This comes up constantly in SEO discussions and I still don't think there's a clean consensus. So I want to hear what people are actually seeing in practice, not what the SEO blogs are saying.
The traditional advice was always keep your exact match anchor text low, maybe 1 to 3 percent of your profile, lean heavy on branded and naked URLs, sprinkle in generics, and you're safe. That framework made sense when Google was more mechanical about anchor text signals. The question is whether it still holds the same weight now or whether the algorithm has gotten sophisticated enough that the exact wording matters less than the context around the link.
My experience over the last year has been mixed. I've seen sites recover rankings using fairly aggressive exact match anchors from relevant placements without any visible penalty. I've also seen profiles with textbook natural anchor distributions that still aren't moving. So the anchor text alone clearly isn't the whole story.
What seems to matter more in my current testing is the topical relevance of the page the link is on. An exact match anchor from a page that's genuinely about the same topic as your target page seems to carry differently than the same anchor from a generic roundup post that covers 12 unrelated topics. Google appears to be reading the context window around the link more than the anchor text in isolation.
That said I'm not ready to say anchor text is irrelevant. It still feels like a risk multiplier. A bad anchor on a low quality placement probably does more damage than the same anchor on a legitimate editorial placement. And spammy anchor patterns at scale still seem to trigger something.
Curious what others are seeing. Are you still managing anchor ratios carefully or have you loosened up on it? And has anyone tested aggressive exact match anchors on newer sites recently and tracked what happened?
