{"id":1414,"date":"2012-09-20T14:19:14","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T14:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=1414"},"modified":"2016-12-09T14:26:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T12:26:33","slug":"anchor-text-distribution-payday-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/1414\/anchor-text-distribution-payday-loans\/","title":{"rendered":"Anchor Text Distribution in the Payday Loans Niche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over-optimisation of targeted anchor text has been given a lot of importance by SEO experts, in a bid to avoid getting slapped by Google\u2019s penguin update. We saw the effects of the penguin update on many websites that have <strong>unnatural anchor text distribution<\/strong> and, as anyone would expect, this should have been applied to the \u2018payday loans\u2019 niche but, surprisingly, this is still not the case.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1420\" title=\"I love Payday Loans Penguin Update\" src=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/penguin-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"370\" height=\"395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/penguin-2.jpg 528w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/penguin-2-280x300.jpg 280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 370px) 100vw, 370px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Any rational SEO would think anchor text distribution is crucial in a competitive and controversial niche like <strong>\u2018payday loans\u2019<\/strong>. I analysed the backlink profiles of the top 20 websites ranking for \u2018payday loans\u2019 on Google UK to see any similarities or anomalies in their anchor text profiles. The analysis was done with the help of the <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/\" target=\"_self\">CognitiveSEO tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>All websites should have a balanced mix of backlinks and anchor texts. Regular analysis of anchor text distribution is extremely important to avoid over optimisation of one search term. The <strong>filterable anchor text cloud <\/strong>in CognitiveSEO\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/tour.php#3\" target=\"_self\">backlink report<\/a> should make this analysis quite easy.<\/p>\n<p>A natural anchor text profile must include different variations of the target URL. This gives quite strong trust signals to Google. \u2018Other\u2019 anchor texts, such as \u2018this post\u2019 or \u2018visit this website\u2019 have become equally as important in the post-penguin period. Also, variations of the brand name (CognitiveSEO) and \u2018keyword branded\u2019 (link analysis by CognitiveSEO) form a large part of a healthy and natural anchor text distribution.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Top 10 Websites Ranking for \u2018Payday Loans\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The following screenshot shows the top 10 websites that rank for \u2018payday loans\u2019 on Google UK. Websites in the first and sixth positions have been detected as suspicious by Google. These rankings were correct on 16<sup>th<\/sup> September, 2012 and are likely to have changed since due to the nature of this extremely competitive niche.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-1418\" style=\"border: 1px solid grey;\" title=\"google rankings\" src=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/google-rankings-824x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"577\" height=\"717\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/google-rankings-824x1024.jpg 824w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/google-rankings-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/google-rankings.jpg 908w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Firstly, let\u2019s have a look at the anchor text mix of the top 3 websites:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>1. <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.appliancemagazine.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>www.appliancemagazine.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-1415\" style=\"border: 1px solid grey;\" title=\"Unnatural Anchor Text Distribution \" src=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-1.-1024x233.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"574\" height=\"130\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-1.-1024x233.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-1.-300x68.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-1..jpg 1076w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 574px) 100vw, 574px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The backlinks report shows 84% of exact match anchor texts<\/li>\n<li>Backlinks profile comprises of 97% text links<\/li>\n<li>91% of backlinks are pointing to the home page of the specified website<\/li>\n<li>Most of the backlinks are from irrelevant and suspicious websites that clearly indicate the implementation of Black Hat SEO<\/li>\n<li>This website is not going to rank for this term for long due to irrelevance and black-hat SEO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2. <\/strong><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.payday-loansuk.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>www.payday-loansuk.org.uk<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1416\" style=\"border: 1px solid grey;\" title=\"Anchor Text Cloud\" src=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"525\" height=\"597\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-2.jpg 525w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-2-263x300.jpg 263w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The anchor text distribution of this website looks natural and has many variations of branded anchor texts<\/li>\n<li>12% of backlinks have exact match anchor texts<\/li>\n<li>Most of the anchor texts are partial and broad match (contain \u2018payday\u2019). This is because \u2018payday\u2019 is a part of the brand name<\/li>\n<li>The website is not stuffed with the anchor text<\/li>\n<li>55% of backlinks are pointing to the home page and 45% are deep links.