Varying Anchor Text - Do or die?

[tshears]

Hey Guys,

If you had 5000 backlinks and 90% of them all used similar anchor text of 1-4 words, would you be concerned?

I'm in a situation where I need to decide to differentiate my anchor text for natural appearance, or continue to build strong focused backlinks with the same anchor text.

So far I have not seen any penalties and we are getting excellent SERPs with the way things have gone, but I'm concerned this may not stay the same if Google decides our back link summary is not natural.

Any opinions?

[AussieWebmaster]

always vary your anchor text - for that number you should have 20-25 different keywords at the low end

[tshears]

I'm sitting at 483 unique anchor texts, but most are VERY similar, such as broker vs. brokers vs. mortgage broker, etc.

Most of them are 1-3 words and don't look very "natural".

That's my primary concern.

[AussieWebmaster]

try lenders, financial assistance, home equity loans, refinance etc

[Catech]

So whats a good ratio to have when creating unique anchor text to links?

[tshears]

That's the answer im trying to getting Catech. Hopefully we get one.

[AussieWebmaster]

There is no ratio it should be random but random as words also..... Google has a thesaraus

[dominatingseo]

Originally Posted by tshears

That's the answer im trying to getting Catech. Hopefully we get one.

As said there is no such fix ratio to anchor text kw variation, but all in all it should look natural... SE should not think that you are doing bulk link building via software (which gives very rare variation).

My 2 cents. Hope this helps.

[tshears]

We're more on the "link ninja" side of things, building them via request / content creation. Generally speaking, we are creating the content that links to us from their pages, so I have full control over the anchors.

There's a lot of different terms, but its probably 75% majority keywords, and of those, only 10-15 of them that share that 75%.

[jewboy]

i think it all depends on the age of your domain. if you've been online since 1996, have a good track record, and all of the sudden you get thousands of spammy links - you should be fine.

[padhamanabhasharma]

You need to vary anchor text that is very much important and there is no fixed ratio as well.

What you need to do is write a keyword likes these

outsource to india
oursourcing to india
indian outsourcing provider
outsourcing supplier in india
outsourced to india
offshore to india
why offshore/outsoure to india

so these of links is "outsource" and "india"

[Tamar Weinberg]

Originally Posted by jewboy

i think it all depends on the age of your domain. if you've been online since 1996, have a good track record, and all of the sudden you get thousands of spammy links - you should be fine.

I think you're jet-lagged, my friend.

[tshears]

What you mean by that Tamar?

[jewboy]

If you had 5000 backlinks and 90% of them all used similar anchor text of 1-4 words, would you be concerned?

To clarify, if my site was indexed in Google for 8 years, and all of the sudden 5,000 backlinks with identical anchor text came my way, it most likely would not result in any penalization. Agree?

[Tamar Weinberg]

Originally Posted by tshears

What you mean by that Tamar?

Sorry, I hijacked the thread with a personal message to my friend who just came back from Israel.

[Tamar Weinberg]

Originally Posted by jewboy

To clarify, if my site was indexed in Google for 8 years, and all of the sudden 5,000 backlinks with identical anchor text came my way, it most likely would not result in any penalization. Agree?

I'd be a little wary at adding 5,000 backlinks immediately. What about doing it just a little more slowly and accumulate the links over time?

Even old domains can be penalized.

[jewboy]

I've heard this question asked 100x at the SES/Pubcon/SMX conferences over the years. Webmasters afraid their competition will send them thousands of spammy links in an attempt to penalize them. The answer usually given by the panelists (usually engine representatives) is that it usually takes multiple infractions to get penalized and that it depends on your sites historical reputation / behavior. I'm not saying that a penalty can't happen to a well aged domain, but age is certainly a factor when it comes to an engines decision to penalize a site with regards to shady inbound links.

[tshears]

Thanks Jewboy. I'll be at SMX this year for my first conference and that's one question I won't have to ask.

We're adjusting our strategy slightly for more organic appeal, so I don't see us having any problems in the future. I was mostly concerned about having an equitable link profile.

Thanks again for your input, hope to see you at SMX this year. (tshears on SMX connect)

[padhamanabhasharma]

Originally Posted by jewboy

I've heard this question asked 100x at the SES/Pubcon/SMX conferences over the years. Webmasters afraid their competition will send them thousands of spammy links in an attempt to penalize them. The answer usually given by the panelists (usually engine representatives) is that it usually takes multiple infractions to get penalized and that it depends on your sites historical reputation / behavior. I'm not saying that a penalty can't happen to a well aged domain, but age is certainly a factor when it comes to an engines decision to penalize a site with regards to shady inbound links.

I would like to add here that lots of people, assume that since age of the domain is very much important so why do not buy some expired domains which are very old or some domains which exists.

This is the technique used for past. Now google is able to detect this.