Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com (google penguin)?
-
I have a couple of partial match domains in the format KEYOWRDdiscount.com and also the website name resembles domain name.
"Car Discount" is not my website but just an example to illustrate:
Is "Car Discount" a problematic anchor text for CarDiscount.com?
Should I try to modify existing external anchor texts to "CarDiscount" or "CarDiscount.com" instead of "Car Discount"Do you know of any cases where such anchor texts coinciding with partial match domain were likely reason for penguin penalization?
Thanks.
-
Andy, James: thanks for your input and suggestions.
-
Daniel, have a look at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
and read some of the responses... this will give you some ideas
-
I think Google is smart enough to recognize that one of your top anchor text terms is your actual brand name but may still penalize you if those links are coming from spammy sites.
-
http://www.cardiscount.com is as safe as you'll get in this case. If you can't get that term, than vary what you can to words other than "car" "discount", but with similar intent; eg. auto deals, auto incentives, special automobile rates, vehicle cost reductions... the types of anchor text one might see naturally. If you try to game Google, the algo will likely recognize it
*this is one of the dangers of having a keyword rich domain name
-
Andy, thanks for sharing.
The special point here is that "Car Discount", "CarDiscount" and "CarDiscount.com" are actually the most natural anchor texts that an independent site owner may choose apart from full URL anchor you mentioned.
To give some context, I do not plan to build now many links with exactly this same anchor text. But these 3 anchor texts are actually the most frequent that other websites have chosen to link to me.
So my doubt is now, whether there is need for action and whether I should reach out to other websites to change the anchor text, if my aim is to rank well for "Car". Actually I dropped significantly in ranking on one of my sites for "Car" keyword, so I wonder whether it may be related (even though for date of ranking change it may rather be panda than penguin).
Also any experience whether CarDiscount or CarDiscount.com maybe better than "Car Discount"?
-
Good points Andre
Google sometimes does gets confused with emd's combined with exact match backlink anchor text. I once had a domain (I sold the name and website) where I hadn't done any backlinking; it was strictly a non-monetized information site. It had the words "cellphone" and "barcode" in the domain name, and it naturally got "cellphone" "barcode" type anchor text backlinks. ---> it got hit by the 1st iteration of Penguin and traffic dropped by over 50%. The backlink portfolio was predominately exact match anchor text. People need to be extra careful with emd's now IF they are deemed to be keyword rich by the algo. Kraft or Michelin are not keyword rich, but something like "CarDiscount" might be
-
I've always wondered about that...
I think that especially for commercial terms, you would want to diversify your anchor profile were possible.
But then you have a case were the brand name is not commercial, in this case i would think using your brand name in your anchor is best.
I remember cleaning up our link profile by changing commercial anchor text to just using our brand name which helped, but then what about the exact match domains? Does this apply for them as well? Is it possible to have a "brand" with a term like "Cardiscount.com" without Google mistaking it for a commercial term?
As you say, mix and match is the best approach just a bit confusing building a brand when the brand itself is a commercial term.
Greg
-
You'll want to make sure you have 'varied' anchor text for your backlinks. Too many of one type will be seen as 'unnatural'by Google and may result in less than rewarding behaviour by the algo.
Lately (since Penguin) many have found it safer to focus on the most natural anchor text backlinks, for example, http://www.domainname.com.
Having an exact match domain name and matching backlink anchor text is a recipe for trouble.
There are many posts and articles about Penguin and exact match domains, which you may want to look over to be certain this advice is the best for your situation.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does redirecting from a "bad" domain "infect" the new domain?
Hi all, So a complicated question that requires a little background. I bought unseenjapan.com to serve as a legitimate news site about a year ago. Social media and content growth has been good. Unfortunately, one thing I didn't realize when I bought this domain was that it used to be a porn site. I've managed to muck out some of the damage already - primarily, I got major vendors like Macafee and OpenDNS to remove the "porn" categorization, which has unblocked the site at most schools & locations w/ public wifi. The sticky bit, however, is Google. Google has the domain filtered under SafeSearch, which means we're losing - and will continue to lose - a ton of organic traffic. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this, and appeal the decision. Unfortunately, Google's Reconsideration Request form currently doesn't work unless your site has an existing manual action against it (mine does not). I've also heard such requests, even if I did figure out how to make them, often just get ignored for months on end. Now, I have a back up plan. I've registered unseen-japan.com, and I could just move my domain over to the new domain if I can't get this issue resolved. It would allow me to be on a domain with a clean history while not having to change my brand. But if I do that, and I set up 301 redirects from the former domain, will it simply cause the new domain to be perceived as an "adult" domain by Google? I.e., will the former URL's bad reputation carry over to the new one? I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet, so any insights are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaiaslastlaugh0 -
Blog.ledsupply.com VERSUS ledsupply.com/blog
Hi All- We had a security issue that started on out blog (ledsupply.com/blog) and moved into our shopping cart, so IT suggested and moved the blog to its own server. This means we had to change the URL structure. It's now blog.ledsupply.com/ instead of ledsupply.com/blog...Is there evidence or opinion on whether this will effect SEO/Traffic (assuming we set-up redirects, etc.)? I remember reading that Google suggests having your BLOG be part of your main domain and not a SUB domain, so I'm very hesitant to switch and also welcome any additional security measure suggestions we could set-up, so that we can keep the preferred domain structure. Thank you so much! -Brooke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
"Unnatural links to your site" manual action by Google
Hi, My site has been hit by a "Unnatural links to your site" manual action penalty and I've just received a decline on my 2nd reconsideration request, after disavowing even more links than I did in the first request. I went over all the links in WMT to my site with an SEO specialist and we both thought things have been resolved but apparently they weren't. I'd appreciate any help on this so as to lift the penalty and get my site back to its former rankings, it has ranked well before and the timing couldn't have been worse. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ishais
Yael0 -
Click to Expand Content - Does anyone know if Google discounts this as a ranking signal ?
Hi All, I read an interesting answer from Tom Roberts on another question and one of things he mentioned was that there are conflicting reports about "Click to Expand " Content being discounted with a link to the article - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html My eCommerce uses this method on every landing page and tabs on our products pages so I am wondering if others had first hand knowledge of whether using these methods had affected their sites or not ?. I may try to experiment on a few pages to remove this and show all content at the bottom but it does kinda ruin the pages a bit so I wanted to know what peoples thoughts were before I screw up my pages and think about page redesign etc etc. Also , if I was to try it ,then how long should I experiment for ?. would a couple of weeks be sufficient providing google crawls them regually thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
Anchor Text Usage
Hi, What is the best way to use anchor text during link building after recent updates from Google. I thinking of doing the following: 60% Brand Keyword (my site name)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitss
20% Click here, visit this site etc
20% myurl.com
10% a Mix of both broad & phrase match of my targetted keyword. What do you suggest Does anyone have a working strategy? Will be waiting for your replies...0 -
Site views messy in a text browser, but can see all text, is that a problem?
In Google's webmaster guidelines, they mention to view your site in a text browser to ensure all text is visible. All of our text is visible, but is very messy and is all jumbled on the page. I've noticed most sites text browser layout is clean. H How important is it to SEO that the site views cleanly in a text browser? Does anyone know of any feedback from Google engineers about this point?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0