Perhaps the SEOMoz beginner's guide should be updated?
-
I was on the phone tonight with a site owner who may have been affected by Penguin. I was explaining how overuse of keywords with anchor text can adversely affect a site and he asked me an interesting question: "If that is the case, then why does the SEOMoz guide say differently?"
Here are some quotes from the SEOMoz beginner's guide:
"Anchor Text - One of the strongest signals the engines use in rankings is anchor text. If dozens of links point to a page with the right keywords, that page has a very good probability of ranking well for the targeted phrase in that anchor text."
That pretty much implies that you should try to get as many keyword anchor texted links to your site as possible. There should probably be some type of Penguin warning in here.
"Self-Created, Non-Editorial - Hundreds of thousands of websites offer any visitor the opportunity to create links through guest book signings, forum signatures, blog comments, or user profiles. These links offer the lowest value, but can, in aggregate, still have an impact for some sites. "
Granted, the text goes on to say this:
"In general, search engines continue to devalue most of these types of links, and have been known to penalize sites that pursue these links aggressively. Today, these types of links are often considered spammy and should be pursued with caution."
That's a good warning, but I think it could be perhaps made a little more clear that self made links like this are not wise to use as an SEO tool. I think that to a beginner, it kind of sounds like the guide is saying, "There are lots of opportunities out there where you can get a link by making one yourself. Go ahead and use them but don't overdo it."
-
Definitely need that updated, it will also bring us more credibility when we tell our clients, no that is not the way anymore.
I also have a client who had previously developed this kind of linking strategy.
The poor guy probably spent hundreds of hours creating his links,on the old seo advice, and we have noticed a huge drop in their effectiveness. At the end of the day, his links were about keywords, not about content.
I think as an SEO, we have the responsibility to really make it clear to our clients that if they take a different approach, and create high quality community orientated content that contains some links, but is not all about the links they will not only benefit from the juice, but also benefit from google author rank.
I welcome the move towards quality content, as it means that genuine experts in various fields will now be heard.
-
This is true, I've ranked real well lately by saturating the market with my keywords as anchor text!
-
Hi Keri, I am in the process of reading this manual, and have been applying some of the suggested strategies.
I agree with EGOL that I don't think that it should be too much to ask for the manual to be updated as google or any other search engine releases new algorithms or changes.
It is a manual that is recommended to be read by SEOmoz and I hope that "quick changes" doesn't imply "i'll get to it when I can!"
-
Marie, EGOL, and others: I'll forward this thread to the appropriate people at Moz, and agree that it would be helpful to update it. It was updated about a year ago, but I'll see if there are any quick changes we can make.
-
I agree EGOL, my thoughts exactly!
-
I think that what Marie suggests are pretty easy edits.
They should be done ASAP to keep this important document - used by thousands - up to date.
-
I believe that SEOmoz beginners guide is one of the best places to start especially if you are interested in SEO as a career but if there is anything that is outdated (as you have mentioned) i guess this is less a problem from SEOmoz and more the problem from Google who continue to change its algorithm from time to time.
Obviously changing/updating the guide book regularly will not be ideal but I think if SEOmoz can add when it got updated last time so people can easily understand the reason of the outdated stuff available on within the guide.
Just my 2 cents!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How important are 'anchor' text links now
We have started building some good links but I'm just wandering how important anchor based text ones are now.
Link Building | | nick-name123
I'm not talking about spamming/going too heavy but a few here and there. What's your recent experience?0 -
How Effective Are Links Between The Same Company's Websites With Different Domain Extensions?
Morning! The main competitor of an eCommerce site I'm working on has a total of 31 sites for 31 different countries. Each one of these sites has a different domain extension (.com, .co.uk, .fr, .it etc.), and every single one of these sites' pages links to all the other homepages through a dropdown menu on the navigation bar. When I pop the .co.uk URL (our main competitor) into Open Site Explorer, I'm advised they have a 45,079 links from 475 domains. If I look at 'just discovered' links, most are from their own sites - I guess MOZ picks these up every time a new page is created. Now, these guys are huge in the UK. They rank in the top 10 for pretty much every single search term and, to put it into some kind of perspective, their Search Metrics score is 33,000 compared to our measly 160! Don't get me wrong, they do get some decent links from authoritative sites, but it seem most of their links are from their own sites. How does Google view these? Does my competitor have these thousands of 'internal' backlinks to thank for their current position? I've just checked their .kr URL and this has 12.5 million(!) links from just 450 domains. Do every single one of these links pass equity? Or does Google just look at one from each domain? Thanks, Lewis
Link Building | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Should I built a microsite for client's new service or add a new section to an existing new website?
