Anchor text is not a customized Etsy service for engraving sailors’ anchors with personalized messages. It’s the clickable text in a hyperlink.
Technically speaking, it’s the text within the <a> tag in HTML code. But it shows up on your website as clickable text.
At first glance, it may not seem like anchor text plays a big role in SEO—but think again. Search engines use anchor text when ranking your site, and humans like you use it to decide if they actually want to click through to the next page.
That’s why the team at Profit Engine pays close attention to anchor text when crafting link-building strategies for clients.
But happily for you, we’re not selfish—we want to share the basics with you so you can DIY it if needed.
As with many non-technical SEO matters, anchor text serves search engines and users. Search engines use it to find their way around your site, Google uses it as a ranking factor, and users need it to know what’s on the other side of the link and whether they should click.
The big benefit of good anchor text?
It boosts your SEO for the keywords the anchor text and linked page are targeting, leading to more visibility in the search engines.
Good anchor text tells search engines what the page on the other side of the link is about—so if you’re trying to rank for a particular keyword in Google search, you want that in the anchor text (assuming you’re being honest and the linked page is actually relevant, of course).
Content relevance refers to how well a page’s content matches up to the search query that pulled it up. Anchor text helps you convey what the content on the following page is about, establishing that content's relevance before a user even clicks through.
For instance, this very article is “The Ultimate Guide To Anchor Text.” If we wanted to secure a backlink from a big SEO publication, we’d strive for the anchor text to say something like “ultimate guide to anchor text” or “complete anchor text guide.”
That way, search engines will know what our article is about before crawling the link. Then, when they do crawl it, they see the content matches the internal link. That’s great for us. Plus, readers (like yourself) who want to learn about anchor text will click through and—whaddya know—actually get what they’re looking for.
Search engines are always advancing. They have shifted a bit from weighing anchor text so heavily as an SEO metric, but anchor text is still important for link-building strategies.
Search engines pay attention to the frequency and diversity of anchor text on backlinking pages, as well as the backlinking site itself. Things need to look natural and come from high-quality sites.
There’s brand recognition, too. Branded anchor text (covered later) gets your name in front of users and tells the search engines your brand is worth potentially ranking.
What all of this means is that proper anchor text is a key piece of any larger link-building strategy.
Anchor text is just as important for your internal (that is, between your website’s own pages) link-building efforts too. The right anchor text gives your readers a better idea of what’s on the next page and encourages them to click through if it’s relevant.
This means users will stay on your site longer and visit more of your pages, boosting each page’s SEO and the site’s overall SEO.
Oh, and the same applies to search engines. Once again, more relevant anchor text makes it easier for Google and others to get around your site. If you have a new page, a few internal links with good anchor text can get it indexed and ranked in a jiffy.
Anchor text can be categorized into different types, and the type you use really matters.
Each type of anchor text offers different benefits and drawbacks, suiting them each to different uses.
Exact match anchor text is exactly what it sounds like—it perfectly matches the content you’re linking to.
For example, say you’re linking to an article called “Best Laptops for College Students.” Your anchor text would be, well, “best laptops for college students.”
Exact match anchor text works great when linking to pages that cover broad topics, with short titles. But the longer tail you get, the harder it becomes to sound natural.
For example, it takes some work to fit “best digital marketing strategies for accounting firms in 2023” into a blog post without it sounding a little forced. Do this too many times, and search engines get upset.
So exact match anchor text is best used sparingly and only where it feels natural.
A rare exception to the above statement is link roundup posts. In these cases, the anchor text for each link will be the exact title of the articles linked, with no exceptions.
Pros of exact-match anchor text:
Optimized for the keyword: If your anchor text matches a search keyword exactly, that link will bring more SEO juice to your site.
Clear relevance: The reader knows what they’re getting on the other side of the link. Same with search engines.
Cons of exact-match anchor text:
Over-optimization risk: Over-optimization can make your content less appealing to viewers and search engines… hurting your SEO in the long run.
Can feel unnatural: As mentioned, exact match anchor text can look odd to the human eye and give your page a certain scammy look—especially for longer keyphrases.
Lack of backlink diversity: If you’re too strict with backlinking sites about the anchor text that leads to your content, they might not be willing to give you a backlink. After all, they want their readers to have a good experience, and rigidly adhering to exact-match anchor text doesn’t always help with that.
Partial match anchor text uses a portion, but not all, of the linked content in the clickable piece of the hyperlink.
Partial match anchor text might consist of synonyms, additional words, and variations of words.
