What is anchor text?

Backlinks have played an important role in Google’s search engine algorithm from the very beginning — so it’s no surprise that anchor text, which is an essential feature of any link, has also played an important role.

In Google’s early days, however, anchor text may have been regarded as too important. Prior to Google’s Penguin update, exact match anchor text was a tool that black hat SEOs often used to manipulate the Google search engine. By creating anchor text — both on- and off-site — that exactly matched the keyword they wanted to rank for, these SEOs could trick Google into presenting their pages as more relevant for a particular keyword or set of keywords than they actually were.

This trust in exact match keywords was remedied via the Penguin update, which improved the way links were weighed and factored into the search algorithm across the board. Following the Penguin update, many domains saw ranking penalties for relying too heavily on exact match anchor text. The New York Times even published an article about J.C. Penny’s abuse of anchor text and links — activities that the brand was later penalized for. Today, Google looks at anchor text for contextual clues about a page’s relevance, without placing too much weight in exact match anchor text.

Best Practices for Anchor Text

Like many search engine ranking factors, writing good anchor text is a delicate balancing act between providing a good user experience and practicing good SEO. However, unlike many other search engine ranking factors, it’s a balancing act that is sometimes in and sometimes out of your control.

We can control the anchor text that appears in the content that we write on our own domains and, sometimes, in the links that we build on other domains. However, when external domains link back to us, we don’t always have control over what they’re saying or the anchor text that they’re using. 

When you do have control over the anchor text you’re using, it’s good to:

• Use partial match anchor text. Partial match anchor text is an extremely effective way to indicate context. It’s a good idea to include partial matches to keywords and keyword phrases that you’d like to see the target pages ranking for. Too much exact match anchor text can read as stuffy, unnatural, or otherwise less than optimal depending on the context.
• Set expectations for the reader. Remember, search engines aren’t the only ones reading your anchor text. Good anchor text should give readers a clue about the kind of page that they’re clicking through to. Generic anchor text and naked links should be avoided. Branded anchor text is slightly better, but still not ideal. Ultimately, the anchor text that does a good job of informing readers should also do a good job of informing search engines.
• Mix it up. Often we find ourselves linking back to the same critical converting pages repeatedly. In general, this is a good thing to do. Links are a big signal of relevance that can build authority, and pages that get a lot of high-quality links are likely to perform well in search. However, don’t get caught using the exact same anchor text over and over again for these important pages. This leaves an impression of over-optimization, which is bad for SEO. Natural anchor text is varied, as are the pages and contexts in which links appear organically.
• Change what you can, accept what you can’t. When you write your own content or when you do your own link building, you can control (or at least influence) the anchor text that’s used to link back to your pages. However, when other people link to you, you often have to live with the anchor text you’re given. In these cases, it’s important to remember that links from high-quality domains are, in general, a good thing. Even if they don’t use exactly the anchor text that you’d like, it’s important to appreciate good links when they pop up. Again, natural backlink profiles are varied, and that means diverse anchor text and context.

Write anchor text that informs your readers and answers user questions. If you do this, you are already on the way to creating anchor text that will help you to rank for the most high-value keywords as well