Anchor Text Optimization - Ultimate Strategy for Backlinks 2024

Since SEO began as a serious practice, link builders have been trying to figure out how to perfectly optimize the anchor text of their backlinks.

We're going to look at all of the important facts and provide some important and actionable advice for optimizing anchor text.

What are anchor texts?

Anchor text is simply the text that appears highlighted in a hyperlink and can be clicked on to visit a target web page.

Think of anchor texts as editorial bridges between pages. These go far beyond the literal meaning of the words that make up the anchor and rely (a lot) on the surroundings (the sentence or paragraph they come in) to classify as a high-quality anchor text.

A high-quality anchor text has two fundamental functions:

1. Naturally link two pages together

2. Provide the reader with an additional resource that may help their reading experience

Types of anchor text

There are various types of different anchor texts, which we've identified below.

Branded anchor texts

• Link Builder

• LinkBuilder.io

• https://linkbuilder.io/

• on LinkBuilder.io

Natural anchor texts

Instead of using keyword queries in our anchor text, we use natural accessory words that refer to what the searcher may expect to do after clicking on the anchor, E.G.

• click here
• this in-depth guide
• visit their website
• find more information by clicking this link

Partial match anchor texts

This is where we mix keywords along with accessory words to keep it feeling natural and more descriptive e.g.

• 9 easy link building strategies that anyone can use (using the page title as the anchor)
• actionable link building strategies
• link building strategies you can implement
• link building strategy guide from LinkBuilder.io
• the ultimate strategy for link building in 2022

Exact match anchor texts

• link building strategy
• link building strategies
• best link building strategy
• link building tactics

Keywords vs. Anchor Text

It's very important to differentiate between the two.

Understanding keywords (search queries)

Keywords are just another name for search queries (that thing you put into the search box).

I actually much prefer the term search queries, because ultimately it’s what the end user is typing into Google that matters.

More often than not, questions will contain keywords that will help Google (and searchers) navigate its index and develop relevant suggestions (in the form of SERPs) that closely match the intent behind the query.

These can also be called keyword queries.

There are no rules for typing queries on the search box - most users just type the simplest query to get a fast result which matches up whatever they're looking for. You'll find that these don't read all the time naturally, i.e.:

• IT support Seattle

• crypto exchange Australia

• gym near me

Anchor texts are not keywords

First, we have to comprehend that Google is a user-oriented index. The most popular search engine's ultimate goal is to provide answers, not pages (think of that for a second, and you will realize these are two different things).

When you’re devising an anchor text strategy, of course you need to consider the keywords you’d like to rank for, but using only those keywords as your anchor texts would be a very unwise move.

The reason is simply because people don’t link that way!

Think about it - If you’re writing an article about going to the gym and you’d like to recommend a great nationwide gym, you’re not going to say “try this amazing gym near me” - that wouldn’t make any sense, it’s just a poorly constructed reference.

What you’d say is something like this - “try Gold’s gym, they have branches all over the country”

So if your target keywords and anchor text strategy aren’t one and the same, then how exactly should you optimize anchor texts?

Let’s dive a little deeper…

Google's Advice on Anchor Text

We've actually gotten some interesting insights from Google over the years with regards to links and anchor text in general.

In fact, it's extremely helpful to read Google's official guide on anchor texts here.

Over the years, Google representatives have

• Anchor text is a ranking factor - Google does use anchor text to determine what a page is about, and it helps them to rank that page.
• Longer anchor texts can be helpful - Using more words in anchor text provides more context to Google about the page being linked to.
• Supply some context on why people should click on a link - Let readers know what kind of extra information or value the link provides.

There's one key reason why you shouldn't try to over optimize anchor text when link building, and that's because of a Google algorithm update which came into play back in 2012.

That was the Google penguin update, which targeted people spamming keyword-rich anchor text links aggressively.

It's quite easy for Google to understand if you're pursuing an exact-match link building strategy, especially if you're building links to pages that don't naturally get many links (such as service pages).

As a link building agency, we get questioned time and time again by clients who want to see more keyword-rich anchor texts in their backlinks.

But it's a fool's errand to think you can push aggressively and expect to get away with it. The only exception to this may be on highly trusted and authoritative sites, which can get away with more. We'll dig into that more later.

For 90% of sites out there, you're just going to get punished algorithmically by building too many over-optimized links to the wrong types of pages.

5 Rules for Mastering Anchor Text

Now we're going to get into 5 actionable rules for mastering your anchor text strategy.

You should follow these rules for every campaign you're working on, and actually map out and track your target backlinks in a spreadsheet to ensure you're sticking to a sensible long-term plan.

