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Lets talk total money anchor text %'s!

tcsmith007tcsmith007
in Other / Mixed
Hey guys and girls!

Just wanted to get people's opinion on an anchor text question. 

We all know Google looks at anchor text %'s, e.g. you wouldn't want to have 30% of your total backlinks for the phrase "fine wine" if you wanted to rank for "fine wine" because that would lead to a quick Penguin coming your way. 

People talk about keeping your anchor text %'s really low, say around the 1-5% mark for any anchor text.

Well my question is say we keep all the "money" related anchor's in the safe 1-5% range, we build generic anchors, domain anchors and some brand anchors too. Does Google look at total "money" related keywords?

E.g. If we took a website with a link profile when they have 30% domain, 20% generic and 50% money related keywords. Would this website trigger a Penguin penalty? Even though all the "money" related keywords are in the 1-5% so called safe range, does Google look at total %'s of money related keywords.

The Algorithm would have to be very clever to know what the "money" keywords were because we're keeping every anchor text to the 1-5% range no?

Thanks

Tom!




Comments

  • JudderManJudderMan UK
    I'm starting to think %s should be higher. I just don't see the benefit in diluting it down to 5%. I have one site that has three main keywords (all contain the same brand kw) and they are around 30% each and it's ranking well and has been for 8-9 months.
  • BuySERListsBuySERLists Vancouver, Canada
    @tcsmith007 - this is a no brainer.

    Step 1 - scrape the top 20 URLs for your target keywords in Google

    Step 2 - research in AHrefs or Majestic to determine anchor text percentages

    Step 3 - notice trends, apply them to your ranking

    Easy stuff. Don't try to recreate the wheel... just see what others are doing, imitate what works and test your own hypothesis to see if you can gain an edge.
  • 2Take22Take2 UK
    edited August 2014
    tcsmith007 - using a broad range of secondary money keywords has been good practice for years, even before the first penguin algo came out.

    I can't say for sure if the algo looks at over optimisation of the same words / phrases, or very similar ones, but provided you're a bit sensible about it you've got nothing to really worry about. I mean, if you've got a website about dogs, then it's probably natural to have a fairly high percentage of your inbound links being dog related, no?

    If anything, it will actually work in your favour by providing added relevance, which in turn will help you rank for every other keyword that you're targeting, as well as helping you pick up lots of long tail, which is where the majority of most people's traffic comes from anyway.

    With regards to the actual percentages of anchor text that you use, there's so many different variables that it's almost impossible to say, as it will vary depending on your domain's authority, how optimised your on-page is, how optimised your internal links are, whether google sees you as a brand or not, and the niche you're in (and it's commercial value / intent), to name a few.


  • tcsmith007tcsmith007
    Thanks guys, I agree that your links would relate to your content.

    Thanks for everyone's thoughts!
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