What is a healthy ratio of keywords being used as anchor text in external links to our site?

[Syed_Raza]

Hi,

One keyword is being used as anchor text in way more external links to our site than any others and I'm getting a lot of mixed advice whether or not to do anything about it.  The agency we previously used had managed to remove about 1500 links (out of 6000) however our rank for that search term is still very poor.

**We have 4500 external links with the anchor text "ABC" and the next highest amount of external link anchor text is the term "XYZ" which has about 400 links. That is over 10 to 1. What is a healthy ratio of anchor text between different search terms to aim for? **

Any help is greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

[SapientSEO]

Try not to focus on percentages. most SEOs try and build a certain % of each type (branded, naked URL, exact match keyword, random anchors, synonym keywords, etc).

The problem with trying to do this is you're manipulating your link profile. The key to building a natural link profile is letting the link type do the work.

Take your Moz profile as an example. You're allowed a link to multiple sites - the NATURAL link type for this is naked. Other sites will let you add an anchor - if you do, use a branded one.

Blog comments are another example. Most platforms will allow you to create an anchor, but it's unnatural. Use a naked URL for blog comments and you can diversify easily.

There's a really good article that goes into detail about it here: http://webris.org/anchor-text/

[MoosaHemani]

In my opinion the best way to deal with it is to leave it up to them as you want things natural so play it the natural way!

[Syed_Raza]

Hi Moosa,

Thanks so much for the reply to my question, that makes things a lot more clear for me.

What are some good ways you can suggest I request for natural-sounding anchor text?  Or should I just leave it up to the webmaster/blogger/writer who is linking to us?

Luckily I've built some decent relationships these influencers in my industry via networking and social media but I'm still very new to link building and SEO so I'm not sure how to approach these conversations without coming off as spammy. I feel like its awkward to ask anyone for a share/link/mention let alone asking for a specific anchor text.

Please share your thoughts if you have time, I greatly appreciate your opinion so far, means a lot that you took the time to help!

Syed Raza

[Syed_Raza]

Hi Patrick,

Awesome, thanks for your answer and for the articles, they were very helpful. I am still very new to link building/earning and inbound marketing in general so I truly appreciate you reaching out to help.

The over-optimized anchor text I'm dealing with is a non-branded, competitive search phrase for our market. Theres about 4500 ext. links with that keyword anchor text out of approx. 10000 total inbound links.

At 45% non-branded anchor text, is it likely the reason we are no where to be found in the SERPs for that phrase?

Apparently the previous SEO agency tried:1-contact individual webmasters to remove links 2- submit a disavow file to google and 3- emailed google reconsideration request.  There were able to remove 1500 links, bringing the number from 6000 down to 4500.  So when Penguin originally hit the site it was more like 60-65% of this one no-brand anchor text.  This what I've been told by the business owner.

What else can I do to clean up these bad links? Should I be looking at tools like LinkRisk or LinkDetox as a solution?

Thanks again so much for your time

Syed

[MoosaHemani]

I don’t think come up with any number or percentage would be a good idea but when I use to deal with these kinds of things… I just make sure that the anchor text should be as natural as possible. I mean if I got 15% of the links pointing back to my site with the Brand name, I probably will be fine with it but if it is a keyword that makes no sense in natural piece; in that case 3% is even a high number.

Hope this helps!

[WhiteboardCreations]

Hi Syed,

There is no exact answer to your question as if you ask 10 SEOs, you very well may get 10 different answers. As Google hasn't defined this ration, the answers and opinions on this subject are widely debated and subjective to the industry.

That being said, a good anchor text ratio to consider is roughly 30% branded anchor text, 70% non-branded keyword anchor text. This is information we've looked into and had discussions about with other SEOs and a source of some quality research and data on this can be found here http://sundayseo.net/penguin-2-0-what-should-your-anchor-text-ratios-be/ and another great article here http://moz.com/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization, which does a fantastic job of breaking it down even further. So, a solid anchor text ration should be 7:3 to emulate the Moz blog written by Geoff.

Hope this was a helpful answer! - Patrick