Internal Linking from Menu or body text or both with exact match keyword?
-
I used to have my menu link to every page with my exact match keywords.
I am a Magician and have pages for each county / town so I had a link to /magician-hampshire with the anchor text Magician Hampshire in the menu.
I recently had my website updated and the developer told me this was very spammy have a menu that said Magician Hampshire, Magician Surrey, Magician Berkshire
He suggested that I should now have a menu structure that says Areas Covered>Hampshire - Surrey - Berkshire etc.Google will know my website is about a magician and relate the two together.
Is this correct or should I revert my menu back to anchor text of Magician (County)
I am running wordpress and he said the title attribute can say Magician Hampshire but the Visible text is for the user and not Google.
I also use the technique of doing site:rogerlapin.co.uk magician hampshire and then seeing the top 10 pages google has for me and placing a text link from each of these pages in the body text.
When doing link analysis I now see I have two links to each page but understand that google will only account for the first one (from the menu)
Questions:
Should I link to every main page from the Menu with the exact anchor text?
Does google only take into account the first link to a page it discovers?
Will it associate a link to a page with just the text of the county (Berkshire) to be related to Magicians in Berkshire as that is what the page is about?A few years ago I used to have at the bottom of each page Magician Hampshire | Magician Surrey | Magician Berkshire | Magician Sussex links - and to date a a lot of other Magicians employ this same technique. I was told google would slap them for it but so far it has not and it seems to be working for them.
Many Thanks
Roger
-
Wow thanks there is some great advice here - I agree I need to be developing my website for the user but there are many of my competitors who are still employing the tactic of many links on each page to Magican + Location and seem to be outranking me.
I keep getting told by various SEO people that google will slap them down soon but it never seems to happen.
I am still trying to find the magic formula as I suppose everyone is!
Thanks
Roger
-
Areas Served vs. Magician + Location
I agree with the developer and definitely think you should move toward an areas served approach, either via the nav menu or working the areas into your home page content once (don't make it sitewide footer links that look spammy). With this approach, you're next task is to create custom local landing pages with content relative to those areas (photos, history, places you've performed, your favorite "magical" places within the towns, etc.)
I have seen some local landing pages with exact match in the Nav menu. Personally, as a web user, I'd much rather click on a town name than see a dropdown list filled with "Magician Surrey" "Magician Hampshire" that looks exactly the same, save for the location.
There are quite a few experts in this area:
Mike Ramsey: http://niftymarketing.com/optimal-local-landing-page-infographic/ Linda Buquet: http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/ and the forum here: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/ Mike Blumenthal: http://blumenthals.com/blog/The important thing to remember is take the time and effort to make these custom local landing pages UNIQUE and something a web visitor would get value from.
Exact Anchor Text in Nav Menu
Don't overdo it. Make your navigation menu links be something that your web visitor will understand without question. There may be certain times when it's okay to use exact match anchor text but do so SPARINGLY and don't sacrifice your web visitors for the sake of exact match anchor text. Adding keywords in your anchor text should make sense to your visitors.
Here's Matt Cutts answer about exact anchor text and not overdoing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ
I also use the technique of doing site:rogerlapin.co.uk magician hampshire and then seeing the top 10 pages google has for me and placing a text link from each of these pages in the body text.
A better technique would be paying attention to your content on your website and linking internally where it makes sense. Be careful with overloading your pages with links as well. The way I like to think of internal linking is much like you would see a newspaper or informational site providing links to give you more context about what you are reading.
Does Google only take into account the first link to a page i****t discovers? AND When doing link analysis I now see I have two links to each page but understand that google will only account for the first one (from the menu)
No. Google will crawl all internal links on a page up to a certain extent. If you have hundreds of links on a page, the crawler may abandon ship eventually and not crawl all of those links, which is why Moz and others have recommendations about the number of links on a page. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en (Keep the number of links on your page to a reasonable number.)
