What is Anchor Text? How to optimize Anchor Text Profile in 2020?

Here in this Article you will learn all about the Anchor Text.

Before going towards the understanding about the Anchor Text, let it discuss in details so that if you are a beginner, then you will also happy to read this simple Anchor Text guide.

Actually I am an average student of all time and just like me there are so many others who are searching easy guides of SEO, that’s why I am bringing the information in easy way of understanding. SO that everybody who read my article can easily understand what he/she is looking for.

What is Anchor Text?-

Anchor text is basically a clickable text highlighted in different color to identify that it is a special word which has its own identity; different color is indication to reader that it is a clickable element.

A Short History of Anchor Text-

So lets get started from our childhood where we use to see the bold text in our course books which shows that the bold text is containing something special to get attention with more information.

There were some books which have the references to know more about the Anchor Text (Bold Text).

e.g. Like  Anchor Text ( You will get the detailed info about the highlighted text on xyz page).

So in short, at my early age of life I was introduced with these kinds of Anchor Texts which were not actually clickable or hyper text but some page reference was mentioned there to get the detailed info about the highlighted bold text.

Now in modern era where generations have moved to computer laptops and now on smart phones and bold text are now called Anchor Text.

So now its a time to know how this term modernize and become Anchor Text.

So at online platform, the bold terms which is highlighted given a hyperlink(clickable element) to it, so that if anyone want more information about that particular highlighted text, can click on that an land on the different page with the detailed information about the bold text which has been clicked.

Here is how to write Anchor Text in HTML

<a href=”http://www.abc.com/”>Top website</a>

Here green highlighted text is the destination page for Anchor “Top website” which is highlighted blue.

This is a html code for anchor text which has to be write of the page backend to put the anchor text

Here on the page you will only see the blue highlighted text” Top website” when you see the page. Which is clickable text and once you click on the text you will land to green highlighted url for deep information about the blue text.

This Anchor text is basically a backlink for the green highlighted URL.

What is the history of Anchor text in Google Rankings?

Before 2011, when Google bots are not as smart as now, the keyword rich anchor texts are the key to get the higher rankings in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).

But As I am expecting you all aware of about a Google update called “Penguin” launched in April 2012.

This was the first big algorithm update from Google and rankings got wrecked who were using the keyword rich anchor text.

Now here is the question arises-

What is keyword rich Anchor Text?

Keyword rich Anchor Text is like putting exact match of queries in Anchor text to get ranking on a particular exact match query.

Google considered this as a black hat trick to get rankings as this was not serving the users intention to search a particular term and users were not getting correct response from the results.

After that lots of other algorithm introduced by Google to serve the more convenient results for a user intent.

And from here started the journey to understand the logic behind the Google’s intent to about the legitimate content.

If you want to know about the type of keywords or what is keyword then you can click on the below link to know more about Keywords

Click here: What is keyword?

Here there are lots of theories has been introduced about the use of Anchor Text on which I will let you know what is the Anchor Text Profiling in SEO and how to work in right direction to place right Anchor Text at right place.

Before proceeding to Anchor text profile for legitimate SEO practice lets have a look of the type of Anchor Text below, wherein I would like to tell you how much type of Anchor texts are there and how much they impact your SEO strategy.

Types of Anchor Text

1. Branded Anchor Text
2. Nacked Anchor Text
3. Exact match Anchor Text
4. Partial match Anchor Text
5. LSI Anchor Text
6. Generic Anchor Text
7. Image Anchor Text

As per my research on the internet, I could find these 7 types of Anchor Text and their combination where most of the site owners usually work.

So let’s start exploring each one of this Anchor Text.

1. Branded Anchor Text: As the text itself defining that these Anchor Texts are based on the brand name, like this is your product or company name which is used as a Anchor Text

Example: Adidas Company, Adidas Sports etc.

2. Naked Anchor Text: This is refers to the exact domain URL where direct link of your website is given as an Anchor Text.

Example: www.abc.com

3. Exact Match Anchor Text: Here this kind of anchor texts are put on the exact keywords to get the visibility on a particular search term.

Example: Sports Shoes Price

4. Partial Match Anchor Text: Partial match anchors are similar to keyword variations; here in these kind of Anchors, a generic term is added around the primary or exact keyword phrase.

Example: White sports shoes price, cheap sports shoes price

5. LSI Anchor Text: LSI is stand for Latent Symantec Indexing, here in this segment a variety of phrases around the exact match Anchor Text appears which increases the chances of ranking a page in SERP with more relative phrases.

Example: Main Keyword: Anchor Text

LSI keywords: What is Anchor Text, Anchor Text in HTML, Anchor Text SEO, Anchor Text profile, anchor text in word press,  anchor text backlink, anchor text generator, anchor text definition, anchor text optimization etc.

6. Generic Anchor Text: Generic Anchors are the basic anchors which have no relation with any kind of keyword, however these anchors are indicators for CTA (Call to Action). Which compel users to take an action.

Example: Click here, Read More, Learn More etc. 

