Anchors Away!, Can too many anchors, too quickly added cause SERP problems? Options

[mal4mac]

I have about twenty pages on "widgets" and added a page on "red widgets". My "red widgets" page was on page 2. I linked to "red widgets" from all my other "widgets" pages to try and get it onto page 1. This was an improvement for the reader, they might want to read about "red widgets" having read about other kinds of widgets. No way could it be seen as a move "just to boost rankings".

But now "red widgets" is nowhere!

Adding links like this is something that spammy automated software might do. Could Google be penalising this - "twenty anchors since last update, all the same, keel-haul the culprit!" - and keel-hauling innocents?

My reasoning:

As Google isn't an idiot he must realise white hats might put in a few dozen anchors at once and I would think he would only put him in prison for a week or so (acting like Gordon Brown with his terrorist suss laws - not guilty, go to jail anyway, we'll let you out soon if there's no concrete evidence).

This, like with Gordon Brown, would be far too heavy handed of Google, but I could imagine him doing it.

Might it be something else?

Reading the red widgets article again I thought it was slightly heavy on keyword repetition so reduced it until it read as well as I could make it (keyword or not).

Has anyone else suffered the dumping of a well-liked page recently? "Red widgets" was getting good traffic on page 2, beating some quite good pages. The good pages have widgets and outgoing links that I haven't quite got around to adding (yet?). Could a human editor have decided that my page (although a well written informative article) just didn't have enough bells and whistles and dumped it? Has the Google algorithm added ways to detect more bells and whistles recently (e.g. api links, js, sql)?

Then again, it might be just a bug and I'm over-thinking this, my other similar pages are all coasting along just fine (apart from the one with the repeated <h3> -- well spotted Google!)

[Randy]

My guess is it's probably a temporary fluke. But it's hard to say.

Getting a ton of links from other sites, all at once and all with the same anchor text, can be a signal of attempted manipulation that might raise a red flag. But these are all internal links, correct? And the number doesn't sound nearly big enough to have that sort of red flag effect.

[Jill]

It would be extremely surprising to me if Google was looking at what every website does within itself at such a granular level.

They have much more important things to look at than whether John Doe changes his anchor text quickly or slowly. It's just not going to be a factor, imo.

[pearlcompany]

It would be extremely surprising to me if Google was looking at what every website does within itself at such a granular level.

They have much more important things to look at than whether John Doe changes his anchor text quickly or slowly. It's just not going to be a factor, imo.

I guess I would be wrong in saying anchor text doesn't work ?

Maybe for yahoo ( Bing well ) I don't know they wont even index me.

[mal4mac]

Anchor text certainly works! And, if anything, better in Google.

As the page i was worried about is back I'm more willing to accept "fluke". But I think Google would, surely, look at anchor text manipulations? The latest seomoz advice is not to have more than 25 anchors in the footer because that is easily automated. Notice this doesn't mean that you can't have more than 25 anchors in the body text. Wikipedia may be a model to follow. Many of their pages have less than 25 'references' in the footer, but lots of anchors in the body text.

Many dodgy pages look as if they have been scraped form search engines, and therefore have anchors leading the paragraph. So that may be a pattern to avoid as well.

[Randy]

The whole footer links reference is just like so many other things with SEO, where things get fuzzy and a lot more grey than black and white in a hurry. Especially when it comes to assigning a number/level to stay away from. Frankly, it's one of the reasons it's so hard to give advice that holds up in every possible situation.

For instance, I have a couple of sites where a little app I've created can be used to make printable documents that span across literally hundreds of general categories. I've got a series of "samples" pages that show the different artwork I make available to subscribers in order to make the creation process a lot easier for them. Each of these samples pages have more than 25 links at the bottom that lead to other category pages. And of course each link includes anchor text to the name of a category.

It clearly breaks both the no more than 25 footer links advice and the don't load up your footer links with keywords rule. If it were a hard and fast rule all of these samples pages should be penalized.

But users find these samples pages quite useful, since it gives them a visual reference to show what's possible. Somehow the search engines have correctly figured out that the samples pages are for users, and not an attempt to spam the search engines. Because they all rank quite well --most #1-- for their targeted phrase. Even though I'm clearly breaking a couple of rules.

[mal4mac]

It would be very harsh just to ban pages with > 25 footer links. But I could imagine it taking you down the rankings a few pegs, unless you do well in other aspects. Have you tried taking links off the pages that are not ranking for #1?

[Randy]

Have you tried taking links off the pages that are not ranking for #1?

I have in fact, being one of those strange birds who like to test anything and everything. Not only did removing some of the links not improve things for those not quite #1 pages, but it actually hurt some of the other pages. Presumably because they lost some of their internal PR flow and the anchor text provided by those samples pages. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

I also tested keeping the whole link block and moving it out of the footer to a different place in the pages' code. That one produced no difference from the footer-only links.

I think it probably comes down to them trying to and doing a pretty good job of figuring out intent. Who knows, if I linked to those same pages and it ended up looking spammy because I was trying to get the whole longish tail phrases in there the pages might get dinged. Instead I link with the adjective modifier and assume people already know the main two-word noun phrase.

[websitebeginner]

hello,

I'm brand new to this, so discount what I'm about to say. But I have been reading (read first, type second).

From a "logical confusion" standpoint, search engines don't like "internal link mania". What I mean, is you should *not* have everything link to everything in your site. If you think of your web pages as a checkerboard, you DO NOT want every page to connect to every other page through links.

The search engines look for link logic. Since you have "everything" linking to red widgets, the search engine may well be thinking "there is no way that one thing relates to everything. It must be some sort of mistake".

the search engines want you to make a decision. To have a "link budget" of sorts. If you link everything, it's like you can't decide what to exclude. You buy everything in the store rather than deciding what you really need.


The search engines try to accurately determine what a good user experience is. Link mania is a bad user experience. You aren't being scored down for trying to game the system. You are being scored lower because your links are logically undisciplined.

That's the impression I have gotten from reading.