Link Priority:
There's a 2010 article from Rand saying that links higher up on the page are given more weight, however, it's three years old and one of the comments on that article says Matt Cutts debunked that idea, though I can't find the video. It seems like there hasn't been much conversation on first link priority since 2012. Here's another article from 2012 about internal link placement on the page: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2185977/Anatomy-of-an-Internal-LinkThere's also a video from Matt Cutt's about the history of page rank and multiple instances of the same link on the same page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYWlEItizjI
I don't have a definitive answer here as far as link priority and order on the page. Maybe you can find more resources in the Q&A on that topic, such as this one: http://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-internal-links-on-page-any-benefit-to-nofollow
Hope all of this gives you some guidance and a lot of resources
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
-
Keyword explorer
Hello, I was trying the keyword explore and got some questions : I first used it with all the search terms for the keyword "italy bike tours" and came across terms like this one "tuscany bike tours florence italy" Does it mean I have to include this exact expression in my content or do I just need to include somewhere in my content the words tuscany and florence ? Then I did the same search but this time with closely related keywords and the keyword explorer give me the word "pasticceria" or "tirrenia" are being closely related to the keyword italy bike ... How does the keyword explorer find those words because I don't see how those can be related... If someone could explain that would be awesome. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Internal links from homepage and other pages
Hello, I'm curious what the difference is between internal links from the homepage and category pages. Make it sense to give some internal links from category pages (with a high PA) to an another page for a boost in the search results? Or is the link value too low in this case? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarcelMoz
Marcel1 -
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
I got message in my Google webmaster tool: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Does anyone knows the difference between "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" and "Unnatural links to your site" Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
Links with Parameters
The links from the home page to some internal pages on my site have been coded in the following format by my tech guys: www.abc.com/tools/page.html?hpint_id=xyz If I specify within my Google Webmaster tools that the parameter ?hpint_id should be ignored and content for the user does not change, Will Google credit me for a link from the home page or am I losing something here. Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harmit360 -
Using Images Instead of Text to Control Keywords on Page
We have recently updated a key page on our website. It is a template page that is used many times to display search results. The words "price", "revenue", and "cash flow", "not disclosed" are used for each listing on the page -- to minimize their impact on keyword density on the page we used images for these words. Here you can see some examples: http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Florida-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/City/Los Angeles-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/Industry/Auto_Car_Wash-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx You will note these words on this page are images and not regular text. We are certainly not doing this to "dupe" the visitors or Google -- we just want to ensure that each page has keywords pertinent to what the page is about. Bottom line question -- is this an OK practice? Are we running any risk with Google by doing this? I'm particularly nervous these days with all of the Google changes. Your thoughts and guidance on this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks. MWM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Improving keyword stuffing and site menu
I'm doing some work on http://flyawaysimulation.com/ and would like some tips to avoid keyword stuffing for the term "flight simulator" on this page. Currently, there are about 42 occurrences of the term "flight simulator" on this page - which is above the SEOmoz 15 term recommended limit. However, looking at the page - they have used the term fairly and it doesn't appear that "inappropriate". Could you guys have a look and let me know your thoughts? What can be done? Where can the repetitions be removed from without hurting internal SEO? Also, from an SEO standpoint how could we improve the site menu? For example, if the word "downloads" were removed from the Downloads-->FSX Downloads, FS2004 Downloads, X-Plane Downloads menu (for example just FSX, FS2004, X-Plane) to remove repetition of the phrase - would engines understand that those are "Downloads" because of it being under the "Downloads" drop down list? Your thoughts, suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
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 -
Targeting combination of keywords
Hi, On our website Vliegtickets.nl we are now targeting one combination of keywords " flights + destination". We are working on a new website and we are rewriting texts for the launch. Our idea is to target again on the combination " flights + destination", but also target other combinations. Our intention is to have a first introduction text targeted on " flights + destination" and have lower parts of texts (descriptions) targeted on the long tail, with use of keywords like flight / fly to / cheap tickets to etc. Our page will be divided like this: 1. introduction text max 150 words (h1 + h2) targeted on " flights + destination"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vliegticketsnl
2. box 2 Cityguide snippets / content in context of destination - targeted on city name
3. box 3. Question: target on new generic keywords + combination of destination What is your point of view on box 3? Is it the right way to target a broader range of keywords? Should we use these long tail keywords (fly to / flights / cheap flights...) also in meta title / meta description / strong kwds, etc? Or will it be sufficient if we target on one combination and use those synonyms in a lower density? Or is it best to keep the focus on one main combination and other pages on other keyword combinations? Best regards, Vliegtickets.nl0