welcome now in this video we're going to answer the question what is anchor text if you've spent
any time looking into seo you've probably come across this term however like a lot of seo terms
it's kind of hard to figure out what the phrase anchor text actually means especially if you
don't know anything about seo i mean does it have something to do with both maybe it
has something to do with the sailing industry unfortunately anchor text doesn't really have
anything to do with any of these things however it's an important concept you need to appreciate
no matter what niche you're in and no matter what kind of seo tactic you're going to use after all
if you don't understand what anchor text is and if you ignore the rules surrounding the
use of anger techs your seo campaigns will likely fail you might even end up hurting your rankings
don't worry though because this video will explain what anchor text is and we'll also touch on the
eight different types of anchor text you need to be aware of and number five is a good example of
one that many people tend to ignore we will also cover some of the rules you need to focus on
when it comes to anchor text as well as what can happen if you don't follow certain rules
in fact one of the sections in this video looks at a website that experienced a huge drop in traffic
practically overnight because it didn't do things the right way near the end of this video we will
also take a look at what the future holds in regards to anchor text and its impact on seo
so stick around and make sure you watch all the way to the end so that you can get up to speed
by the way if you get a chance please like and subscribe to this video in doing so you'll help
us reach more people and as a subscriber you'll also be notified whenever we post new content so
what is anchor text what exactly is anchor text well anchor text is just a text that is used to
represent a link so if you look at this graphic you'll see that the bit on the left is the actual
web page people will be taken to when they click on a link however the bit on the right represents
the anchor text and this is what people actually see when they're looking at a link on a webpage
for the most part the anchor text can be whatever you want it to be for instance even though the
link above points to a page about a tiny dancing house the person creating the link could make it
so the anchor text reads tiny dancing dock or even something completely random like small red car
of course no matter what the anchor text actually is the person will still be taken to the same page
when they click on the link because people can use whatever they like this can sometimes lead to some
very creative anchor text and if you've ever seen any weird or cool examples let us know in
the comment section below so why is anchor text important in seo well anchor text is important
in seo because it helps google figure out what a certain web page is about now above we mentioned
that someone could technically use a really random phrase as anchor text however in most cases
people really don't do this and they tend to use a phrase or some kind of wording that is relevant
to the page they're actually linking to something we're going to look at later on in this video
it's this very fact that allows google to use anchor text to figure out what a certain page
or website is about of course once people learn this many inevitably go overboard and focus on one
specific type of anchor text this can result in a google penalty which lowers the rankings because
of this later in this video we're going to look at how you can stay on the safe side of things
when using anchor text to improve your rankings so what are the different types of anchor text as
mentioned people can use all sorts of variations when they're creating anchor text for their links
however most anchor text falls into the following eight categories exact match partial match
keyword variation branded branded plus keyword naked generic image there's all types of anchor
text and the rabbit hole goes deep so let's quickly go through each variation to help
you understand the difference between all of these anchor text types so number one exact
match anchor text exact match anchor text is anchor text that matches the precise keyword
you'd like a certain page to rank for for instance if you sell bookshelves
you might want to rank for the keyword bookshelves in that case an exact match link to your website
might be something as simple as bookshelves this kind of anchor text can be very powerful because
it helps you rank for the term you're using in the actual anchor text however if you use this kind
of anchor text too much you might be penalized by google in fact there was a famous google algorithm
update known as the penguin update which penalized websites that had too many exact match links
later on in this video we'll touch on why this update was important and the impact it had
but for now you just need to appreciate that you shouldn't focus too much on these kind of links no
matter how powerful they are number two is partial match anchor text partial match anchor text is a
link that contains the keyword you want to rank for alongside another related keyword or phrase
this kind of keyword is often used in a paragraph when someone is trying to describe something
for instance if we take the bookshelf example from earlier a partial match keyword might be
something like brown bookshelf or how to choose the right bookshelf and number three is related
keyword anchor text related keyword anchor text is anchor text that is related to your initial
business but doesn't really focus on any of the keywords you're trying to target so if we take the
bookshelf example from earlier a good example of a related keyword might be something like how to
choose the best office furniture this might then link to an article on my website that talks about
furnishing and office and there might be a section dedicated to bookshelves number four is branded
anchor text branded anchor text is anchor text that uses a brand name of a website or business
for example if our bookshelf store from earlier is called the world's best bookshelves a branded
anchor link would essentially just be the text world's best bookshelves here's a good example
