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Am I better off:
(a) going with the repetitions... ?
- or:
(b) weeding the "widget" repetitions out and only getting half the phrase in some of the anchor text?
For example:
(a):
Widget City Home ¦ Widget Sales ¦ Widget Rentals ¦ Widget Accessories ¦ Widget Repairs ¦ Widget News ¦ Widget Resources ¦ Contact Widget City
or (b):
Home ¦ Widget Sales ¦ Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Repairs ¦ Widget News ¦ Resources ¦ Contact Us
I've played around with this one for years and mostly have gone with (b), but now I'm working on a site where almost all targets hinge on one word, so it's harder to edit out the repetitions.
your gonna be runnin outta available widgets if you keep mentioning them at the top/bottom sorta thing, best to leave some ammo for the main part of the page, i.e. the product listing IMO
Lets face it, given my topic, every page of my site is plastered with the ontopic words with almost every possible permutation, combination or translation thereof. And I would imagine BOL has the same challenge with hit topic.
What I ended up doing was not worrying about the problem for outbound links, if it is a widget it needs to called as such. However, I did use you your option B for the main menu links and there doesn't seem to be any problems.
In your case I would keep an open mind about using the Widget word judiciously in important internal links, but be careful.
Onya
Woz
I would be drawn towards (a) above, because I like each anchor to describe the resource it links to, but a lot of people seem to be worried about nearby repetitions of part of a phrase within one page.
What's the consensus? Is it dangerous to link down to your regional pages using "Widgets for sale in Texas ¦ Widgets for sale in Idaho ¦ Widgets for sale in Florida ¦ etc."?
What's the consensus?
take it from the maestro himself: [google.com...]
"Google" the equivalent of Robert_Charlton's "Widget" is shamelessly repeated seven times as part of the anchortexts.
and for that matter "search" is repeated eight times!
so go ahead with a comparable frequency, subtely spread out over your page (maybe less grouped together on the bottom next to each other) Robert_Charlton, you only risk a PR10 ;)
Widgets: Sales ¦ Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Repairs ¦ News ¦ Resources ¦ Contact Us
or
Widgets for sale in: Texas ¦ Idaho ¦ Florida ¦ etc.
[big]Texas[/big] Widgets for sale.
[big]Idaho[/big] Widgets for sale.
[big]Florida[/big] Widgets for sale.
etc.
I would not know, it would make sense for the visually impaired..
Is that who you are trying to help? ;)
My stab-in-the-dark, try to be fair opinion would be that it would count for the smallest font size in the link, that is if Google is friendly.
If you want to see if it works, I would edit your posting before Googleguy wakes up..:)
Google is not only repeated seven times in anchor text, there are many other occurences on the page. But not within the same phraseology, and not in the same word order within the phrases. It's also distributed throughout the page
Same thing with the word "search"; it's distributed naturally. I looked it up under Google Search Solutions, and that phrase intact is only used once on the page, in addition to the page title, with "search solutions" used in two-word anchor text.
Those words are all used a lot, but they're well distributed and the exact order isn't repeated much. It's natural looking when seeing it with the words highlighted.
>>where the link covers each phrase, but the first word is made to stand out.
Texas Widgets for sale.
Idaho Widgets for sale.
Florida Widgets for sale.
That's almost natural to do. I've got a small site of 8 pages, with anchor text like that 5 times - Nice widgets - 1, Nice widgets - 2, etc. It seemed the only way to do it, but in Robert's case, if that can be put in as links within paragraphs, the phrasing could be different:
When you're shopping for <link>widgets in Texas</link>
See our gallery of <link>Ohio widgets</link>
When looking for a widget in Arkansas (singular)
We're the largest manufacturer of <link>custom widgets</link>
In Robert's "A" example, the phrasing and word order could be changed a bit. It would affect the receiving pages of the links differently, but it doesn't look quite as stitled to the human eye.
Thanks vitaplease, I just spent an hour looking a that one page. ;)
I'm trying to help everyone understand where my links go. (including Googlebot) :)
I also think it's natural Marcia. Google is believed to have a density cap, and count very high word densities just the same as moderate densities. So why should they care if we use the same words a lot in a contents page?
That page has intrigued me for some time. If you can see why it's ranked at 150+ for "solutions" please lets us all know!
One set something like this:
Home ¦ Widget Sales ¦ Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Repairs ¦ Widget News ¦ Resources ¦ Contact Us
and the other set something like this:
Home ¦ Sales ¦ Widget Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Widget Repairs ¦ News ¦ Widget Resources ¦ Contact Us
That would make sense to human visitors, reduce concerns about overdoing the keyword density on any particular page, and still give each critical page some benefit from having "widgets" in the link text.
So why should they care if we use the same words a lot in a contents page?
Exactly, Google would unwantingly punish many sitemaps if they banned pages with keyword repetition in part of the anchortexts.
[google.com...] (Google 15x, Search 11x)
but then there are always the over-enthousiastic who could tenfold that density.
Google can do whatever it wants to. It doesn't need to rank itself in Google as others do. They could give a blank page of theirs a PR10 if they wanted to. With this in mind, why use Google as a benchmark?
In addition to Google giving your pages better relevance ranking for the target keyword pages, I can make the case for using the entire phrase based as a copywriting issue. People are more likely to click on a link that is the same phrase as they think of or commonly speak.
I can't imagine this being a penalty issue. Far too many pages would get nailed for this. I think sometimes we over analyze what could cause problems.
Text density on page also is something I think about, though, and if every link includes "widget," the text density of that word on the page as a whole often feels too high.
