![\"Total](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/total-backlinks-per-google-search-rank-1024x582.jpg\"){kind=icon}
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nBut there\u2019s more to backlinks than just the sheer number of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Authority<\/strong> of the referring URL matters a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Relevancy<\/strong> matters too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally, there\u2019s the anchor text<\/b> to every backlink that Google considers important as well.<\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s so important that pretty much all seven Penguin updates<\/a> were largely centered around anchor texts. For those who don\u2019t know, these were the updates that made many websites lose tons of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now Penguin is a part of Google\u2019s regular algorithm, which means your anchor texts are looked at in real-time and matter for your rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s what this article is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We looked at best practices and we did our own study, analyzing 1.3 million anchor texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All to provide a complete guide to optimizing your anchor texts in 2019<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, anchor text is the clickable part of the text that links to another URL. <\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s a term that probably comes from HTML terminology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In plain HTML format, it looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n Other than telling the reader what the link is about, it also represents a data point in Google\u2019s (proverbial) eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are several types of anchors we\u2019ll refer to in this article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could easily come up with a bunch of other categories to make this article look cool, but in general, these are the categories that matter the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll come across the rest in the SEO-sphere and they are just a combination of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, that\u2019s all the technicalities you need to know about anchors. Now, let\u2019s provide a little context to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early days, Google used a fairly efficient, but relatively simple, algorithm to rank pages. It relied mainly on backlinks and keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While keywords <\/b>used to determine the relevance of a ranking (or linking) page, the total number of backlinks <\/b>used to be the main signal assigning authority to a page or a domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more links and keywords you got, the better you ranked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The anchors, by the way, used to be a big part of the keyword game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were only 40 million websites in 2002, and 200 million at the time of the first Penguin update, so it worked well.<\/p>\n\n\n Naturally, this simple system got abused by spammers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you managed to get yourself a lot of backlinks from whatever source (there were directories specifically created to sell links) you could have been doing well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you stuffed your website with nonsensical strings of keywords (aka keyword stuffing<\/i>), you could have been doing well, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you spammed the web with tons of links, each with the same anchor, exactly matching your campaign\u2019s keyword, you could have hit the top rank or pulled a practical joke, like this one:<\/p>\n\n\n Obviously, Google evolved, technology advanced, and a series of algorithm updates put an end to what used to be the SEO heydays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some websites got hit pretty hard.<\/p>\n\n\n Google started to spot spammy patterns and the first Penguin update was the start of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your page had, let\u2019s say, 100 backlinks and 75 of them used \u201cpayday loans<\/i>\u201d as an anchor, you would get penalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, two things have happened since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t we publish these [200 ranking factors]. And the fundamental answer is we\u2019re always changing.\u201d Eric Schmidt, Zeitgeist Conference 2010<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A bit of both, I would say. They\u2019ve become one of the most reliable signals for Google to uncover unnatural backlinks, or, in other words, search spam<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, it\u2019s still a relevant signal, among many others, providing Google with more context to the quality of the backlinks and the extent of the relevance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, as our recent study has shown<\/a>, relevance matters a lot these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, however, the general consensus among SEOs is that you should avoid \u201coptimizing\u201d anchor texts. Don\u2019t risk a penalty. Instead, focus on earning links naturally (or seemingly naturally).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In practice, that means you want to have many referring domains with many backlinks, and diversity in anchors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, Google makes it very clear that anchors do carry an SEO weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis text tells users and Google something about the page you’re linking to. With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also a well-known fact that Google still uses its original algorithm, but rather as a part of the much more robust algorithm it evolved into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of today, Penguin is a part of this algorithm too, which means your backlink profile and its anchors may get flagged in real-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, that leaves us in a rather difficult situation where we hang between risking and avoiding a penalty, or potentially losing some valuable search traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google provides some general guidelines on the do’s and don\u2019ts of anchor text optimization<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, it says you should use descriptive text, not too long, not too short, and avoid over-optimization with keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helpful, but not that much if you\u2019re someone who likes to get specific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, here\u2019s the thing. All SEO is quantifiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s because Google is a computer algorithm that relies on data only. As such, it can only work on signals that can be quantified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meaning metrics, such as backlinks, keywords, traffic and their numbers, ratios, distributions, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s just that today, as opposed to 2005, Google can process millions of data points from more than a billion active websites, assign scores and red flags, and narrow it down to some 100+ signals that, together, determine your search rank (at a given time, location, and search query).