Ahref's amazing case study on Anchor Text

https://ahrefs.com/blog/anchor-text/

Anchor text has been bothering me for a while. I over optimized many of my sites and probably under optimized some otheres, with anchor texts.

However, some of my sites have shitloads of PBN's links with only exact anchor links and are still #1 for their keywords, others are doing bad and nothing seems to be pushing it higher. All have great on-page and fresh original content.


What are your experiences with anchor text ratios? Exact match, phrase match, brand anchors, naked anchors and more. Have you noticed any correlations?

I hardcore brand anchor at first, like 95% brand at first, d0follow, nofollow, no cares, just brand name everywhere! A fricking press release about how awesome my brand is.

As time moves on, I start adding in naked anchors,and generic more.
I am all about branding though, like I'll plan a launch and have my texts, my colors, my everything"voice", everything mapped and planned out. Because people like brands, people trust brands. Google likes brands more and more, so give them a brand.

Listen to what @patriotnews said.

When I was doing SEO it was all branded links for 90% of my anchors, with generic anchor text, naked urls, partial match and exact match keywords in that order of most to least used. Worked great for me.

I have two sites which I had not built any exact anchors, all were branded ones, generic texts, naked urls. Total about 5xx. No ranks for 2 months after it showed in GSC. Then I added a bunch of keyword anchors (total 2xx) for 3 keywords and BOOM, they are now ranking for all 3 of them, with 1 in the top 3, 1 in the top 10, and the 3rd in the top 20. Competitors are authorities and some other sites optimized for those keywords. Almost all of them have brand as the top anchors.

Can someone explain why ThePornDude use 'Best Porn Sites' as exact match anchors on a large portion of sites without being over optimized?

Interesting read. But then how does this tie back to keyword research?

The whole point of writing content and link building is to rank for a specific search query?

So if we combine these 2 pieces of information:
1. "Topics > keywords" --> As mentioned by the author
2. Keyword stuffing of your content would get you penalized by Google.

Then how exactly are you supposed to rank for a specific search query .... confused af. Even if you were to say "Google ranks based on amounts of social shares". Yeah but what then would they be ranking you for?

Interested to hear what senior SEOs have to say.

patriotnews said:

I hardcore brand anchor at first, like 95% brand at first, d0follow, nofollow, no cares, just brand name everywhere! A fricking press release about how awesome my brand is.

As time moves on, I start adding in naked anchors,and generic more.
I am all about branding though, like I'll plan a launch and have my texts, my colors, my everything"voice", everything mapped and planned out. Because people like brands, people trust brands. Google likes brands more and more, so give them a brand.

Click to expand...

So branded anchors mostly eh?

affbull said:

Interesting read. But then how does this tie back to keyword research?

The whole point of writing content and link building is to rank for a specific search query?

So if we combine these 2 pieces of information:
1. "Topics > keywords" --> As mentioned by the author
2. Keyword stuffing of your content would get you penalized by Google.

Then how exactly are you supposed to rank for a specific search query .... confused af. Even if you were to say "Google ranks based on amounts of social shares". Yeah but what then would they be ranking you for?

Interested to hear what senior SEOs have to say.

Click to expand...

Instead of seeing it as "how to rank", I see it as "how to avoid being algorythmically penalised".

People who link naturally to your website rarely use your high volume, commercial intent keywords in the anchor text. So it is logical for Google to look for pages that have a higher than normal proportion of keyword rich anchors, and come to the conclusion that those links have not been gained naturally.

I believe Google is well beyond using anchor text as a primary indicator of subject. It might still to a small extent, but the limit of using anchor text is context. If the anchor text to a page is just "glasses", is the page about drinking glasses or spectacles? The way of determining that is to look at the page, not the anchor text profile.

You rank for a specific query by writing a page that is more about that query than any other, and then by having a site that is more authoritative than any other in that topic area.

A page that is more about a query than others is probably one that has a high TD-IF correlation to others about the subject, and that has good user signals for the user intention.

Having a site that is more authoritative is about the quantity and relevance of links to the page, but also to other pages on the site.

Last time I paid attention to social shares, Google has said that it doesn't use the quantity of social shares as a ranking factor. That is because they might be able to be gamed.

When it comes to the anchor text profile for a page, I think there is a threshold before Google judges whether the link profile is unnatural. If a page has just a few (say 5) links to it, there isn't statistically enough data to make a decision as to whether that profile is natural. So unless you're building large numbers of links to an inner page, it probably doesn't matter whether your anchor text is slightly unnatural. Remember that most pages on the web don't have any external links to them. If a product page has 30 links to it, its statistically unusual regardless of the anchor text profile.