Competitor Research & Modeling

Always look at the competitor's ranking at the top of Google for your target search keywords, and check out their anchor text distribution.

Here's an example using the search term "link building strategies"

At the time of writing, this article on Neil Patel was ranking #1 for the query.

Here's the anchor text distribution for this article:

As you can see, there's a wide variety of different anchor texts present here, but generally speaking lots of partial-match anchor texts which give us a good idea on how we might vary anchor texts for a competing article.

How to do competitor anchor analysis

1. Export the anchor text data for the competing page you're analyzing
2. Categorize the various anchors by type in a spreadsheet
3. Repeat this for the other competing pages ranking in position 1-5
4. Record all of the data & finalize your action plan

It should hopefully look something like this...

Feel free to use our template here - just click file > make a copy.

🧠 Don't count certain links - If you're doing this to a high level, you should not count links from social bookmarking sites and other low-quality no-follow sources, since realistically they're going to skew your anchor text plan massively, especially if your competitors have a high percentage of random bookmarking links. These are quite common to find in Ahrefs.

Please bear in mind that doing this type of competitor analysis is just going to help give you a range to work with. You can't rely only on the %'s that Ahrefs tells you, and you'll still need to use your own analysis skills to help decide on the best anchor text strategy.

Make it Natural

When you're reading an article, the anchor text should always feel very natural, like it's supposed to be there and actually makes the page you're reading better for being there.

There's a very simple stress test to make here...

If an SEO can't easily identify the link straight away as being clearly placed for the purpose of link building, then it passes. Even if it smells a little bit off, it fails the test.

You should be thinking in the mind of an editor or writer, and not a dumb SEO who thinks that stuffing his target keywords into an anchor text like a moron is going to get him improved rankings.

Variety is Key

There have been some incredibly interesting studies done recently on internal linking, and although we're talking about external links in this article, I think the findings are very relevant.

If you look at any pages that have consistently ranked near the top of Google, you'll see a massive variety when it comes to the anchors linking to those pages.

Essentially, it's a good thing to vary your inbound anchor texts as much as possible.

In fact, as a general rule of thumb our advice would be to never use the same anchor text twice.

The reason is simply because in the real World, if somebody links to their site it's actually fairly unlikely that they'll use the same linking text as the next person linking out to you.

That doesn't mean you can't have overlapping keywords of course, but just get creative and vary the keyword strings you're putting together.

This way, we keep our client's anchor profile from looking over-optimised, giving clear hints of intervention to Google crawlers.

Key takeaways:

• Never use the same target anchor text more than once if you can - however word variations of the same thing are fine.

• Anchor text variety is highly correlated with higher search traffic

• Naked URL anchors don’t seem to hurt, and in fact, are associated with more traffic.

• At least some exact match anchors are associated with significantly higher traffic.

• Use your page title (meta title) for anchor text - it's super common to do so

Content Relevance

Google did seem to have confirm that the surrounding text around the link being placed is important, and helps Google to understand the outbound link.

For you, it means that if you're actively doing link building, you need to be making sure your link is placed in an article or paragraph which relates strongly to the page being linked to on your website.

If you're not using exact match or partial match anchor text, you should ensure your target keyword is nearby the anchor text.

Example using target keyword "Link Building Agency"

"If you don't have the resources to hire internally, then you should consider hiring a link building agency. We would recommend LinkBuilder.io as they come highly rated within the industry."

When exact match anchors are OK

As we've previously mentioned, you should be very cautious in general when actively using exact match anchor texts.

However, there are certain situations when exact match anchors can be more common.

Let's take a look at two examples...

Example 1 - The Wikipedia Page for World War II

In this particular case, the page has more than 30,000 referring domains, and 59% of the anchor texts are exact match.

Key points:

• This is the name of Historical event - there's not really any other sensible way a writer would link to this page other than using the exact name of the event.
• It's an informational page which describes a particular event or concept in general.
• If you look at the other top pages in the search results, they all follow the same pattern.
• Wikipedia and other top ranking pages for this key term and insanely high authority - Wikipedia has a DR score of 96, they can stomach as many exact match anchors as they like, because Google knows they're an incredibly trusted source, despite what your University teachers would have you believe.

Example 2 - Definition Page for CRM on Salesforce

In this particular case, the two dominant anchors are both exact-match variations.

Key points:

• This page is a definition page - It's literally explaining what a CRM is.
• For this reason, it does make sense that it would have a higher % of exact match anchor texts.
• Even despite the unique nature of the page (it's a definition page) it still only has around 35% exact match anchors, and still plenty of variations.
• Again, this page is on an extremely trusted website - Salesforce, with a DR score of 92.

