Inbound links question

[andyh]

Hi - I've heard that with inbound links using the keyphrase as a text link there is a percentage that, if exceeded, can hurt your ranking, is this true? - and does anyone know the percentage of keyphrase links to non-keyphrase links. Thanks.

[Macguru]

Hi andyh,

Welcome to the board.

I am not sure about the percentages, but can share this rule of thumb : "the more the merrier".

[andyh]

Thanks MacGuru - so I am OK if 80% of inbounds are the keyphrase?

[trillianjedi]

andyh - I think most people here would beg, on their knees, in the mud, blindfolded, cold, wet and hungry and barking like a dog, for 80% of their inbound links to have keyword anchortext.

;)

TJ

[annej]

I think Andy's question comes from some speculation somewhere in the massive threads on dominic that sj & fi were penalizing pages that have too many inbound links with identical text. I have no idea if there is good evidence of this but it shows how confusing it can be around here to sort wild theory from carefully thought out theories. (I almost said 'truth' but we can never be sure of anything with the Google algo)

typo edit

[edited by: annej at 3:56 pm (utc) on May 16, 2003]

[scottyman]

I am not so sure. I am analysing results for the update at the moment and I have two clients who have had a significant hit in SERPS. I am trying to work out why but it seems a bit of a coincidence that both have 50/60% of their external links with the keyword anchor text.

[trillianjedi]

ScottyMan:-

Interesting observation. But I'd be very surprised if that's the case.

Anchor text linking is a fundamental part of the internet. Google can't expect web designers to go back and redesign all their sites, write to people linking to them and ask them to change their linking strategy etc.

TJ

[needinfo]

I think the idea of possibly been penalized for the same anchor text in all or most of your links is crazy.
A site sells "blue widgets", why the hell can't it have links to it reading "blue widgets", absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[scottyman]

Trillianjedi,

I would have thought the same and I hope you are right. But I am wondering if you have a high proportion of your anchor text in exactly the same format it is viewed as manipulation. I just can't see any other explanation for it at the moment.

[needinfo]

scottyman
IMO Google like sites which have good navigation and sites which give surfers what they want. If an external site sells "blue widgets" and i put a link on my site to it, it would make sense to let my clients know where they are going, surely Google are aware of this.
A sites keyword phrases are short phrases detailing what the site/page is about.. it makes total sense to have this in the anchor text of any links to that site/page.
If Google are penalizing for this they I personally think it is a big mistake.
I'd find it easier to believe that Elvis was working at Google!

[amazed]

obviously we are all speculating...
but if I was google and decided to go into semantics I would compare to keywords in the anchor text to the keywords in the page...

[scottyman]

Needinfo,

If I see Elvis I will let you know ;)

[amazed]

...just checked...google has not got into semantics yet...search for "god" and you'll see.

I got this nice example out of the thread on yahoo.

[taxpod]

This whole theory seems kind of impossible to me. How many people link to google using identical links? The sites most likely to see a reduction in backlinks from such a filter would be the large brand name sites like Google, Yahoo, etc. Why would they want to run that filter through the algo?

[quotations]

I provide linking code for people to copy and paste into their site. Everyone who does that has identical anchor text in those links. It does not appear to have a negative impact.

I submit that if you pursue that strategy you will not care nearly as much about search engine traffic. Only about 9% of traffic to that site is from search engines.