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>3. <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.paydayloan.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>www.paydayloan.co.uk<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1417\" style=\"border: 1px solid grey;\" title=\"Natural Anchor Text Distribution\" src=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"594\" height=\"528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-3.jpg 594w, https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/anchor-text-cloud-3-300x266.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 9% of backlinks have exact match anchor texts, i.e., \u2018payday loans\u2019<\/li>\n<li>The anchor text profile is random and has different variations of brand<\/li>\n<li>The website is fairly clean with many high quality and powerful backlinks<\/li>\n<li>The website also has a lot of creative and fun content considering that it is a highly competitive niche. For instance, <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.paydayloan.co.uk\/Visual-News\/the-life-finanical-times-of-average-joe.html\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a> has almost 90 backlinks including <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.forbes.com<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Websites at position 4, 5 and 6:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rush-my-pay.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.rush-my-pay.co.uk<\/a> (4<sup>th<\/sup> position) is using 71% exact match anchor text. All backlinks are pointing to the home page of the website. 20% of backlinks have \u201cpayday loan\u201d as anchor text.<\/li>\n<li><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.unclebuck.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.unclebuck.co.uk<\/a> (5<sup>th<\/sup> position) has a natural looking anchor text distribution with 30% of \u2018other\u2019 anchor texts and only 9% exact match anchor text.\u00a0 There are some flaws on the website in regards to the architecture and on-site content.<\/li>\n<li><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hourofthetime.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.hourofthetime.com<\/a> is in 6<sup>th<\/sup> position for the term \u2018payday loans\u2019 and again, is an example of Black Hat SEO. Even though Google has provided an alert on this website, it has still managed to rank on the first page with the help of 75% exact match anchor text and other &#8216;dodgy&#8217; techniques.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, let\u2019s take a look at <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jackrabbitloans.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.jackrabbitloans.co.uk<\/a>, (not available anymore) which is ranking at <strong>13<sup>th<\/sup> position<\/strong>. What makes this website rank on the second page? The answer is a no-brainer for many of us; this website does not contain a lot of on-site content. The backlinks are not high quality and, in fact, most of them are taken from low quality article websites and blogs. 72% of backlinks have exact match anchor text. 99% of backlinks are pointing to the home page. Added to this, the website is quite thin.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Anchor text distribution is one of the most important elements of the Penguin update but there are still many irrelevant and spammed websites ranking on the first page for \u2018payday loans\u2019. Example: <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hourofthetime.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.hourofthetime.com<\/a>. This page will more than likely be moved to a new domain.<\/li>\n<li>Natural anchor text distribution is extremely important to get recognised as a good quality website. High percentage of exact match anchor text is a big &#8216;NO&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Targeted keywords should be avoided, to an extent. Although, it can be argued that this strategy won\u2019t always work for small brands, but this can be easily achieved via interesting and creative content.<\/li>\n<li>Up to date on-site content and social shares are equally as important as good technical SEO.\u00a0 A very obvious example is <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.paydayloan.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.paydayloan.co.uk<\/a>. Their <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.paydayloan.co.uk\/Fun-Stuff\/\" target=\"_blank\">creative content<\/a> has attracted a large number of social shares and backlinks on almost every blog post.\u00a0 Arguably, however, many of these backlinks could have been bought, but the results in terms of ranking and traffic are worth looking into. Paid links cannot always be avoided but they have to be well integrated with interesting content so that the natural links will flow within the text.<\/li>\n<li>Natural links automatically make your anchor text distribution more diverse, hence the websites ranking at positions 2 and 3 having an edge over the lower ranked websites for the term \u2018payday loans\u2019.<\/li>\n<li>Google\u2019s algorithm updates seem to have had little impact on highly spammed websites in niches like \u2018payday loans\u2019 where websites are continuously being ranked to top positions and often moved to a new domain later that day.<\/li>\n<li>In a difficult niche like \u2018payday loans\u2019, it becomes even more important to keep a regular check on your link and anchor text profile. CognitiveSEO provides a comprehensive link and anchor text analysis tool for an in-depth analysis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over-optimisation of targeted anchor text has been given a lot of importance by SEO experts, in a bid to avoid getting slapped by Google\u2019s penguin update. We saw the effects of the penguin update on many websites that have unnatural anchor text distribution and, as anyone would expect, this should have been applied to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}