What Pages Should I Link to?

This ties very closely into our discussion of anchor texts, because it's clear that certain pages get way more links than others.

• You can link more aggressively to content and informational pages.
• You can and should build a ton of branded links to your website, provided they feel natural.
• Do not link aggressively to commercial pages, money pages, service pages unless you have a clear and logical reason for doing so.

Anchor Text for Geographical Locations

Context is paramount for the anchor to perform its function and take the readers right where they need to be.

It is not wrong to include the business or service location in the anchor text or its surroundings, but this is something not to be taken lightly.

More often than not, things get tricky when optimizing commercial pages whose scope is local. When competing for better search engine visibility in heavily competitive geographical locations such as "lawyer New York", we tend to see SEOs spamming keyword-rich anchor texts hard.

When analyzing competitors, we have to be careful and mindful about what we decide to reverse engineer and what is better to avoid.

Before referencing directly to a location, we ask should ourselves:

• Is the geographical area relevant to the website that links back to our clients?

• Is it convenient to let searchers know about the specific locations when these may be coming from worldwide?

• Are my competitors making good use of their anchor texts? Does it make sense?

• Does this anchor text provide an unmatched reader experience?

Good Anchor Text Examples

We're going to finish off by showing some examples of good anchor text, and how it's placed naturally in common situations.

As we mentioned earlier, reading some of the best and most highly respected blogs in your industry in undoubtedly the best way to recognize the patterns that real writers & webmasters use to link out to other pages in a natural way.

🧠 Meticulously study the linking habits of well respected writers in your industry - This is going to be your new benchmark for how to think about anchor text.

Watch the video below to help get an understanding of good anchor texts.

Example 1 - Credit card page on bank of America

🔗 Three links that appear natural & helpful, despite going to a commercial page:

• From Lendedu.com (DR 76) - "If you don’t already have a Bank of America card, you’ll want to head to their website to begin the application process. It won’t take you long to sign up and be notified whether you’ve been accepted."
  
• From Upgradedpoints.com (DR 71) - "The card has a variety of other benefits and a varying welcome bonus, too. Check out Bank of America’s credit card page for more info."
• From CNBC.com (DR 91) - "The travel rewards card is the latest Bank of America co-branded credit card to disappear from the bank’s website, following the likes of the MLB™ Cash Rewards Mastercard®, World Wildlife Fund Visa, and other co-branded cards that have been pulled in 2021."

Example 2 - How to invest in Bitcoin article on Nerdwallet

🔗 Three links that appear natural & helpful, despite going to an informational-commercial page:

• From Yahoo News (DR 92) - "Whether you should invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies depends on your financial situation. One rule of thumb when it comes to alternative investments like this is to ensure they comprise only a small percentage of your overall portfolio."
• From FutureLearn - DR 84) - "If you are interested in getting hands-on experience with cryptocurrency, you can consider investing. Guides are freely available on the internet (Investopedia, NerdWallet, 99BitCoins to mention but a few)
• From Yahoo Finance (DR 92) - "Once you decide to take the plunge you then have to decide whether to buy coins directly from an exchange like CoinDesk or Gemini."

Example 3 - Linking to Wise Agent, a real estate CRM software

🔗 Examples of homepage links which are helping the Wise Agent homepage to rank #1 for 'real estate CRM"

• From Placester.com (DR 87) Listicle post - 4. Wise Agent - Wise Agent provides contact management, lead management, a Chrome extension, and other features to track and optimize your interactions with all your clients.
• From Smith.AI (DR 73) - "This robust CRM features advanced automation and transaction management tools, along with a central database for client information. Wise Agent makes it easy to create optimized landing pages, generate lead categories and contact assignments, and more."

Example 4 - Best Dogs Food page on DogFoodAdvisor

🔗 Examples of links to an affiliate page which is ranking #1 for 'best dog foods' on Google.

• From iHeartdogs (DR 74) - "You can also research brands on DogFoodAdvisor.com for ratings, recall information, and nutritional content, and take that information with you to your vet."
• From Heavy.com (DR 80) - "On this list, we’ve compiled the remainder of that site’s best dog foods list that did not appear on our first post. These are all highly recommended dog foods according to the experts, so shop confidently."
• From Totallygoldens.com (DR 46) - "There are a range of factors that mark out a good dog food. According to Dog Food Advisor, a good dog food should have:"

In summary, you only need to consider anchor text optimization when you are actively building links to your website. If this is something that you've decided to invest in, then you need to be very careful with your strategy.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss your anchor text strategy in more detail.