Anchor Text: What Is It And How to Optimize It?

In this post, I'm going to cover everything about the anchor text and how you can use it to improve your SEO practices.
What is anchor text
What is anchor text
The HTML format of anchor text looks like this:

Why Anchor text optimization is important for you
Why Anchor text optimization is important for you
It was easy to rank with 100% exact match anchor text for all your SEO backlinks. But after changes in Google algorithms, anchor text is considered as one of the reasons for Google to penalize your website if you do it in a wrong way, called the anchor text over-optimization.
After Penguin update, Google takes it more seriously to check keywords in your anchor text. Now, if Google finds any website that is of low-quality and doing abusive use of anchor text, it starts penalizes this website and drops its rankings in the search results as it's against the Google's Webmaster Guidelines. After being penalized, you will lose a significant amount of traffic because of the rankings drop.
Googlebots can quickly detect which website is a spammer one and not following Google's rules based on their keywords, synonyms and the title tag used as the anchor text.
As mentioned in post-penguin anchor text case study by MOZ, you don't need to create 100s of links with exact match anchor text to get better ranking in search results. It would be sufficient if you build 5-10 links with a wide range of mixed anchor text with some of your main keywords.
Let's take the How to Perform an Actionable SEO Audit post as an example. If I want to rank for a keyword such as "SEO Audit" on serpstat.com then I might use following anchor text having links to that post:
- Serpstat.com
- https://serpstat.com/
- Guide for SEO Audit
- SEO Audit Checklist
- Tips for SEO Audit
- what is SEO audit
- How To Perform an SEO Audit
- Click here
Types of anchor texts
Types of anchor texts
#1: Exact-match
#1: Exact-match
For example, a link to a target page about SEO tips includes the keyword "SEO tips."
The distribution of exact-match anchors should be less than or equal to 1%. Otherwise, they can become the reason for the penalty of your site.
#2: Partial-match
#2: Partial-match
For example, if your exact-match anchor is "SEO tips." A partial match anchors could be:
- SEO tips guide
- Learn more about SEO tips
- SEO tips for beginners
- SEO tips for bloggers
#3: Branded
#3: Branded
For example, "Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO platform which consists of five modules: Rank Tracking, Backlink Analysis, SEO-audit, Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis."
Branded anchors are the safest types of anchor text, but if your domain includes the primary keywords you're optimizing for, then you should avoid their over-optimization. For example, if your website was "besttoolbox.com and all your anchor text are "Best Tool Box," it would appear to be very spammy and you would get penalized.
#4: Naked Link
#4: Naked Link
#5: Generic
#5: Generic
- Click here
- Click to learn more
- Click this link
- Read more
- View more.
#6: LSI keywords
#6: LSI keywords
The LSI anchors are the anchor text that might not be similar to your exact keyword but they are typically synonyms of your keyword phrase.
To find LSI keywords, just type your search keyword on Google and you will get some LSI keywords ideas at the bottom of the search page. In the screenshot below, you can see the related search suggestions:



How to perform anchor text optimization
How to perform anchor text optimization
To avoid it, you should use the best practices of anchor text optimization.
Here are some tips you should use for anchor text optimization for better SEO practices.
- Branded anchor text: 50%
- Naked links: 20%
- Generic anchors: 5%
- LSI, partial match anchors: 1-5%
- Exact match anchor text: 1-2%

FAQ
How to use anchors?
You can use anchors for short description of the link content.
How to create anchor text?
Type your anchor text between tags <a href= "site.com> and </a>
What is an anchor link?
An anchor link is a web page element that links to another location on the same page.
Why are link texts important for SEO?
Links are important for SEO because there is a direct connection between quality and quantity of links to your website and how much search traffic your site receives.
Wrapping up
Try to use them in a way that looks natural with the flow of content. Don't build dozens of links at once. Build one or two at a time, and move forward.
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