Links

[Rob_I]

Hi, im wondering if links that is not exact anchor links gives any boost for rankings?

Example if lets say somebody links to my site http://domain.com/category/article with anchor: domainname or url link.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hey Paddy,

Great summary man!

Your 1,2, 3 = There are lots of other signals as well which Google can look at besides anchor text.

Overall site health is essential

• https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/site-structure-enhance-seo/

All the best,

Tom

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi Rob,

There are some great answers in this thread, so I won't repeat too much. But just a few additional points:

• Ultimately, the quality of the site should be an important factor for you to consider. If the site is high quality, then it's likely to help you in terms of traffic and rankings no matter what the anchor text is.
• Anchor text still plays a big part in rankings. But as others have said, it can be risky to have too much anchor text which doesn't look natural i.e. is stuffed full of keywords. So you do need to be careful not to look manipulative and I'd advise not taking risks and focusing on the quality of the link as noted above.
• There are lots of other signals as well which Google can look at besides anchor text. A few may be - the position of the link on the page, the surrounding text, whether the link is in a list or not, whether the link is followed or not.. countless things which can help Google decide if a link is good or not.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

[BlueprintMarketing]

Just in case all these excellent answers are not compounding enough I want to let you know I concur with everyone.

Today you want to be careful of using anchor text. I'm not going to lie and tell you that it is a more potent however the best way to do it is naturally most people will not give you incredible anchor text when linking to you if it's done naturally.

It's fine to get a lot of "click here" check out the site" for site's name or the URL. Also, Google is not stupid they have an excellent idea of rather not it's a little bit over optimized and may be a buddy helped hypothetically let's say you sell tennis shoes For clay courts. "Clay-court tennis shoes" looks like it would fine only If rarely done and people will do that on their own so don't do it yourself.

Backlinks and anchor text are still a way to get you removed from the SERPS by Google, but if it is over optimized, it's so easy to tell that you have manipulated the links.

Put it this way Google looks at every link with its AI machine learning algorithm it knows what normal is and what normal is not. You will always get some very optimized URLs and its natural.

One rule I have with Google if you think it's possibly going to be an issue then stay away from it or do what you did here and got good information.

** excellent references on Natural Anchor Text vs Unnatural Anchor Text**

• https://www.semrush.com/blog/8-signs-that-indicate-youre-over-optimizing-your-blog/
• https://moz.com/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization
• http://www.wordstream.com/anchor-text
• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/avoid-over-optimizing/
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

What you have to deal with if you do not pay attention to what Google tells you to do.

• https://builtvisible.com/link-auditing/

Tools For checking your back links.

• https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
• https://ahrefs.com/
• https://majestic.com

Tools for checking your external links on your site:

• https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
• https://www.deepcrawl.com/index-of-reports/
• https://analytics.moz.com/manage-campaigns
• https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

** I hope that this helps and you have avoided some issues with Google.**

** All the best,**

** Tom **

[GastonRiera]

Hi Rob.

Long story, short? Yes, they do impact possitevely in your SERPS.

I agree with Bas.
My personal advise: mantein the diversity in every aspect. Google is able to find out whether you are trying to manipulate the SERPs. And ALWAYS, think the linkbuilding strategy as making it look natural and organic.

Hope it helps.
GR.

[BasKierkels]

Well: like i said: it's better to have 'natural anchors'. So, yes, you can score with a different anchor text.

Say for example: you wouldn't tell anyone to which page they would have to link to and what anchor or IF they need to use an anchor text. In this case: the inlinks and anchor texts would probably be very 'natural'. Meaning: all different.

In that you will very probably gain DA or PA with these inlinks.

It's not only the anchor text, or the source URL, or the relevancy of the content of the linking domain to your domain: it's all these and much more combined. The anchor text is only a part of the complete 'calculation'.

To come back to your question if such a link will give you a boost: there is a high probability that it will, no matter what the anchor text is. Since the site that is linking to you is about a similar topic, i would expect a positive effect. Whether you can measure the effect or not depends on a lot of other elements that we (in this forum) don't know.

Of course: a link with an anchor text containing the keyword that you chose to the page you've chosen would be perfect. But that doesn't mean all other combinations are useless. Maybe less effective towards to your personal or business goal. That might be the case.

Does this help you?
Bas

[Rob_I]

Thanks for the answer, i understand that. But i wonder if it will give any boost in rankings if lets say somebody links to me from his blog that is about fruits and the article is about apples. The anchor text is my domain name or my URL and it links to my site with this url: http://domain.com/fruit/apple.

Will it give any boost at all or is it only when the right anchor is used?

[BasKierkels]

Hi: best to have natural anchor texts. Rand said in one of the Whiteboard Friday videos that it's better to not have all anchor texts the same. That's not natural. Have some variation in anchor texts.

As long as the anchor texts resemble the content and your chosen keyword(s), the anchor text will still push you in the right direction.

Hope that helps.

Bas