<\/p>\n\n\n\n And anchors, their count, length, composition, distribution, etc. all make up one of those signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, before we get into drawing conclusions on our own, let\u2019s have a look at the data profile of the top-ranked pages and see if we can find quantifiable patterns there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We took a dataset of 50,000 URLs, ranking in the top ten for different keywords. Later on, we expanded the dataset to 100,000 URLs with top 20 results to confirm some findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We used a randomly created list of long-tail keywords (average 4.85 words, 23.5 characters) with a volume of somewhere between 5000 and 12,000 searches a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This isn\u2019t an entirely random dataset as we took extra care to only look at top ten results, where all results are content pages–not root domains, branded results, or other, potentially outlier stuff, like Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To learn more about the reasoning behind it, you can look at our research doc<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a screenshot of our database:<\/p>\n\n\n We then obtained metrics for each of the SERPs, including traffic, backlinks, and anchor texts. Here\u2019s a look at how backlinks correlate, for example. <\/p>\n\n\n Usually, we see a much higher difference. But it seems that, in terms of content pages, things are a little bit more competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or rather, the fact that the high volume keywords (5000+ in this case) result in more competition by default. Either way, nice correlation as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll also take this opportunity to let you know that the data we\u2019re about to talk about only includes external links to the site, and that data was provided by the Ahrefs API, just so we\u2019re clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason I showed the chart for backlinks is because the first thing we looked at was the number of unique anchors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to show you the numbers to provide a bit of context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in our previous study on internal links, some data already hinted that the diversity of unique anchors carries some solid SEO weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The data wasn’t conclusive but this time we got it a bit clearer.<\/p>\n\n\n Since the Penguin updates, there seems to be a consensus in the SEO community that you should avoid having too many similar anchors and that you should aim for diversity instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is to avoid having your backlinks profile look spammy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can see, the higher the rank the more unique backlink anchors the page shows. That\u2019s not surprising because when you have more backlinks, you should get more variety in anchors too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question is whether the ratio of backlinks to anchor variety increases too. Because, if you score tons of backlinks and only a slightly higher variety in anchors, then the opposite is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we divided the median of unique anchors per search rank by the median number of backlinks. We did the same with referring pages too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the result:<\/p>\n\n\n It seems to correlate; i.e. there\u2019s a slightly higher overall variety as the rank increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I don\u2019t think a greater variety is a signal in itself, rather than variety in general. I think, if a web page has one anchor for all backlinks, it wouldn\u2019t even show in the top 20 results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You see my point? Backlinks are the main factor, and with more backlinks, there are more different anchors. The ratios are more or less proportional to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also likely that, with more backlinking pages, the likelihood of someone choosing a completely novel anchor increases disproportionately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, backlinks rule it all.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n If we\u2019re to speculate\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s interesting is that the ratio of anchors\/referring pages shows slightly nicer numbers, while the anchors\/backlinks are a bit more blurry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference is that one referring page can contain multiple backlinks to the same target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This might be due to the \u201cfirst anchor rule<\/i>\u201d– an idea that, if there are two backlinks pointing towards the same target, Google only considers the first one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was confirmed by a few studies many years ago. It\u2019s known to be a part of the original PageRank algorithm and Matt Cutts confirmed it himself in this video in 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps it is still valid…<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appears that maintaining an anchor variety definitely won\u2019t hurt your rankings. On the contrary, our data suggests it might be a helpful thing to do as all results in the top ten show many different anchors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the first anchor rule, this isn\u2019t a particularly useful piece of information. As Matt Cutts says in his video: \u201cYou should really focus on the more important things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it\u2019s out there and it might be something to bear in mind when trying to optimize your anchor variety. For example, when you\u2019re guest blogging or linking internally<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s do a little recap here. Here are the main types of anchor texts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Often, you\u2019ll find SEO gurus recommending \u201canchor optimization<\/i>\u201d formulas, like 70% exact match, 10% branded, 1-2% naked URL, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, advice like that comes from years of real referenced experience. But quite often, formulas like that are simply pulled out of their ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we had a look at that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But first, let\u2019s take it one-by-one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, we looked at the % of anchor texts that exactly match the keyword that the page ranks for. E.g. the keyword is \u201crandom keyword<\/i>\u201d, so the anchor is \u201crandom keyword<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, we looked at the presence of an exact keyword match within the anchor text. E.g. the keyword is \u201crandom keyword<\/i>\u201d, the anchor is \u201cbest random keyword<\/b> analyzer<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n These are averages and they add up nicely. The total number of links with the actual anchor text, as you can see, is quite small, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s a look at partial match. This would be the case where the keyword is \u201crandom keyword<\/i>\u201d and the anchor is, for example, \u201cthe keyword<\/b>s were generated random<\/b>ly<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We measured the presence of all the main words (we ignored prepositions and stuff like that) in the anchor text. That means that both random<\/i> and keyword<\/i> would have to appear in the anchor text.