We built a new website for one of our clients. Covering services A B C mostly commercial and industrial B2B construction service. We bought him a brand new domain called serviceAcompanyname.com The website uses a brand new domain and as no DA and PA yet. The client wants a new section added to the Website concerning a new service ( we are going to call it service D) which is still a local service but offered to Home owners. Should we buy a new domain called serviceD-region-companyname.com and make a microsite covering the topic and work on backlinks and links in parallel for both sites, or would we be better off just adding a new section to the existing website and work on the main DA. Will it be easier in the future to enhance 2 different domains or a single one even though all services are not targeting the same audience.
Link Building | | escteam0 -
Any benefits to having Wikipedia links now they are 'no-followed' (apart from traffic and natural link prof.)
I see that Wikipedia outbound links are all no-followed, is there any benefit (aside from the traffic) for having links here now ? For example is their co-citation and co-occurance benefits. I know there is without the links since from seeing previous Moz content about this saying Google getting good at connecting brand/s and topic mentions on a page (without any links) so appreciate Wikipedia is still good for that sort of thing. And a no-followed link is obviously good for the potential traffic. But is there any additional SEO benefit to having a no followed link on a wikipedia entry/stub too ? (aside from its contribution to your no-followed links which in turn contribute to a natural looking link profile) Cheers Dan
Link Building | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
When does Google Webmaster update your links to site??
Hi everyone We removed a load of links from a site over 2 months ago but they still show in Google webmaster tools. I understand Google will not be reading this links as they were removed so long ago. However I just was interested when Google might update these as not showing as linking to us anymore. I like to try and keep things tidy and its a bit frustrating it would be good to be 100% sure what Google is counting at any given time. Cheers James
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
Website Hit by Penguin Update Rising Back From The Dead?
I have a website that had been hit quite hard by the Google Penguin update, losing about 75% of its traffic. The website dropped to positions 300 - 400 for it's most significant keywords. The website had some unnatural links but not that much, maybe about 10 to 20 unnatural links and I've had them all removed about a month ago by the SEO company (submitcomfort.com). Another issue with this website is that it was hacked in early 2012 and hackers used a writeable directory to store porn stuff (my website has absolutely nothing to do with porn!). That said, the website acquired lots of backlinks from porn and warez websites. But today I noticed that impressions are now up by 23% and clicks are up by 54% according to Google Webmaster Tools and it's now ranking in positions 30 to 50 for it's main keywords. So my question is: was that a penalty that's just been lift off? How can it come back from the dead like this? I'm investigating before reinvesting time and money in this website because I'm not sure if this is temporary. Thank you
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
Have SEOmoz members ever considered joining forces with link-building?
I really hope this isn't interpreted as gray hat or spammy, so please let me know if it is! I'm just always racking my brain to try to come up with creative link-building strategies. Since we're all SEOs who are presumably doing some form of link-building, what if we got together and examined one anothers' sites, to find opportunities for links? I'm sure that still doesn't make sense, so I'll try to clarify. OK, I've been seeing an in-house guy around here that works for a place that sells coat hangers. What if I had an existing blog post that mentioned coat hangers, allowing me to make that phrase a link to this site? LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I'M NOT SUGGESTING A FREE-FOR-ALL OF POINTLESS LINKS! I'm only suggesting this to be done in instances where it makes sense and makes copy more informative! I know a lot of kinks would have to be worked out (like making sure people are giving and not just taking) but I wanted to throw the general idea out there first to see if it's even a good idea.
Link Building | | UnderRugSwept0 -
How does Google interpret articles or prepositions in languages where it's attached to the (key)word?
Hi, All! This is for any foreign language SEOs where articles or prepostitions such as "the" "to" "in" or anything else are actually part of the word they are modifying and not a separate word, as in English: How does Google understand those words on-page and in anchor text? If you want to optimize for the word "house", and your content/anchor text says "the house" or "in the house" (again, all one word) - what does Google count that as? Does it count toward "house"? Does it count toward "in the house" only? Does it count toward "house" but not as much as if you had just put "house"? I end up sometimes writing slightly grammatically-off content because I want to optimize for the keyphrase - but is that necessary? Obviously different languages might be different, but you can probably project a little from one to the others. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | debi_zyx0