of some branded anchor text that we managed to get for a client after securing a link for them
on forbes.com if you'd like to learn how to get links like this you should check out my video
on harrow link building how to get backlinks with harrow fast and if you go to juliangoldi.com you
can also book in a free consulting call with us and we'll go over exactly how you can build these
kinds of links to your site number five is branded plus keyword anchor text this kind of keyword
anchor text includes the brand name of a business alongside a relevant keyword so if our business is
called the world's best bookshelves a branded plus keyword link might be something like buy
bookshelves at the world's best bookshelves number six is naked anchor text and this kind of anchor
text sounds a little bit crazy but i promise you this video is still safe for work naked anchor
text is basically just anchor text that showcases the actual link without any kind of editing so you
know the bit you type into your browser where you want to go to a certain website that's basically
what a naked anchor text link looks like if we take our bookshelf store example from earlier
a naked anchor text link for this business might be something like www.worldsbestbookshelves.com
number seven is generic anchor text generic anchor text links are links that contain random
phrases a lot of the time these phrases are often a call to action such as click here or
even something like visit this site to learn more and number eight is our final type of anchor text
and that is image anchor text this is essentially just a linked image that people can click on so if
someone clicks on this image it will take them to a certain web page so are there any rules you need
to follow when it comes to anchor text well google will keep a close eye on your backlink profile
and they will tend to analyze the anchor text that you're using if it skews too much in one direction
meaning if there's an overabundance of one type of anchor text it might trigger some red flags google
might then penalize your site and you could lose your rankings earlier we touched on a big google
update that focused a lot on anchor text this update was called penguin which is ironic because
it's kind of a happy sounding name for what was a pretty horrifying update for many people after
all when penguin hit a lot of people logged into their google analytics account and saw something
like this chart pretty terrifying most of the websites that experienced the drop in traffic
because of this update experienced bad results because they had a lot of exact match anchors
this update or at least the nature of this update is still a core part of the latest algorithm
that google uses to rank websites so you need to be careful because if you suddenly
decide to build lots of exact match anchor text links that target a certain keyword
your analytics account might end up looking like the one we just saw
because of all of this you should just try to vary your anchor text as much as possible
this means your backlink profile should make use of all of the different type of anchor
text categories that we touched upon earlier or at least a good variant of them now there isn't
really an exact ratio you want to focus on when it comes to anchor text variations but as long as you
focus on building links naturally you should automatically end up with backlinks that use
several types of anchor text of course if you're an seo pro you might have some thoughts on what
counts as a good ratio when it comes to using different types of anchor text if that's the case
let us know in the comments because i'd love to hear your point of view on this topic on the other
hand if you're relatively new to this topic and you'd like some advice on how you can build links
naturally consider booking a free call with us at juliengoldi.com we'll be happy to help you develop
a solid plan that's tailored specifically to your site so will anchor text be important in the
future as mentioned anchor text is one of those things that's often manipulated by a lot of people
so they can achieve high rankings very quickly now google is always fighting against this pressure
and earlier we spoke about the penguin update and how it was helping google prevent this kind of
thing however seo is a little bit of an arms race and people are always coming up with clever ways
to get around the rules because of this google is constantly looking at methods that will help them
rack down on this issue so that people can't game or manipulate the rankings too much one
such method google is considering is focusing on the text that actually surrounds the anchor text
this point of view is based on a patent filing by google now granted this patent filing is a bit of
a complicated read but it essentially says it will focus on something called the anchor tag and in
simple terms this is just a text that surrounds a link so if a link is in a paragraph google might
look at the words in the paragraph alongside the actual anchor text to figure out what a certain
page is about it's because of this that you should try to secure links on relevant web pages as much
as you can if you do this your links will be around relevant keywords almost by default this
could then mean that a link has a much stronger impact on your rankings even if it doesn't use any
kind of exact match anchor text or something that contains a relevant keyword if you'd like some
advice on how you can land natural backlinks check out my video on eight powerful seo link building
strategies for 2022. and if you'd like someone to actually walk you through the process of how
you can secure natural links for your site book a free consultation call with us at juliangoli.com
also if you have some of your own awesome methods when it comes to securing natural links
please mention your tips in the comments i'd love to exchange notes of you so you should now have
a decent understanding of anchor text and why it's important you should also understand how
you should use anchor text the right way so you don't get into trouble with google if you have
any thoughts or even any suggestions or ideas on what we've covered please don't hesitate to leave
a comment thanks for watching this video and please remember to like and subscribe
you