I think Google also looks at the profile for the whole site as well in assessing site quality, rather than page quality. When referring to a site, most natural anchor text would be either the brand or a URL. Think about how you would refer to BHW in an article. If a site has an anchor text profile that doesn't have brand and URL featuring large, its probably an indicator that some of those links have not been gained naturally.

Lastly, I think there are varying degrees of penalty. Manual penalties are black and white - you're either assessed by a human as warranting a place in the index or not. But algorythmic penalties are dampeners. Google assesses lots of different factors to decide which page to rank where, and a possible unnatural anchor text profile is just one factor. Not only that, the probability that an anchor text profile is unnatural is a range.

I wouldn't overthink anchor text too much. Build a good foundation to your main pages that consist of brand and URLs. Then build a handful of keyword rich anchors to every page. Just make sure they are diverse and not all exact.

Unreliable Witness said:

I wouldn't overthink anchor text too much. Build a good foundation to your main pages that consist of brand and URLs. Then build a handful of keyword rich anchors to every page. Just make sure they are diverse and not all exact.

Click to expand...

Many thanks for the detailed replies!

Yes that makes sense. You seem to have alot of insights into the Google search process. May I know where you learned them?

Also, on the section I quoted above, so basically what you are saying is use a spread of anchors that were mentioned in the article? ie.

1. Exact Match: the anchor text is the exact keyword or phrase for which we want to rank.
2. Phrase Match: the anchor text contains the keyword phrase for which we want to rank.
3. Partial Match: the anchor text has all words in the query, but not as an exact phrase.
4. Branded: the anchor text is the name of our brand
5. Naked URL: the anchor text is the raw, ‘naked’ URL (i.e., as it would appear in a browser)
6. Random: the anchor text is an unspecific, generic phrase which does not include our target keyword (e.g., “click here,” “this site,” “this article,” etc.)

So... Make sure to use a mixture of matches in order to

1. rank for that phrase / keyword
2. not get penalised

Right?

You Can Rank Only With Brand And Nacked Anchors!

affbull said:

You seem to have alot of insights into the Google search process. May I know where you learned them?

Click to expand...

By reading many websites, including this one, and piecing together the knowledge. Because anyone can publish anything, you can't rely on any one article, but if you read enough, you'll find patterns.

Google seems to have many different tools, but many of them use the same principles. For example, Google Translate is predominantly mathematics based, not language based and (I believe) similar to Google Search when evaluating topical relevance. Google Ads uses many of the same principles as Google Search in terms of evaluating quality and relevance of content on a page.

When I wrote diverse, I meant using different combinations of words. I prefer to link with longer phrases of 3 to 5 words. They might contain the keyword, or they might contain a similar word, or nothing at all. A reasonable proportion of mine are ones such as "click here for more information". I try and think what I would do if linking to the page wasn't important to me (i.e. if I was an external writer). You could have a mix as you say above. I tend to avoid exact matches.

As @Jay Yadav says above, you can rank perfectly well with no risk of being penalised if you just use brand and naked URL anchor text. It might not be as optimal as it could be (who knows?), but its safe and easy to follow.

I have witnessed similar ranking (Brand/Persona/naked url/long tail keyphrase based) for my number 1 competitor. He is ranking 1 and his anchor text strategy is as mentioned above.

Another thing is he is ranking based on some profile BL and forum BL(may have hidden pbn) but still he tried everything to keep it as natural as possible and it worked for him(generating around 9k traffic for his niche site).

Apart from his anchor diversity and bl strategy, his site speed plays a vital role in his ranking i reckon (using vultr vps hosting).
96/89 in gtmeteix, mine is 100/95 though

Thanks for posting this; studies from ahrefs are always decent.

affbull said:

Interesting read. But then how does this tie back to keyword research?

The whole point of writing content and link building is to rank for a specific search query?

So if we combine these 2 pieces of information:
1. "Topics > keywords" --> As mentioned by the author
2. Keyword stuffing of your content would get you penalized by Google.

Then how exactly are you supposed to rank for a specific search query .... confused af. Even if you were to say "Google ranks based on amounts of social shares". Yeah but what then would they be ranking you for?

Interested to hear what senior SEOs have to say.

Click to expand...

Between the on page content and the backlink profile it doesn’t take much for google to know what the page is really about.

I think google probably looks at the entire data set as well - so imagine looking at the keyword density for “blue shoes” across the entire sum of sites targeting that keyword. Google probably has a perfect density that it will used, based on the average density across the board, for that particular keyword.

They probably also have a set of say 20 other keywords and terms that tend to be used quite regularly along with that term, and then an average usage of those related terms across all sites in the dataset, and again a perfect usage that they’re looking for based on the average.