Returning to our laptop example: Say you’re linking to an article called “best laptops for gaming.”
Examples of partial match anchor text include:
“best gaming laptops”
“top laptops for gaming”
“best laptops for multiplayer games.”
Notice how they all contain one or two words from the exact title of the article, but add extra words or switch out particular words for synonyms. This lets you keep a lot of the contextual relevance while adding variety and having more freedom to make the anchor text feel natural.
Partial match anchor text can work well for earning backlinks through link insertions since you can mold the anchor text as needed while still retaining the most important elements of the actual page title.
Pros of partial match anchor text:
Content versatility: The flexibility in partial match anchor text gives you more options when writing the surrounding content and the content the link points to.
Less risk of over-optimization: Search engines are less likely to see partial match anchor text as manipulative, thanks to the varied language.
Better natural feel: Partial match anchor text offers more creative room, making it easier to work into the surrounding text without sounding weird or scammy.
Cons of partial match anchor text:
Lost keyword targeting: Without an exact match, the anchor text won’t be as powerful for increasing keyword-search ranking.
Can take effort to craft: Exact match anchor text is just copy + paste. No match anchor text (discussed next) lets you use whatever words you want. Partial match anchor text, being in the middle, is more restrictive. You must keep certain pieces of the linked pages title while changing others, all without losing the overall meaning.
Can still feel slightly unnatural: In some rare cases, you may need to reword the surrounding content to fit a partial match link in—but not nearly to the same extent you’ll need for exact match anchor text.
No match anchor text, also called “generic” anchor text, has little-to-no elements of the keyword or phrase. It’s a much more natural and often general description of what’s on the other side of the link.
For example, say the page you’re linking to is titled “digital marketing strategies.” No match anchor text for this keyword might be “the best ways to promote your business online.”
It’s relevant to the page title and, if the page was written the right way, the content as well. But it has none of the words in the target keyphrase.
Pros of no match anchor text:
Curiosity-provoking: Depending on the linked content, you can pique the reader’s interest with ease. Being just descriptive enough to hint at what’s on the other side while also being a bit vague can result in plenty of clicks.
Maximum flexibility: You have a lot of creative room here. You might even accidentally end up ranking for unexpected search keywords, which can’t really hurt.
User-friendly: No match anchor text feels natural to readers, letting you convey what topic the linked page covers without sounding scammy at all.
Cons of no match anchor text:
Less targeted: You will likely give up some keyword optimization and SEO juice by leaving out all pieces of the linked page’s title.
Risk of excessive vagueness: Flexibility is nice, but if you’re too vague or confusing, your reader won’t click. This is arguably not even a con, however, since it’s entirely preventable.
Heavier reliance on surrounding content: When the anchor text is not as descriptive or targeted, readers and search engines lean heavily on surrounding content for context. Poorly written content can lead to fewer clicks and worse SEO.
Branded anchor text, as the name implies, includes the linked website’s brand name in the hyperlinked text. The anchor text can be only the brand name, or contain the brand name and other words.
Branded anchor text is usually used when internally linking—especially in blog posts when you are urging the reader to buy from you. They can also be used in backlinking if, for example, the backlinking site is citing you as a source or giving your site a shoutout.
Here are some examples for us at Profit Engine:
“Boost your SEO with Profit Engine’s niche edit services”
“According to Profit Engine,” + claim we make in an article
In all cases, we included our brand name in the anchor text. But beyond that, we ensured the pages on the other side were as relevant as possible to the additional anchor text.
For example, the first anchor text just links to our home page. The latter links to our niche edits service page rather than just the home page. The third one might link to an article where we explain a concept in more detail.
Pros of branded anchor text:
Reader trust: If your brand name is mentioned positively in a backlink on an authoritative website, the user will immediately trust your site.
Authority signaling to search engines: If your brand name is in an authoritative backlink, it tells search engines that your brand and site are worth listening to. Thus, your brand could see an overall SEO boost.
Helps with calls to action: Brand-focused anchor text can better urge readers to book a call, buy from you, sign up for a free trial, or take some other action that accomplishes business objectives.
Cons of branded anchor text:
Can look “salesy”: Overusing this anchor text type can turn readers off. You don’t need to use your brand name every time you internally link—even if you are linking to services pages throughout an article.
May miss out on other keywords: Branded anchor text limits opportunities to capitalize on other keywords.
Missing context: Branded anchor text can leave out helpful context. For example, just using your brand name without content-related keywords might not be enough to get the reader to click or to take action on the next page.