7. Image Anchor Text: This is interesting where Google consider the image alt text as an anchor as this is very important to provide a valid anchor to all the image you are using on the internet for your website as some time internet connection speed is not good in many of the areas where Google shows the image text for the image which is not able to load, so that a user can understand the intent of the image and this is also the benefit for Anchor Text SEO.

So I hope now you guys have clear about the Anchor Text, now I will tell you the anchor text distribution process.

Anchor Text Profile or Distribution:

This is the very important aspect of Anchor Text, as anchor text profiling is the main thing which you need to focus, this is very important to understand the anchor text profiling and distribute it over the internet as per the standard guidelines.

So here I will show you how you can distribute the anchor text which can help you grow your Google rankings.

Here is the list of safe Anchor text profile

1. Branded Anchors = 50%
2. Naked Links Anchors = 20%
3. LSI Anchors = 5-10%
4. Brand + Keyword Anchors = 5%
5. Partial Match Anchors = 1- 5%
6. Generic Anchors = 1-5%
7. Long Tail Anchors= 1-5%
8. Exact match Anchors = <1%

How to optimize your Anchor text strategy for your business:

How to rank with less backlinks when you are a newbie?

Phase 1.

If you have started a new business and wondering about going with exact match anchors?

You have no worry about going with exact match keyword in initial state of your website as this will help search engine to know what your business is all about.

But make sure you didn’t over optimize your anchor text profile by just putting a keyword rich anchors serving with thin content which is nowhere putting value to the users.

As search engines are all about the user intent, thus keep in mind about the user intent and serve the engaging content to the users with your target keywords initially.

Phase 2.

Use another Variation of Anchor Texts-

You should use your brand name rich anchors, with other relative terms; initially you should go with long tail keyword rich anchors to get rankings for low competitions keywords.

As it is very hard to get the immediate rankings for which you need to wait for at least 3-4 months but you should continuously build the quality backlinks with Long tail keywords which are having less search volume, but at least if you will appear for these anchors, you will start getting traffic from search engines which is well enough to motivate yourself for more hard work in right direction.

Phase 3.

Track your rankings and monitor progress

You will get the output of your work within 2-3 months, I am sure your page should rank for some low competitive anchors and you will start getting users, if it is not the case, reaccess your website and build more backlinks.

Altogether these could also be the potential reasons which are obstacle in your ranking which you should check and resolve:

• Site content isn’t strong enough
• Very less backlinks on the target page
• Low quality backlinks
• Poor page structure
• Poor Page speed
• Bad on page structure

Where to place anchor text?

• Anchor text placement is as crucial as the anchor text itself, see anchor text placement should be user friendly, do not try to put your anchor text on a very first paragraph of your content, it looks spamy sometime.

Niche relevant websites:

• When you are putting your anchor text to niche website, try to put the anchor in the body part with keyword rich anchor.
• It will be good to go with keyword rich anchor when you are getting an opportunity to place an anchor in body part.
• There are many websites, which are not allowing you to put the anchor in body part whereas they offer you the backlink from the Author bio.
• If you are putting a link in Author bio, then try to put branded keyword over there rather going with keyword rich anchor.

Blog Commenting:

• You can also get the opportunity to take backlinks from blog commenting, please note if you want to get your comment approve, then put your brand name in the name section and try to comment on relevant sites, so that your chances of approval can increase. Try to put your thoughts on the blog and make it easier to make understand the author of the blog, try to put question, so the author could see and give the answer of your query.
• Does not always comment on blogs like, nice blog, very good article, keep rocking etc.
• This kind of language compel the author to avoid your comment to be approved as the author can understand the Moto behind these kind of comments where your intentions are clearly visible to take the backlink from the comment section.
• If comment section allowing the html, then put your keyword rich anchor in the body of the comment with relevant words limit of 50-100 words.

Profile Creation, Business citations, Press Release, Business Directories:

• When you are opting for these types of websites then go with your branded anchor with home page link, or use naked URL to take backlinks from these websites.

Does Google Algorithm will impact the Anchor text profile in 2020?

Google has recently released a broad core algorithm update called “BERT”, and the impact is visible for many of the websites where Google bots are upgraded to understand natural language process to provide more relevant results to the user.

This broad core update impacted lots of websites negatively and there is huge impact on rankings as well.

However nobody has suggested to work on any direction to overcome from the update, but I would recommend to add natural anchor texts in your upcoming projects to understand the user intent more effectively.

Just try to put users queries as anchor, it can be long tail but you should keep these queries to your anchor profiling more often as upcoming era in search will be voice based where Search engines have to work upon the voice based queries, and the latest Google update is indicating the same with this broad core update.

Final Words:

Anchor text is crucial for best SEO efforts, wherein putting best Achor text profile will lead your web pages to rank on top on the SERP.

Please make a note, just try to make user friendly content with user query and their solution rather than just writing a keyword stuffed content.

Your solutions towards a question will help a user, don’t write for search engine, write for your user in an conversational manner, so that a user can engage with your content naturally.

Google loves to rank your webpages in a natural way. Any black hat technique can help you for a short but harm you for a long time.

Do not try to make Google fool, as the current search engines are smart enough to read your intent, as they are working on AI( Artificial Intelligence) and further updates will make these ranking process more complicated.

So be genuine and provide a healthy content to the users.

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