Anchor Text Guide (Strategy & Ratios)

Key Takeaways

[Music] hey what's up it's a turban gotcha Co Academy and in this lesson I'm going to show you how to use anchor text so the first part of this process that I want to show you are the different types of anchor text that you can use in your link building until the first type of anchor text that you need to understand is a branded anchor text and so to give you an example of what a branded anchor text is it would just be if you link as WebMD or you link as GOC SEO or you link as forms these would all be branded anchor text the next type of anchor text is what I like to call a naked link and so an example of a naked link anchor text would be webmd.com or wymt.com or any variation of that would be considered a naked link anchor text the third type of anchor text is a generic anchor and so that could just be click here go here visit my web site or something that doesn't have a keyword or a brand in the actual anchor the fourth type of anchor text that you need to know is an image anchor text and so Google uses the alt tag of an image as the anchor text for link and so this only really matters if you're linking from an image to your website the fifth type of anchor is an LSI anchor text and LSI's stands for latent semantic indexing so I know that sounds like a bunch of technical jargon but I promise you it is not complicated so you can think of an LSI keywords just as a relevant keyword or a closely related keyword and so for example let's say your target keyword was creatine some LSI keywords would be what is creating or does creatine work or the pros and cons of creatine and so using these LSI or super related keywords is a great way to diversify your anchor text profile and make it look more natural so the next type of anchor that you need to understand is the brand plus keyword anchor text so that would simply just be WebMD creatine or creatine at WebMD or learn about creatine at WebMD so in this instance there's has to at least be a brand in there and also a keyword in the anchor text for it to be classified in this category the next type of anchor text is a partial match anchor text and so an example of this would be learn more about creatine the next type of anchor text which is the most popular in the SEO industry and probably the one you've heard about before is an exact match anchor text and so for an anchor text to be classified as exact match it's going to be exactly what your target keyword is and so for example if I wanted to rank for creatine my exact match anchor text for my backlink would be cuisine the last type of anchor text that I want to show you is what I like to call a title anchor text and so if title anchor text would be if a website decided to link to my article about backlinks and they said three things you didn't know about backlinks and that was the title of my article so before I show you how frequently you should be using these different types of anchor text I want to explain this concept of co-occurrence so once again I am NOT going to bore you with technical jargon but co-occurrence is the process of putting your keyword in close proximity to your anchor text so this is an effective alternative to using exact match anchor text because Google will be able to determine the relevancy of your backlink without needing you to use an exact match anchor to illustrate this a little more easier I'm just going to show you an example so let's say your target keyword was creatine and your anchor text was go here and so here is that example in a sentence if you're looking for more information about creatine which is your target keyword go here which is your backlink right away and so Google will read through this sentence and clearly see that creatine and go here so close together and that obviously this link is going to be about creatine at least in theory in so in general it's pretty hard to quantify the co-occurrence strategy but it's not a bad idea to put your keyword in close proximity to your backlink when you're not using exact match anchor text or really any type of keyword rich anchor text so ultimately the number one thing you should be doing is putting your backlink in a relevant piece of content and then also putting your keyword very close to wherever your backlink or anchor text is okay so now that you understand the different types of anchor text that you can use and you also know how to use co-occurrence now I want to explain how you should distribute your anchor text and the ratios that you should use for each type of anchor so these are the anchor text ratios that I have been using since the first penguin update and I can tell you firsthand that I have not been penalized or had any type of link based penalty since then because I'm using very safe anchor text distribution and ratios but not only are these anchor text ratios that I'm about to show you save but they're also very effective and so the two types of anchor text that will comprise the bulk of your anchor text profile are going to be branded anchor text which should be at least 70% or above of all your anchor text naked link anchor text which should be about 20 or so percent and then also generic anchor text which are just going to be click here go here etc and then the last one to five percent of your anchor text should be either LSI keywords partial match anchor text or your title as an anchor text and then as far as exact match anchor text you should stay below 1% in most scenarios so if you follow these ratios I can assure you that you'll never have to deal with any type of algorithmic penalties or even manual penalties and one last thing to keep in mind about ratios and how to distribute your anchor text is that anchor text is a very small piece of the equation what really matters is the quality of the content and the page that you have created how well you've optimized that page and then secondly the Koala lyndie of the backlinks that are going to that page it doesn't really matter the type of anchor text that you're using and all that other stuff it just really matters the quality of your page and the quality of your backlinks those are the two most important factors and the strongest factors that will determine how well your specific pages will rank an anchor text is a very small piece of the equation so I wouldn't stress out about it too much just focus on keeping things natural and you won't need to worry about it too much and so real quickly I want to show you a tactic you can use for your anchor text which I call anchor text cycling and so this process of anchor text cycling is to help you avoid using exact match anchor text in close proximity to each other for example you wouldn't want to get a bunch of new backlinks in a short period of time all with exact match anchor text because it's going to look super suspicious because that is not a natural way to get backlinks and so if that were to happen and you were to get all of these exact match anchor text in a very short amount of time then there's a very good chance that you can get penalized by the algorithm and so you want to avoid this so the best way to do that is to cycle your anchor text so what you do is let's say you get a backlink on Monday for your exact match anchor text that's fine but then after that you want to start using all the different types of anchor text before you get your next exact match anchor and so as you can see in the diagram you get your exact match anchor text and then you get a Brandon and a partial match and then a naked link and the generic and then a branded anchor before you hate your site or page with another exact match anchor text and so the good news is that you don't have to be super rigid about this process because when you're doing outreach and you're acquiring links naturally this will kind of just happen on its own and this really does apply if you're doing artificial link building because if you're in control of your backlinks then you have to be more rigid but fortunately everything you're learning in GOC SEO Academy does not involve those type of tactics so if you just do things the way that you're supposed to this will all fall into place and you won't need to worry about it it's the last part of your anchor text strategy that I want to cover is where to place your anchor sets and so this is something that a lot of people will get wrong and so you have to listen very very carefully on this it is absolutely critical that you place your best anchor text on your best link opportunities and so for example if you knew that you are going to be getting a backlink on Ford's then that is when you should use a keyword rich anchor text because that's going to be one of the best opportunities that you're going to get but then for some of these other link types which aren't your highest wing opportunities you should be using branded or naked link or even generic anchor text for them so an example might be business listings but you'd want to use a branded or naked link blog comments which you'd want to use your name press releases which you want to keep definitely branded or even naked link directories same thing profile links same thing signatures form signatures exactly the same thing blog rolls sidebar or footer links that you'll and those should definitely be branded and lastly donations or sponsorship backlinks should also be branded as well the main reason why you want to use branded anchor text with these link types is because they have been abused in the past and so Google does watch them a little bit closer so it's not recommended that you use keywords and any of your anchor sex in these types of links so like I said focus your best and most important keyword rich anchor text on your most important and best link opportunities and so that is all you need to know for how to use anchor text in your link building efforts so thank you so much for watching and I'll see you the next video 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