My experience in optimizing sites for others is that link text wording can get very political, and usability becomes an important factor... as I think it should. So I like dcheney's example, but with a cautionary note that the text preceding the link text should combine with the link text to form the target phrase. It should be "widget" singular in the case of his first example...
Widget: Sales ¦ Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Repairs ¦ News ¦ Resources ¦ Contact Us
Marcia's suggestion about getting more links into paragraph text is also a good one. I think Google likes links in paragraphs better than links at the bottom anyway... they're more prominent, and thus would logically get a higher weight. This would also allow more variation of targeting a page.
Varying the footer links is tricky, because most developers like to use global footers since they're much easier to maintain. When I use (b), I'll pick the links to the most competitive or important pages to include "widget," but I also try to make sure that the links are clear and readable.
If within the flow of text, "Contact us about word1 word2" can read OK, IMO.
For the home page (which may be most important), this seems OK (the big blue text is underlined, both lines are part of the link).
About Us
phrase 1
Products
phrase 2
Contact
phrase 3
Though I tend to agree with this, it's mostly a gut feeling; too much to hope for something concrete on this I suppose?
¦ Widget Sales ¦ Widget Rentals ¦ Widget Accessories ¦ Widget Repairs ¦
and the other at the bottom of the page
¦ Widget City Home ¦ Widget News ¦ Widget Resources ¦ Contact Widget City ¦
Navigational Text [webmasterworld.com]
web_india - This doesn't avoid the problem I'm trying to address, which is the close repetition of the word "widget" in links that are adjacent... and also the great increase in density for "widget" that could occur if you had the word in every link.
if u use:
Widget City Home ¦ Widget Sales ¦ Widget Rentals ¦ Widget Accessories ¦ Widget Repairs ¦ Widget News ¦ Widget Resources ¦ Contact Widget City
then you will rank higher on 2 search phrases exmp.
("aa bb" instead if "aa blablabla bb" will rank higher on "aa bb", because its the exact search phrase.
if i were you i would do this of course you can do the other one, but then you will rank "little bit" lower on 2 search phrases.
ps. number 1 does not affect 1 phrases search terms ranking.
I think you're assuming that "would it help if the navigation is split into two" refers to splitting the link text "aa bb" into two.
As I reread web_india's post which I was quoting, I think he's talking about putting some text links at the top of the page and some at the bottom.
Yes, you're right that an exact phrase match in the link text would be best.
IndexPage:
¦Sales ¦ Rentals ¦ Accessories ¦ Repairs ¦ News ¦ Resources ¦ Contact Us
Bottom of page- copywrite >Widget</a>City (link to index page)
The nav bar on all the other pages does not have to be the same and this is where the optimal anchor text can be used. Do not use subdirectories for the first 20 pages for each link off the index page. EG, the sales page has at least 20 pages under it in the sales category. Using the above nav bar you now have 140 pages at root level(pr mining) where you can use optimal link text.
Google DEFINATELY allows option 1, but it is open to abuse. Some companies build huge link farms in this manner, and Google has yet to penalize them.
Many travel sites have dozens of URLs and link them all together with a footer like this:
China Hotels, Taiwan Hotels, Thailand Hotels, Poland Hotels,.... blah blah hotels
The chief aim is to to get the word "hotels" on the page as many times as possible. So far it works. Google allows these sites to rank well in the index. However, a word of caution. It should be pretty elementary to catch these sites too by setting a filter to catch groups of sites with the same/similar links on every page. So what works today, most likely won't work much longer!
I think this is just asking for PR0 trouble.... I've seen these sites and would hesitate to use them as any kind of example.
My concern re repetition in link text is about being cautious with my internal links on one domain. Even though I see sites with closely repeated text in Google's index, that doesn't tell me whether that's the best way to do it.
Your pagerank suffers a little this way because the number of links is reduced, but I sleep better at night.
I’ve tried many different navigational styles, each dependent on the site itself. That is one of the reasons I use canonicals Robert. I layout the navigation for canonicals in the pattern of a constellation and treat each a satellite within the structure of the site. There’s a hub then to pull it all together. This allows me to break up my information into whole sublevels connected to a core. Each canonical then has it’s own structure and if it makes sense to link or expand on the basic navigational links between the canonicals then I do so.
When I think about navigation it’s not in fear of what I shouldn’t do, although it may appear that way because I caution restraint, rather ‘what more I can do’ to maximize it’s potential for my efforts.
Robert, in your time researching do you notice how others are managing their navigation? Are you noticing changes in levels of what is acceptable navigation dependent on the amount of competition there is for that position?
I don’t believe there are as many controls over navigation as some people believe but I know that when mistakes happen we hear about it. What we don’t hear are the individual facts of each case, giving us the information we need to analyze and evaluate each situation. Because the backlash can be terrible and there are newbies and lurkers who don’t yet comprehend the complexity involved in setting strategies for linking, I suggest folks really think before they link.
We can look at all the interesting information we can draw from to organize navigation. Some of the things I consider are branding, keyword presentation, establishing authority, accessibility, comprehension for the level of user, and so on.
I only have one rule and that is always connect with home and always have home connect in return.
huge link farms
That's really starting to get into a different topic though. The original point was about using keywords in repeated anchor text in a site's internal navigation, and any dangers involved.
Crosslinking and link farms are a different matter with inherent dangers regardless of what kinds of links or which anchor tags are used.
As for the first topic, I've seen it used to great effect, but believe it should be approached with a bit of caution, just as should any other technique for loading keywords on the page. And like anything else, a manual "penalty" isn't the only concern, something like this could be dealt with "automatically" in the algorithms -- just as getting your keyword density too high might begin to count against you, so too could a "too high" presence of repeated anchor tags.
