Anchor Text Percentage
-
At the linklove conference, many of the speakers emphasized the importance of not having too high a percentage of anchor text for your incoming links, because it looks unnatural. I was wondering whether this applies to your keyword being in the anchor text along with other things, or just exact anchor text matches?
For example, if my keyword is widgets, is it bad to have too many of these:
Please buy widgets from Acme Corp.
or
Please buy Acme Corp widgets.
-
Right, I understand all of that, but it doesn't really answer the question. My question is regarding anchor text that INCLUDES the keyword vs anchor text that is ONLY the keyword. So is it OK to have a high percentage of anchor text that includes the keyword (based on numbers in OSE's anchor text "terms" instead of "phrases")?
-
So it is OK to have a high percentage of the keyword being included in the anchor text, as long as it is not a high percentage of EXACT keyword anchor text?
-
In the process of natural link building I would expect that anchor text will vary and won't always be the exact keyphrase that is being targeted. Sometimes it would be the company name, the site URL, a longer sentence with the keyphrase in it or even "click here".
The suggestion is that if a high % of links are just the keyword that this sends a signal to Google that their acquisition may not be from purely natural means.
-
I'd take a look at the competition and see the anchor text variety that they have, like was shared at LinkLove. Essentially you don't want the extreme. So if you have 40% widgets, 40% acme corp widgets and only 20% Acme Corp that might stand out to Google as being out of whack.
A link without "perfect" anchor text is better than no link at all, especially if you've built a ton of links with that keyword rich anchor text. In Rand's presentation at Link Love he discussed this a bit also, that anchor text is worth less than it used to be.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should anchor text be local or global keyword?
One of my clients' run a hyperlocal marketplace (have different pages for each city) to hire music teachers. When I am doing link building, should I use anchor text as "violin teachers" or "violin teachers in boston". I suggested to use "violin teachers" as this is the primary keyword with high search volume and if we rank for this keyword, we will automatically rank for locality keywords like violin teachers in boston, violin teachers in new york, violin teachers in los angels etc. But, he argues that we are hyper local services, which means we should have city anchor texts like "violin teachers in boston", "violin teachers in new york", "violin teachers in los angels" etc. Am I right? or Is he right? and Why?
Link Building | | Avin1230 -
Does a text URL (without hyperlink) provide any SEO value?
Our clients use the link shortener of our service software to share their job offers. Sometime the job baords they post to do not allow hyperlink and thus post the url as text only. Do these url texts offer any benfits in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | rflores0 -
Does over-optimised ext. link anchor text of one particular keyword affect our other search term rankings?
Hi, **Does having over-optimised anchor text only affect the rank for that one particular keyword being used as the anchor text or can it negatively affect our rank for other search terms as well? **
Link Building | | Syed_Raza0 -
Anchor Text Guidelines
Hi. Is there an approximate guide to avoid over optimizing anchor text for a particular key-phrase? i.e. is 20% of back-links using the anchor text [HR Software] OK or too much? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | davidoff5744440 -
Shortened url vs. anchor text
Are there any benefits to linking a shortened url vs. an anchor text when I am link building?Would linking via shortened link such as tinyurl cause problems with SERPS? Also, would it be more beneficial to short link to the homepage or landing page?
Link Building | | Modbargains0 -
Rel="canonical" or text link?
Lets say I have a commercial website that nobody will link to so I create a non commercial website with some awesome content that is highly linkable. I then get 30 - 40 quality links pointing to this site which I then either rel ="canonical" back to my main site to the page with the replica content or do I simply add a text link from the new site to the old sites homepage. Which would benefit my commercial site most? We are seeing the strategy of building a non commercial site for links becoming more and more popular. The second question is is it worth the effort for in effect one backlink?
Link Building | | fazza470 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0 -
How Important is Placement of Anchor Text
I'm working on a series of guest posts to help promote a site. These are competitive, high quality posts from a well-respected resource in the industry. I placed the author introduction at the front of the posts, with anchor text for the keywords we are targetting (e.g., "This is a guest post by John Doe, a [keyword] who ... and writes about [keyword]."). I understand that having the anchor text in a prominent location - such as near the front of the post - will probably be more authoritative than a sentence at the very end. My question: how significant is this difference? The blog that I am posting on wants to include author information at the end only and only have one link using the site name (which doesn't contain keywords). The post I sent had two deep links using keyword-rich anchor text, placed at the beginning. I am trying to decide whether to walk away and keep shopping the material around.
Link Building | | Falconberg1
