

To give you a real example, my website is virtualsheetmusic.com, and pretty often affiliates link to us with, randomly, the following kind anchor text:

"download sheet music at Virtual Sheet Music"

"classical sheet music downloads"

"find violin sheet music on Virtual Sheet Music"

And so on... from what you describe, I shouldn't worry about it, first of all because of the percentage of this kind of anchor texts, second because they are varied anyway (they are not all the same), but of course Google is able to spot a pattern there and understand that they are not natural. Also, most of our affiliates have used our ready to use, copy & paste links, therefore many of them are exactly the same kind of links, but still, just around 16% of our overall inbound links.

I am just worried that Google could see that as a "link scheme" of some sort, and possibly penalize me... your final thoughts?

[fablau]

Yes, I just watched that video 2 days ago, brilliant! Thank you Thomas, I am much less concerned now.

Appreciated!

[signet_int]

Fabrizo,

Thank you for the the clarification. Ok so I did my own backlink analysis real quick and I'm actually seeing that 18% of your overall links are using a very specific two word phrase. At this point, I would stop building any type of exact match backlink and and start building with a variety of branded, url, maybe a couple clicks here, and so on and so on.

I think that you have hit a pretty close threshold in this circumstance. It may also be worth just focusing on writing some really good content in the meantime. Focus on Latent Semantic Indexing to cater to RankBrain and perhaps try putting together one really big idea that will capture the attention of journalist and bloggers. That way you will start acquiring a solid balance with strong semantic relevancy.  That's what I would do at least until this new Penguin update is released.

On the other hand, I can tell which links are affiliate and which ones aren't. Each affiliate link is appended with /?af=verter so that the affiliate can get credit for that purchase, however, that means that the actual link is being built to a 301 redirect in which I feel Google dampens the affect of the link... by about 15% at least. Also, it is easily detected by Google but that doesn't mean they will necessarily penalize you for those events.

Now, Google might start frowning upon that. I can't be certain until it happens, but they've always been somewhat enemies with affiliate marketers.

There are more algorithm updates coming up in the near future and Barry Schwartz just reported that there is a big Penguin update coming in the near future: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-launch-date-penguin-22694.html

Keep in mind that this next update will be an ongoing version rather than a refresh.

[fablau]

Thank you Joshua for your additional reply and insights, may I ask you what are your two mentioned specific word phrases you wrote above about? Just curious, because those could be "brand" related keywords like "Virtual Sheet Music" or "Classical Sheet Music Downloads" which are both our own trademarks, therefore they should be considered as "natural"... you know what I mean.

As for our affiliate links, yes, those are the URLs I am concerned about. I was thinking to 302 redirect those instead than 301, but I am afraid also to lose a big deal of juice from them by doing that, even though I am aware that Google could have already discounted those links at some extent, but I am not sure how much, and I don't want to risk losing that little juice that could help us with rankings if not really needed. So, my choice would be to leave things how they are, and, yes, as you are suggesting, start building more "link-baits" to have more natural links, but as you know, that takes time...

I am eager to know your thoughts about my points above. Thank you!