<\/p>\n\n\n We looked at the presence of at least one of the main words. For example, the keyword is \u201cwhat are random keywords<\/i>\u201d and the matching anchor is \u201chow random<\/b> is <\/i>it\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ignored words like \u201cit\u201d, \u201care\u201d, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n As you can see, no correlation, but quite a lot of the anchor texts somewhat contain some part of the keyword. But, it\u2019s not very clear and the method is a little problematic too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s quite complicated to analyze this. Should we include matches for words like \u201cis\u201d, \u201chow\u201d, \u201cand\u201d, etc.? How does Google evaluate these?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless, the data show some results, and our internal links study<\/a> returned similar stats on a different dataset. (Check out our 71 Link Building Statistics And Trends in 2024<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I had to recreate this study a few times to get different results. This one, again, is a little complicated to measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We looked at the core of a URL and compared it to an anchor string, stripped of spaces and special characters, to look for similarities.<\/p>\n\n\n Obviously, you can\u2019t match all brands efficiently, but, in an aggregate result, things should even out and return a higher number where there are a higher number of matches overall.<\/p>\n\n\n Except, the results, again, aren\u2019t conclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen SEOs recommend making the majority of your anchors branded, because: \u201cGoogle likes to see brands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know what the reasoning behind that is, or how it is that \u201cGoogle likes to see brands.\u201d Maybe, with branded keywords, it can have a benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But overall, I don\u2019t see how having a link with a, for example, \u201cAuthority Hacker\u201d anchor would convey relevance for a topic like \u201cWordPress plugins for SEO\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where it gets interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of SEOs recommend maintaining a number of naked URLs and other not-so-user-friendly anchors, just to maintain a non-spammy appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n In our study, we found a very solid negative correlation with naked URL anchors<\/b>. It seems to be the factor for evaluating the quality of the backlinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s not so clear from the chart, but the rank #20 contains on average 50% more naked URL<\/b> anchors when compared to rank #1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It might also be the case that higher-ranked pages just get more links from better websites. Forbes isn\u2019t going to use a naked URL as anchor text, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a lot of empty anchors in our dataset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suppose these are links placed around CSS elements, like buttons or things like that. Maybe even images or banners.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-text-on-a-page-1024x663.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nWhat is Anchor Text?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/what-is-anchor-text.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-text-in-html.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Anchors and SEO, What\u2019s the Theory?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/total-number-of-live-websites-1024x688.jpg\")
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/google-bombing-example.png\")
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lyrics-site-google-penalty-results.png\")
\n
\n
So, what about anchors?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/page-with-different-anchor-text-links.png\")
OK, so what should I do?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-text-best-practices.png\")
<\/figure><\/div><\/center>\n\n\n\nOur Study: The Influence of Anchor Text on Search Rankings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-text-research-data-spreadsheet.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Our](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/our-dataset-backlinks-per-google-rank-1024x663.jpg\"){kind=icon}
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n#1: Anchor text variety, does it matter?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Unique](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/unique-anchors-per-google-rank-1024x645.jpg\"){kind=icon}
![\"Unique](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/unique-anchors-median-backlinks-1024x716.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/unique-anchors-median-referring-pages-1024x716.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nConclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
#2: OK, but what variety?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
a. Exact match<\/h3>\n\n\n
![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-keyword-1024x727.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-contains-keyword-exact-match-1024x741.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nb. Partial match<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-contains-all-words-in-the-keyword-string-1024x727.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-contains-a-port-of-the-keyword-partial-match-1024x725.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nc. Brand match<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-string-example-1024x373.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchors-brand-match-1024x640.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nd. Naked URL match<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-is-url-exact-match-1024x735.jpg\")
e. No anchor text<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"No](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/no-anchor-text-1024x721.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/anchor-text-variety-search-rank-1-vs-search-rank-20-1-1024x765.jpg\"){kind=icon}
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-length-characters-1024x679.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/anchor-length-words-1024x663.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Long](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/long-anchor-text.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/occurrence-of-100-characters-in-anchors-1024x663.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Occurrence](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/occurrence-of-10-characters-in-anchors-1024x679.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/cta-related-words-in-anchors-1024x663.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Word](\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/word-click-here-in-anchors-1024x671.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n