We all know that an anchor is a heavy object that stops a boat from drifting out to sea. A sea captain knows which anchor to use to navigate a vessel effectively. I’ve found this to be a fitting analogy for how anchor text can help you lay the course for your digital link-building strategy. Using the right anchor text in my backlinks has increased our site’s ranking and organic search. And my approach has given us the added benefit of increased lead generation — the sea captain’s version of catching fish.
Anchor Text 101
Before getting into how to use various types of anchor texts, let’s define each type. In general, anchor text is one or more words that pull up a link when you click on it. Here are some anchor text definitions:
Branded anchor text: This is your brand name that takes someone to a page on your site when they click on it. An example of this is HGTV.
Naked link anchor text: A naked link has your brand name followed by .com, .net, .org, etc. If we stick with the HGTV example, the naked link would be HGTV.com.
Generic anchor text: This type of link doesn’t use a keyword or your brand. It simply tells your audience exactly what words to click on to access your link, such as click, click here, go here, find it at this link, etc.
Image anchor: When someone clicks on one of your images, the search engine grabs the alt tag and uses it to find the link to your site.
LSI anchor text: This is an acronym for latent semantic indexing. An LSI anchor text is a relevant or closely related keyword. If your target word is flooring, an LSI anchor text might be "installing wood flooring" or "buying wood flooring." It is a natural way to lead a user to your content.
Brand + keyword anchor text: Create a phrase by adding a keyword to your brand name, such as "learn about wood flooring at HGTV."
Partial match anchor text: This is when part of the target keyword matches your anchor text. If your target keyword is flooring, then "learn more about flooring" would be a partial match anchor text.
Exact keyword: This is exactly what it sounds like. It matches text exactly with your target keyword. This is the most popular kind of anchor text, but it’s one that you should use sparingly, if at all, to avoid penalties.
Title anchor text: Link to the title of one of your articles, such as "Five Tips for Installing Wood Flooring."
Co-occurrence anchor text: Place your backlink in a relevant piece of content and put the backlink in close proximity to the target keyword. For example, if the target keyword is flooring and the anchor text is click here, use "If you are interested in tips for installing wood flooring, click here." Search engines will rank it more favorably than an exact keyword.
Long-tail keyword anchor text: This is three or four-word keyword phrases that reflect words someone puts in a search box when they’re looking for something specific.
Anchor Text Distribution Ratios That Warrant Top Ranking
After a lot of research and personal experimenting, I’ve come up with a formula that works well for keeping my company’s site ranking high in search engines through anchor text:
• Branded anchor: 60%
• Generic anchor: 20%
• Naked anchor: 10%
• Brand + keyword: 5%
• LSI anchor: 2%
• Partial match: 2%
• Long-tail keyword anchor: 1%
Google and other search engines don’t care for exact match keywords because they’ve been so abused and overused in the past. Even though search engines aren’t human, they still have the integrity to drive consumers toward legitimate websites. If you overuse exact keywords as anchors, search engines will penalize you. There are better ways to use anchor text, so I don’t use exact keywords as anchors at all.
Preventing Penalties And Putting Anchor Text Into Perspective
The best way to prevent search engine algorithm penalties is to not put all of your anchor text in one basket. Google algorithms honor content that is informative and flows naturally. That means that the structure of your articles shouldn’t be too predictable. Use a variety of anchor text and switch it up periodically to steer clear of penalties.
However, keep in mind that, in the grand scheme of things, using anchor text is one of the smaller factors in an overall SEO strategy.
Putting The Pieces Together
To make sure that you're linking to websites with good reputations, check their domain authority score on Moz. You can count on sites with a score of 30 or higher. Also, review your backlinks occasionally to see that they are pushing multiple pages on your website. Even links to service pages can help create organic traffic. Search engines will give you props for links that come from websites that are different from your industry and from each other. No review is complete without taking a hard look at the types of industries your backlinks come from.
Even though anchor links don’t take a primary role in my back-linking strategy, they are still an important piece of it overall.
