Backlink question

[BinaryTris]

Hi all.

Here's the scenario.

There is a company who provide financial services to their online clients. On ALL their clients sites they have a "payments-by-us" style logo with backlink to their homepage domain name. This means they have over 3,000 links from a multitude of non-related websites - with just 3 or 4 anchor text keywords in these backlinks.

No surprise they have been hit by Penguin

My questions

1. What it the best practice for these type of linking LOGO's.

• Should they link to a dedicated page,and NOT the homepage?
• Should they have branded + anchor text, no text, or just branded? or a combination of each
• Should they even be a link at all as they are coming from such a diverse group of sites?

2. I understand how Penguin penalises for overuse of money word keywords as anchor text. This is something that has definitely happened here (by the bucket load) ... Assume the anchor text is "Green Chips Finance" and that phrase is also overused and a bit "stuffy" in their homepage. Here's my question - could simply lowering the prominence / significance of "Green Chips Finance" on the actual home page, help in reducing the impact of the damage caused by the thousands of backlinks with "Green Chips Finance" as the anchor text?

I say this as they have a similar number of back links saying "Red Chips Finance", but there is no mention of "Red Chips Finance" on their homepage other than in the keywords and a couple of standard text mentions (no H1, H2, alt text etc) ... interestingly, "Red Chips Finance" (not the real words) is Google No1 whereas "Green Chips Finance" has been demoted from longtime No1 to about 4.

Cheers

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

I think the standard line is that any links like this should be branded only and no followed if you want to be as safe as possible. If an option it has been suggested to try having them only on a homepage or on a partners type page rather than a sitewide link in the footer for example. As to if they should even be there at all, well I guess this depends if they were created purely for the link or if they bring in some marketing value from referrals/brand recognition.

Assuming you have been affected by Penguin then I wouldnt think that reducing the keyword usage on the homepage will help much. You will need to monitor carefully since #4 ranking is still visible and if you start adjusting multiple onpage and offpage variables at the same time you could all of a sudden be looking at a bigger drop and be stuck wondering which of the changes might have contributed to this! Even messing with the existing backlinks could cause further fluctuations so it sounds like a fine line you are on now. I would try making small changes and monitor for a week or two before proceeding with other edits.

[PremioOscar]

According to the latest in the industry you should be earning links naturally; obviously these links are not natural; also having tons of links linked through the same anchor text doesn't help you rank higher but  it penalizes you (same story, not natural).

A bit like a link left in the footer of a wordpress theme.

By earning links, you can't control who links to you, so you might get links from websites that aren't related to your industry. Even though, theoretically, sites related to your industry would want to link to you.

[BinaryTris]

Many thanks Lynn, that all makes sense to me. We will suggest moving forward with NEW logo's set as BRAND and no-follow only. We will leave the home page alone

Regards

Tris