How much should keywords in text have internal links added?

changing all keywords to internal links too much?

[hereyougo]

I am seeing a drop in SERP ranking and wonder if this could be because of a change we made when adding keyword text to pages. We made two changes at the same time (probably not a good idea!).

1. When we added text to pages, we made all keywrods into internal links. Does Google like keywords as plain text, or are they OK as links?

2. Within the text, we also added links to other areas of the site not direclty related to the page concerned. For example, on a dog collar page, I have put text and links relating to dog collars at the top of the page and a smaller paragraph with keyword links to other areas of the site under this text (eg dog beds, cat collars). Could this be diluting the message?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Nick0r]

I think auto-linking keywords to pages in your site is a pretty well used tactic amongst big sites. Just look at wikipedia, who exploit that to the max....

P.S. This should be in the Google Search forum.

[new_seo]

I don't think these can be the reasons.May be some other factors are creating problem.According to my knowledge now days SE hugely prefer 2 things
1. Quality and Fresh content
2. Quality and Relevant inbound links
check these 2 factors in your site,you might find out the problem.

[hereyougo]

Many thanks for your input.

[errorsamac]

You should check to see if your pages have been hit with the -950 penalty/filter. Too many internal "keyword rich" inbound links can hurt a website.

[Marcia]

Sounds to me like the internal linking is being over-done in a couple of different respects. Was that all done for users or for search engines?

And why link to off topic sections? Can't users find them through the site navigation if they want to?

[Inspired]

errorsamac and Marcia are certainly right, this type of automatic mass generation of IBLs is almost certain to have a negative end-result on your site.

[Nick0r]

How could that be?

Look at huge sites like Wikipedia (there are many more who do the same I'm sure). It helps them in an absolutely huge way.

[edited by: Nick0r at 9:13 am (utc) on July 24, 2007]

[errorsamac]

Look at huge sites like Wikipedia (there are many more who do the same I'm sure). It helps them in an absolutely huge way.

It is assumed that Wikipedia is manually given a lot of trust and that's it why they rank well and also why they can get away with things that normal webmasters can not do.