Changing your Anchor Text in 2014

[EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT]

Hello I have a series of question,

There was a directory listing we submitted to and got approved. However we got 6 Links total with the same Anchor Text 3 from www and 3 from non www, which is also the Title of our Brand Name. However this is causing an unnatural link.

1. Does Changing the Anchor Text Bad? Does Google have a new way of detecting anchor text changes.
2. Can I change the Title/Anchor to something more generic, so that the anchor text profile is more natural.
3. Since this is a Directory is http://obln.org/ - Does anybody know being on this directory bad?
Or should I just remove this links altogether or Disavow 5 Links and just keep one, because they have a PR5 and has trust flow, losing all the links may not be good as well for ranking.

Thanks For your Insight.

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

I'll go through the questions one by one:

1. Does Changing the Anchor Text Bad? Does Google have a new way of detecting anchor text changes.

Google will note the changed anchor text when it re-indexes the pages the links sit on. There is no hard evidence that this is viewed as "good" or "bad", although if the links are otherwise "bad" (from spammy sources), changing the anchor text won't help - the link would be better off being removed. However, if the link is neutral or good, there is no evidence that changing the anchor text will hurt you.

2. Can I change the Title/Anchor to something more generic, so that the anchor text profile is more natural.

Definitely - if you are going to change the anchor, it is best to change it to something related to your brand, e.g. the name of the company or URL of the website.

**3. Since this is a Directory is http://obln.org/ - Does anybody know being on this directory bad? **

Free web directories are not advisable places to build links, so despite this conversation about anchor text, I would remove the link in this case. Yes, they have a PR of 5, but it is the best rule for modern SEO to not use free directories as link building tools because they have been abused so badly for spam in the past.