So both on page and off page are about finding what google considers the perfect, for any particular keyword. Too little mention of the keyword and related terms, you don’t rank, too much and you also suffer.

TheVigilante said:

So branded anchors mostly eh?

Click to expand...

In my niche(s) brands dominate, so I build hardcore branding.

I kept using brand and generic keywords for a long time without any result. Then, I used Exact match anchors and it worked

So, just like he concluded in the article, no one has idea how anchors affect SEO

@Unreliable Witness and @patriotnews - Terrific content / comment, I have really appreciated the great information in this thread - so 'Brand' in anchor text for an eCommerce site, and indeed in general online marketing, and appreciating that the anchor text will be variable -

QUESTION: is the 'brand' used in conjunction with the primary keyword(s) for the search term that ranking is required (or simply in isolation), e.g. search term is 'Silver Earrings' and the brand is 'Stunners' then are the optimal anchor texts along the lines of 'Stunners Silver Earrings' - 'Earrings by Stunners' - 'Stunners Earrings' - 'Stunners' ??? and of course the search term specific exact match keywords in isolation also in the mix?

• I assume that then the 'brand' would need to be in the product meta-title / name and referred to in the description text?
• Domain Name - even if I have an EMD, which I do but cannot get past position #5, would it be advantageous to redirect that to a 'brandEMD' domain name, e.g. redirect SilverEarrings dotcom to StunnersSilverEarrings dotcom and push the 'brand' harder? i.e. will the brand name in the domain name be advantageous?

cheers,

Brand anchor is link to home page? not post page?

patriotnews said:

I hardcore brand anchor at first, like 95% brand at first, d0follow, nofollow, no cares, just brand name everywhere! A fricking press release about how awesome my brand is.

As time moves on, I start adding in naked anchors,and generic more.
I am all about branding though, like I'll plan a launch and have my texts, my colors, my everything"voice", everything mapped and planned out. Because people like brands, people trust brands. Google likes brands more and more, so give them a brand.

Click to expand...

I would listen to him. He knows what he is talking about. Branding->Naked Url->Generic Anchors->Keyword Anchors + Social Shares Works Best. Also it is much safer. I wouldn't suggest branding if your keyword is in the brand though. For example you have a site for running shoes. And your brand is Acme. Just use Acme. Don't use Acme Running Shoes. Try to get backlinks from high DA , high TF main page backlinks. Wait for 3-4 weeks you ll see a big jump on general. Also with branding you can add different keywords later and because of domain authority those keywords will start showing up in the serps too. PLUS much less risky.

shags38 said:

QUESTION: is the 'brand' used in conjunction with the primary keyword(s) for the search term that ranking is required (or simply in isolation), e.g. search term is 'Silver Earrings' and the brand is 'Stunners' then are the optimal anchor texts along the lines of 'Stunners Silver Earrings' - 'Earrings by Stunners' - 'Stunners Earrings' - 'Stunners' ??? and of course the search term specific exact match keywords in isolation also in the mix?

• I assume that then the 'brand' would need to be in the product meta-title / name and referred to in the description text?
• Domain Name - even if I have an EMD, which I do but cannot get past position #5, would it be advantageous to redirect that to a 'brandEMD' domain name, e.g. redirect SilverEarrings dotcom to StunnersSilverEarrings dotcom and push the 'brand' harder? i.e. will the brand name in the domain name be advantageous?

cheers,

Click to expand...

You're overthinking this. How would someone unconnected to your business link to you?

You'd use anchors that only contain your brand name "Stunners", and anchors that contain your brand name and other words. Those other words might be your keywords, but they might not.

Your anchor text profile isn't going to help you rank much more highly. If you've limited resources for SEO, working on acquiring any good link will help you far more than trying to perfect your anchor text profile.

Where your anchor text profile does become important is in avoiding over-optimisation dampening (Penguin). The easy solution to making sure this never affects you is not to use keywords at all in your external anchor text.

Your use of an EMD is unlikely to be reason why you're not ranking at number 1. You could redirect it to a new domain name (that may help), but its not going to be the magic bullet to ranking higher. You may need better content or more, stronger links to beat your competition.

hoangvinhcbvn said:

Brand anchor is link to home page? not post page?

Click to expand...

No. Brand anchor text is using your brand name in the anchor text of links. E.g. "IBM", "International Business Machines", or "IBM's cloud hosting service".

Its not about which page you're linking to.

Most brand anchor text will point to your home page, because that is the page that is most closely associated with your brand. But you might link to an article deep in a site using a brand anchor - for example, where you are being attributed as author of that article.