Thread by @I___DEREKflint

An Anchor Text User Guide: What It Is, SEO Best Practices, and Strategic Uses [Thread 🧵]

Important note: For the sake of clarity I'm going to say some things without added nuance - take advice about things in SEO with large grains of salt - even from your favorite creators.

When you first learn about SEO, you’ll be forced to read all the beginner blogs that discuss the two pillars of search engine optimization - Links (backlinks) and Keywords.

In this post, we’re going to focus on an aspect of optimization and UX that combines both: Anchor Text.

Anchor text refers to the specific words that are hyperlinked on a webpage in order to direct a user to another piece of content.

This text should be optimized in order to give search engines and users context on what they can find on the page they’ll be directed to.

Some common anchor text types include:

✅ exact-match keyword anchor text
✅ partial match text
✅ branded link text
✅ naked links
✅ generic or random
✅ alt attributes for images
✅ jump links for site links

Important: With a user-first mission, Google has always prioritized the ability to remove what it considers “spam or spammy” from ranking competitively.

They’ve by no means created a perfect system, but they have taken steps over the last two decades to prevent people...

...particularly malicious companies and marketers, from over-optimizing via unnaturally acquiring links from other websites.

And while we could drone on about the history of the Penguin update since 2012, here is the short version.

In the earlier days of Google, using exact-match anchor text for all of your links would likely deliver you your keyword and a great way to rank your content.

On top of that, those links didn’t even need to come from relevant pages with similar topics.

If you had a blog post about glue, you could find a way to throw on 20 or 30 links about elephants, fireworks, or any other content you wanted.

That blog post about glue would then help these irrelevant posts rank.

Because Google was weighting those links so heavily, the industry saw a plethora of bad-faith link-building practices such as purchasing irrelevant placement of links, the creation of websites just to place links on the pages, etc.

Thus Google’s Penguin algorithm was introduced.

And with each update of Penguin has come an emphasis on the relevance of page topics for those content pieces linking to one another, natural link building, etc.

(Quite honestly, I'm not a follower of all algorithm news so I don't know the state of Penguin anymore.)

So let's get into some practicalities around using anchor text.

1️⃣ Start by using anchor text in the first place

It sounds too simple, but you’d be amazed how many websites simply aren’t using internal links and anchor text at all.

Go back through your site(s) and make sure your blogs, videos, products, services, etc. are utilizing various forms of anchor text to help users get to relevant pages and to pass along link equity.

2️⃣ Use “succinct” anchor text

The word “succinct” can be read - “as long as it needs to be”

Good advice is to provide any phrase that can offer insight into what is on the other side of the link. It could be a single word or a variation of a longtail keyword.

Examples:

If you were writing a post about the history of the Penguin algorithm and its many updates, any of the following would be perfectly appropriate, natural anchor texts:

✸ Penguin algorithm updates
✸ History of Google’s Penguin algorithm

✸ How Google regulates spam via its Penguin algorithm’s ability to interpret natural linking
✸ Penguin algorithm updates since 2012

4️⃣ Target page topic relevance

Anchor text needs to be relevant in order to be effective.

As Google indexes and understands your content, sections of your site, individual paragraphs, and short phrases, you should use all of these to help users and bots alike understand how pages and sections relate to one another.

And this means being relevant in several ways:

✸ The entire page - The overall topic and intent of the two articles being linked together should somehow be relevant to one another.

✸ The section or paragraph - The paragraph your anchor text/link are placed in should give Google and the reader a better sense of relevance

✸ The anchor text - The keyword phrase or variation of the keyword phrase within your anchor text should be relevant to the piece of content you’re linking to.

5️⃣ Mix up your anchor text approach for a natural distribution ratio

This is semi-controversial - but the point is - don't use your exact keyword to link to the page you want to rank for that keyword for every single link - it looks suspicious.

Something I've seen on the internet from legitimate sources: Loose rules and anchor text ratios - likely wildly inaccurate BUT the attempt is to give you some type of framework to wrap your head around.

Like all things in search engine optimization...

...the ideal ratio depends on your competition, your business niche, and your best estimates based on case studies since Google isn’t giving out that information.

A commonly proposed anchor text ratio:

✸ Brand text: ~30 - 50%‍

✸ Keyword-rich anchors (Topic Relevant): ~15 - 20% with only 1 - 9% being exact-match keyword targets‍

✸ Naked URLs: 15 - 20%‍

✸ Generic and Random: 15 - 20%

It’s worth noting that anchor text is both a part of internal and external linking.

This means that your website is likely attracting links and anchor text from a lot of different sources that are out of your control. And a lot of external links will assign your site naked or raw URLs as well as brand-centric anchor texts.

That’s why, generally speaking, without too much effort on your part, you'll likely maintain a natural distribution of anchor text types even if you aggressively target topical keyword phrases on internal links.

6️⃣ Add “exact title matching” anchors or “parent to child page” navigation menus

Instead of always relying on a large body of text and descriptions in order to link your pillar posts to the clusters pages and vice versa, there are occasions when it might be more useful to...

...implement a sidebar navigation tool that takes advantage of targeted anchor text.

A great example of this comes from the parent page by a Michigan law firm, Buckfire Law

That has individual pages for each type of accident case type that they handle.

The pillar post in the image below is targeted toward car accident lawyers.

Along the right side of the post, they have a sticky navigation bar that uses descriptive anchor text to indicate types of car accidents that a reader might want to learn more about.

Some SEOs take advantage of exact title matching anchor text.

Instead of utilizing an anchor text that works through your paragraphs naturally, you might simply end a specific section with a CTA hyperlink of the other page’s exact title.

Some SEO professionals swear by this technique, implying that exact title anchor text matching seems to at least correlate with higher rankings via relevant intent matching.

TL:DR use linked text in a way that clues the reader into what they're about to read in a way that they are drawn to the link.

For a more thorough take of the above thread - take a look at this helpful post:

tenspeed.io/blog/what-is-a…

For more SEO and content marketing threads, please feel free to follow me here @I___DEREKflint

And if you found this thread helpful, feel free to give it an RT for reach