Brand name variations: Confusion can occur if your brand has a more complex name or a name spelled similarly to other brands. For example, if your brand is accidentally spelled like another, you could incur a double-whammy: miss out on SEO and confuse users. Meanwhile, that other brand will unintentionally “steal” a bit of that SEO benefit.
A naked URL, or bare URL, is just the full, unedited URL of the target page with a hyperlink.
For example, if we used a naked URL to sell you on our AI link protocol (which we’re, ahem, totally not trying to do), here’s how that would look:
https://www.myprofitengine.com/ai-link-protocol
That’s the exact URL for our page where you can hire us to produce an AI-driven link strategy report.
We know: those blue hyperlinks look hopelessly “1990s.” But there are some scenarios where naked URLs make sense, believe it or not—but they’re usually never a good idea for SEO purposes.
For example, if you have a company intranet and your employees are familiar with internal documents, posting a naked URL may just be easier.
Pros of naked URLs:
Increased trust in certain circumstances: If users can see the exact URL, they’ll usually be able to tell what’s on the other side and ensure it’s not a virus.
Convenience, convenience, convenience: Like the example we mentioned above, using a naked URL instead of anchor text could save you around 30 seconds. That sounds like a joke—but if you’re sending hundreds of links, that could be the difference between eating and skipping lunch.
Cons of naked URLs:
Less SEO: Search engines rely on descriptive anchor text, so a naked URL will reduce the SEO value. The surrounding context may help a bit, but it would be better if the anchor text itself were descriptive.
Less context: Although a naked URL tells you what page is on the other side, it’s not always descriptive of what that page contains. For example, if we just drop the Profit Engine home page URL in here, you might not know what we do if you have never heard of us.
Looks messy: Naked URLs look messy. They can even look quite a bit scammy to some users at a glance due to the cluttered look with slashes, punctuation, and other URL elements. They’re generally not suited for public-facing things like articles and blog posts.
On its face, anchor text seems pretty simple. How much could there possibly be to learn about the words used for a link? But it turns out that a decent amount of work does go into it—at least, if you want to get the most SEO power possible.
This seems obvious, and we’ve already covered it a bit in the section about exact match anchor text.
First and foremost, the anchor text must be relevant to the content its link is pointing to. This will help the search engines crawl the page and rank it correctly. Oh, and it’ll help not just more users, but the right users click through to that page.
This doesn’t mean you should always just use exact match anchor text, however. To get the most SEO bang for your buck, you’ll want to balance your target search keywords (what you want users to be searching for when they find your article) with the linked page’s actual content.
But ensure the content surrounding the link is also relevant, so it doesn’t feel forced in or misleading. This will help you avoid over-optimization, which can hurt you in the search engines and reduce reader trust.
Link building tools can help automate parts of this process, increasing link SEO while also saving you time.
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Relevance to the linked content is crucial, but you can’t use the same anchor text over and over again. You have to mix things up to avoid search engine algorithm penalties.
Plus, it’ll let you make more informative anchor text. The right users—those who will buy or take whatever action you want them to—will be more likely to click through.
Oh, and like we mentioned earlier, having a diverse mix of anchor text types could unintentionally grab you rankings for some other keywords you didn’t even think about.
For example, let’s say you sell hiking-related items. You have an article called “The best hiking boots in 2023.”
You want “the best hiking boots in 2023”—the exact match—in there somewhere. That could come from another article on your blog, via an internal link. But you’ll also want other types of anchor text, primarily:
Partial Match: "Some of the top hiking footwear.” This could be dropped somewhere in another website’s article, worked in naturally with surrounding content.
Branded: "Visit OutdoorStore for tough, well-built hiking boots." This could be in the conclusion section of another website’s article, or even your own, as a call to action.
Where you place anchor text and how often you use links matter a lot too. Say you’re placing backlinks on other websites to increase keyword search rankings. You’ll have to nail all your keywords in your anchor text, while also spacing them out appropriately and not going overboard.
Getting the spacing right makes the page look neater, enhancing readability for users. It also, again, reduces the chance that things will look scammy or link farm-esque.
This might involve moving content around a bit—but don’t sacrifice the logical order of the page’s content just for backlinks. Helpfulness to the reader is paramount as well.
Finally, anchor text typos can, at best, net you no SEO boost. But at worst, they can incur search engine penalties and anger users. So be careful and pay attention to the details when writing your anchor text. And when in doubt, proofread it again.
