Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Site is about widgets. Main search is for widgets, but also important are blue widgets, red widgets, big widgets, small widgets, so I have content on those types of widgets, and links to those pages from home, 40 of them, all saying... colour/description widgets.
This is the only site of 30 i run that seems to have tripped a filter....and the only one where its relevant to link like this to inner pages as on such a singular topic.
Anyone else seen this?
If it really is color, I can see how this would be considered search-engine spam. I can't think of a scenario needing seperate pages for each color of widget.
Or even left-handed and right-handed widgets.
Now, widgets for different types of applications, premium vs. standard widgets, trucated widgets, widgets with built-in gadgets, etc. should all be OK.
Or even use a list with "Types of Widgets" preceding the list in plain text, followed by links that just say "green, blue, red". Anything so that Google loses the sense that you are spamming the anchor text. Google is very sensitive in that spot, it's like the soles of their feet or something.
[edited by: tedster at 1:09 am (utc) on Sep. 13, 2006]
eg
indian hotels
australian hotels
uk hotels
etc
if I do this, I am still goinug to get pinged for keyword spam, though not for anchor text spam
Mentioning "widgets" in the link text is redundant. Your visitors know it is a widget site. There's no reason to repeat it 30 times on one page!
I'd also group the links. (i.e. which countries go together?) Whether this makes any difference to search engines, I dunno. But it makes sense for your users. Anything that makes more sense for your users - ultimately - tomorrow if not today - will probably make you look less spammy to search engines.
Keep the "widget" references on each destination page. There should be something on each page to remind users what the site is about. (Just not 30 reminders!)
I guess I'm saying the same thing as tedster. I'm afraid I don't understand your response. Why do you think you would still be penalized for keyword spam?
<a href>Australian</a>Hotels
<a href>USA</a>Hotels
the word hotels is not in the anchor text, but its going to look like keyword spam because of the repetition?
The thing is, I;m pretty sure that having 10-15 links like this is fine, its just as my list of countries covered has grown, well, I;ve got 55 links on the home page.
I do believe the anchor with country/hotels is helping my inner pages rank higher, and that placing an link with the anchor of Australian, rather than Australian Hotels is not going to cut it.
Whilst I'm dissapointed not to be able to do it, I am going to move my anchors to location/hotel pages to a sitemap with no more than 15 such links per page, link to all these pages from the home page, and place my 10 top location/hotel page links on the home page and see how this goes.
My competitors are all doing this succesfully, but have no more than 15 such links, thus I think its merely a case of because I cover more topics, I've been pinged.
The worst thing is, that I think that this filter is downgraded as PR increases, it would be relevant for a high PR site about hotels, to have lots of links to location/hotels. The higher the pr of the site, the more links they appear to be able to get away with like this. Oh well
running AS? What is AS?
the word hotels is not in the anchor text, but its going to look like keyword spam because of the repetition
Over the summer, many people reported having new troubles with their Google ranking -- troubles that showed up on the 27th and 17th of various months. At that time, one of the changes I noted was that the algo seemed to become even more sensitive and protected around anchor text keywords than it was before. Regular text keywords are not in nearly so sensitive an area.
Remember how dependent Google is on links? They even show results when the search "terms only appear in links pointing to this page." So links are the ticklish underbelly of the Google algorithm. More and more, Google protects their ticklish area with a ferocity -- and they have plenty of data to know what a normal distribution of "keyword in anchor text" looks like for a page.
Keyword stuffing in the plain text is not nearly so sensitive -- although I assume there is a limit. Still, if you ever try to rank page in Google with just on-page factors, I think you'll see that it's quite hard to do -- you need links.
So I would still suggest backing off on the anchor text first. Save a backup of your pages. If you don't see an improvement, you can always revert, right? I also agree with you that repeating "hotels" (and whatever other categories you have) in plain text still might be a bit too much for best results.
<a href>Australian</a>Hotels
<a href>USA</a>Hotels
An even better idea might be something in this direction, which I also tried to describe above. This mark-up semantically relates the words without placing them all inside the anchor text:
<div>
<h2>Hotels</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href>Austria</a></li>
<li><a href>USA</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
You can always use the full phrase in the target page's title and meta description, etc. Plus there are other pages with IBLs, I assume. There's no reason to try to have a single page rank for 55 different search phrases, especially when it just slid down 40 for the primary phrase you're hoping for.
All this is just my own opinion. I do see a lot of sites in a week and that informs my opinion. But I don't claim any secret batphone to the Google Search team. I can only report that changes like this helped some pages that were showing recent troubles.
<added thought>
People who have been working with sites for several years became accustomed to links being the be-all and end-all of ranking in Google. Recent shifts have made that background assumption not to be quite so true anymore. The one trick pony is no longer an act in the Google SEO circus. Links need some real support from other factors, which are discussed all around the forum.
</added>
This <ul> thingo, wondering why you think google will view these as thus being in context? I use a <ul> just like for my NORMAL navigation, where the content of each navigation is not overly related. Do you think the h2 at the top of the list will do this?
I am not trying to get the home page to rank for all these terms of course, I am trying to give added anchor text benefit to the inner pages, but seems this is resulting in a penalty for the repeated keyword, which is the main term for the home page….
