Keyword rich internal linking - problem?

[nick-name123]

Had an interesting situation today..

We write daily news articles on our site. In each article we link out to two sources that we are writing about (credible sources) and we do one or two internal links.

For example..

'Today McDonald's have announced that they are purchasing more blue widgets in order to increase their opportunity to appeal to a larger market.'

So in that sentence you can see one outbound link and one inbound to blue widgets on our site.

I got an email today from a large company who we have written an article about in the industry and they have asked me to remove the link to their site..

I actually asked them why and this was their response.

'We're concerned because of the number of keyword-rich internal links in the article, and are worried that being included alongside them might be misinterpreted by Google as an artificial link.'

Fristly, do they really have anything to be worried about?.. but more importantly, with our internal linking, do we have anything to be worried about?.

[EGOL]

In each article we link out to two sources that we are writing about (credible sources) and we do one or two internal links.

This sounds kinda systematic.  If anybody is payin' you then you could have a problem.  If nobody is payin or doing any favors back then just stop linking to these other sites.  You don't have to.  Or, if you worry about it then nofollow the links.

I got an email today from a large company who we have written an article about in the industry and they have asked me to remove the link to their site.

Did you write the article without them asking you or paying you?   If that is the case then just take the link down.

If you are publishing articles for others with links to them on request, for a fee, or as an article exchange then there could be a problem.

Fristly, do they really have anything to be worried about?..

If nobody is payin' or doin' favors then there is probably not a problem.  But get out of the habit of linking to two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...

See what it looks like?

but more importantly, with our internal linking, do we have anything to be worried about?.

Look at wikipedia.  On my site, I do the same thing.  If I have relevant article about widgets I link to it in the text of the article.

[nick-name123]

Thanks EGOL - You have been answering my questions since 2006 on SEOchat so appreciate you know your stuff on articles/blogs etc.

Nobody is paying us for links, there is no dodgy reciprocal or paid arrangement at all. We are writing news articles and linking out to relevant sources for that article (about 50% relevant to our industry, but 100% related to the article)

I think your point about the 2 and 2 is a valid point. Its a long job as our articles go back to 2007

On the subject of articles and pages that list headings of articles.. any idea on minimum text needed before something is regarded as 'thin content'?

[EGOL]

On the subject of articles and pages that list headings of articles.. any idea on minimum text needed before something is regarded as 'thin content'?

I have a site with pages like that and was producing to thirty to forty pages per week (news items).  I had thousands of those pages and would delete old ones about once a year.  That site got hit in one of the first Pandas.  I noindexed those pages right away and the site recovered within a few weeks.    Now I continue doing the same.  The anchor text is two to six words that are perfectly descriptive of the content or something snarky.  Since the pages  are not indexed I don't think that they are a problem.

I have had some slight panda problems that I think was caused by some pages that I added to a site almost ten years ago.  It was a lot of photos with two to three sentence descriptions.  So, I noindexed them and will beef all of them up to  a couple hundred words and the really good ones up to 1000 word articles with several photos.  But, I think that a couple hundred words would be adequate - but nobody knows for sure.