Instead of harping excessively on what to do to optimize anchor text, sometimes it helps to go over what not to do.
The first mistake on our list is a common one.
Keyword stuffing is the practice of jamming in far too many of the same keywords or phrases to try and game Google’s search engine into giving you higher rankings.
In the internet’s distant past, this actually worked. But search engines are privy to this now and will penalize you for doing it. Users won’t like it either.
Be careful though—it’s hard, but not impossible, to accidentally keyword stuff. Here are a few ways to avoid keyword stuffing, accidental or intentional:
Write for the reader first: Make sure the content and anchor text is helpful first and foremost. Search engines are more advanced than they used to be and they prioritize the helpfulness and descriptiveness of the anchor text. Writing for the reader will generally result in more diverse and natural-sounding anchor text.
Review anchor text keywords: Look over your anchor text before publishing and use your best judgment to see if keywords appear excessively. Automated SEO tools can also help find and fix potential keyword stuffing issues.
Avoid getting backlinks from spammy sites: This one is a no-brainer, but don’t rely on scammy or low-quality sites. High-quality domains will naturally avoid keyword stuffing, so seek these out if you’re not the one manually writing the anchor text.
Even if you don’t keyword stuff, you’ll miss out on the full benefits of your linking strategy if you ignore user experience overall. A lack of clear, compelling, and relevant anchor text will lose a lot of that referral traffic.
For the page that contains your anchor text, link placement is paramount. Cramming too many backlinks together looks scammy and unattractive. It also distracts the reader and prevents them from getting the full value out of the article in which your links are placed. That can lead to analysis paralysis.
You must optimize for all devices, too, since so many people search on mobile these days. Long anchor text might spill into a second line of text, making it a little harder to read.
But further, the page the anchor text is linking to (your page) needs to grab attention right away. It obviously can’t be clickbait, or users will bounce immediately in frustration after landing on a page that has nothing to do with the anchor text they clicked. But on the other hand, it can’t just be relevant. You could link to the most relevant content ever written, but if it doesn’t actually interest the user, all that work with the anchor text will end up being fruitless.
The first thing the user sees on the linked page needs to grab their attention and keep them on the page. So you might have to play with the hero image, page title/headline, and other elements above the fold on the linked page.
Anchor text doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can target all the right keywords with a variety of anchor text types, but you’ll still get hit with a penalty if the sites containing the links have low domain authority.
And you won’t get a lot of great user traffic like this, either—the users you want generally aren’t surfing those types of low-quality sites.
All that to say, anchor text is part of a larger link-building strategy, not its own separate thing. So you should start by auditing your backlink profile and investigating irrelevant links, many of which will probably be low quality. Use the built-in “disavow” tools that search engines provide to disassociate your site from these sites.
Then, you have to actively start building links from high-quality sites in your niche. Build relationships with these sites before securing backlinks from them for the best results.
A few links from these types of sites will pack more punch than tons of low-quality links from sites that engage in keyword stuffing.
Content tends to change in nature over time. If the anchor text linking to that page doesn’t change accordingly, it could mislead users.
This will have the same effect as clickbait. Users who click through might leave more quickly, increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time, thereby hurting SEO. You’ll also lose trust among readers, depending on the link and content.
Not to mention the search engines themselves will see a misalignment of anchor text and linked content, which is never a good thing.
Here are a few ways to fix this:
Regular audits: Audit your content regularly. Stay on top of each page’s links and associated anchor texts that point to each page. If you notice any content changes during your audit, check on the anchor text for each link and make any changes if necessary.
Monitor reader feedback: Watch for feedback about the link and the linked page. Readers might inadvertently alert you to outdated anchor text.
Watch analytics: Look for sudden drops in page traffic and dwell time or sudden jumps in bounce rates, as anchor text could be a factor.
Despite constant changes in search engine algorithms and the huge number of SEO elements, anchor text is still crucial to rankings and user experience.
Getting it right is a delicate balance of knocking out all your target keywords and making the anchor text fit naturally into the content… while ensuring it's relevant to the linked page’s subject matter. Luckily, there are several types of anchor text to suit different situations when you’re building links.
So nailing your anchor text for just one single post is more work than it appears on the surface—let alone when you need to do it for hundreds of articles.
And then there are the other elements of successful link building, which include… well, we’ll save that for another article.
The good news for you is that Profit Engine is here to take all of this off your plate. With cutting-edge AI software, we’ll handle it all, including writing your anchor text.
Contact us today for a free, no-pressure consultation.
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