 |
Anchor text is an important element that “unlocks” every link’s potential — to the extent that Google had to roll out its first Penguin update in 2012, cutting tried-and-true anchor text over-optimization methods out of the picture.
Over the past five years, the best practices of anchor text optimization have considerably evolved. It is time to learn how anchor text best practices can allow you to get the most out of links in 2018.
Anchor text and Google Penguin
The release of Penguin 1.0 in April, 2012 shook up the SERPs, affecting around 3% of all search queries in English, German, Chinese, Arabic, and other popular languages. Since then, there have been at least five major Google Penguin updates:
Penguin 1.1 — May, 2012
Penguin 1.2 — October, 2012
Penguin 2.0 — May, 2013
Penguin 2.1 — October, 2013
Penguin 3.0 — October, 2014
Penguin 4.0 — September, 2016
Since Google releases its Penguin updates periodically, some SEO professionals and marketers take advantage of the gaps, pushing up SERPs with gray-hat anchor text practices (e.g. targeted anchor texts, lower-quality link-building), and then get penalized for doing so.
When it comes to the relationship between anchor texts and Google Penguin updates, the rule of thumb is simple: Follow Google’s guidelines and avoid trying to hack the system by using overly aggressive anchor text practices. Sooner or later, Google will come up with a new update, which will negatively affect SERPs.
Major anchor text categories
Before providing specific tips on anchor text optimization, let’s recap the major categories of anchor text:
Branded — your brand name with a link placed on it (e.g. Essays-shark)
Naked URL — your site’s URL with the link it is pointing to (e.g. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://essays-shark(dot">https://essays-shark(dot</a><!-- m -->)net/)
Website Name — your site’s URL with the anchor text written as “YourWebsite.com” (e.g. essays-shark.net)
Page/Blog Post Title — a page’s title anchor text with a link on it (e.g. Where can i buy a research paper)
Exact-match Keywords — a targeted keyword with a link on it (e.g. Tips for writers)
Partial-match Keywords — a targeted keyword plus some other text with a link on it (e.g. Beginner tips for writers, tips for writing guide)
LSI Keywords — a keyword anchor text that is related to a targeted keyword (e.g. writing tips, business tips for writers, academical assignments)
No Text — an image with a link on it
Generic (e.g. Click this link, Read more, Check this out)
Best practices for anchor text optimization
Keep it natural… and versatile
According to Google, every part of any website, including links and their associated anchor text, needs to provide real value to users. Links must be put only where users expect to see them, so they can get informed about something valuable to them.
With Google’s algorithms getting smarter every year, you should avoid multiple repetitive and keyword-based anchors in your site’s anchor text cloud. Failure to do so will definitely result in a penalty.
To quote Neil Patel:
“I like building natural links, because that’s what Google wants. You can’t be smarter than the engineers who spend their workdays making the algorithm work smarter. So, stay off Google’s radar, focus on high-quality content and avoid a penalty on Google and other search engines.”
Of course, you need to link to high-quality, relevant pages and disavow all links from low-quality, non-relevant web pages. Getting links from sites with high Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Trust Flow is also a must.
Avoid over-optimization
Google does not appreciate overly-rich anchor text. A spammy, keyword-based anchor text cloud is a big red flag to Google. It indicates blunt manipulation with backlinks, which, obviously, results in penalties.
Instead, try to keep your anchor text natural by spreading it across your inbound links in the right proportions (more about this below). For instance, instead of placing “Software development company” in every guest post, try using something like “companies that develop software” or “the most reliable software development firms,” etc.
Keep anchors relevant to content
As time goes on, Google will only improve its algorithms responsible for understanding the actual meaning of a web page’s content. Since 2015, it has been testing DeepMind, a natural language processing technology that allows artificial intelligence to learn just as humans would.
Provided Google knows what is put on a concrete web page, it will not have any problems figuring out if a specific anchor text or link is relevant to a web page’s content.
If you place an internal link with irrelevant anchor text on your own website, this is likely to harm your search ranking. The is true for backlinks with irrelevant anchor text.
Google is obsessed with improving user experiences. It tries its best to provide relevant content in the most convenient manner. Clearly, non-relevant anchors with non-relevant links behind them lead users to non-relevant content, which Google does not appreciate.
Engage in relevant guest blogging
The relevance of the anchor text is one of key factors of a successful, cost-efficient guest blogging campaign, or of any healthy anchor text cloud for that matter.
What it comes down to is this: If you are guest posting with the intention of pushing up your “Digital marketing tips” keyword, place links to pages that include information about digital marketing, with exact-match, partial-match, and LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords featuring the topic of discussion. Obviously, your “Digital marketing tips” anchor text, with an associated link, should not be put on websites that have nothing to do with digital marketing.
Note: Do your best to use LSI and partial-match anchors in your guest post. In this way, you will achieve a more natural-looking anchor text cloud and satisfy the Google gods.
|
