Anchor Text: How I Optimize it (Step-by-Step)

Key Takeaways

this blue underlined text can single-handedly hold you back from the first page of Google it's called anchor text in this video I'll show you exactly how to optimize your anchor text so you can get to the top of Google with the least amount of backlinks but first let me tell you a story the year was 2016 and while everyone was so busy catching Pokemons and talking about how Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Oscar I had a backlink service here was my marketing process when someone ordered a backlink the first thing I do is put their target keyword in a rank tracker for example if they wanted to be on top of Google for the term best dog food I would put that keyword in a Tracker so I could come back later and say hi before I built a link you're in position six and now you're second then I'd offer them a discount to encourage them to keep working with me now let me tell you this the odds of seeing a position jump like that were much higher if I used an anchor text with the target keyword in it for example if the client was trying to be on the first page of Google for the term best dog food an anchor-like top dog food is much more likely to move the needle than something like click here this just shows how much Google cares about the anchor text that you use that said you can't just use Target anchor text over and over again and expect to get away with it Google pays close attention to the anchors you use and if it looks unnatural to them you will get hit by the Google penguin algorithm for example if you have 100 backlinks and 90 of them have the anchored dog food that's a red flag to Google and they'll penalize your site for it in fact that's exactly what happened to me in 2013. I was just starting to get traction with SEO and my sites were doing really good but then bam the penguin algorithm came out and obliterated my sites some of them lost more than 80 traffic overnight but now I know better I've spent so many hours testing different anchor strategies to know exactly what Google wants to see and in this video I'll show you a strategy that gets the best results without pissing off Google and the best part it's not just Theory it's all data backed and tested so you know it works in case we didn't meet before my name is Matt Diggity and I'm the founder of the search initiative a data driven SEO agency that focuses on cutting-edge SEO this is our most Cutting Edge anchor Tech strategy and make sure to stick around to the end because the last technique is a game changer but real quick before we dive in I'd like to invite you to my free SEO training masterclass in this 40 min in class I'll teach you everything that I'm doing today to get sites to the top of Google sign up by using the link in the pin comment now let's start by defining the different types of anchor text the first type is the target anchor and it's any anchor text that has even one word of your target keyword in it for example if you want to be the top Google result for the term best dog food a Target anchor could be buy dog food here best dog food dog food or any anchor that contains the word best dog or food Target anchors are the most important type it's the one that actually improves your ranking but can penalize your site if you overdo it anchor text optimization is about building as many Target anchor texts as possible without looking unnatural to Google we do this by sending a blend of the other anchor types such as the Branded anchor a branded anchor is simply using your business website or author name as the anchor text for example if I'm building links to my website ticketymarketing.com then a branded anchor would be Diggity marketing Matt Diggity Etc branded anchors are the most common naturally occurring anchor text as you can see here 704 domains linked to me with Diggity marketing that's 44.6 of all my homepage links now it's important to mention that if you have an exact or partial match domain that has a keyword in it that counts as a Target anchor for example if your domain is mydogtreats.com and you're trying to be on top of Google for the term best dog food using your brand name would count as a Target anchor so keep that in mind next we have the URL anchor which is simply the actual URL so if I was building links to diggitymarketing.com forward slash affiliate marketing the URL anchor would be dignitymarketing.com forward slash affiliate marketing or any other variation of the URL then we have the topical anchor which is the broad topic of the receiving page this might sound confusing but it's actually really easy just think one topic level up so if your target keyword is best dog food a topical anchor would be pet diet or Pet Care next we have miscellaneous anchors which are words like click here this website or check out this page lastly all anchors that don't fit into any of the previous categories are na anchors these are usually empty image links gibberish words words in other languages or just plain irrelevant anchors by the way I'd like to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this video and that's Otis Otis is a premium age domain Marketplace and my go-to solution for domains that mean business their domains can give you a head start for site building and 301 redirects that can give an incredible boost in existing sites traffic the Otis team carefully checks each domain for Quality through a strict due diligence process to ensure that they meet their highest standards therefore each other's domain Canadians High Authority backlinks which are hard to acquire using conventional link building techniques this saves you time money and effort you'd otherwise have to invest in your site if built on a fresh domain oh and Otis recently launched their cellular domain service so if you have domains that are collecting dust you have a good chance of selling them for a profit sign up for Otis using the link in the description and get a hundred dollars free store credit now back to the video now you know the different types of anchors let's get into anchor text distribution and how to optimize for it anchor text distribution is a blend of anchor texts coming into a single page for example if a page has 20 links 10 of them are Target anchors five are branded three are topical and two are miscellaneous then your distribution is 50 Target 25 brand 15 topical and 10 miscellaneous notice I said come into a single page not the entire website Google looks at anchor Distribution on a page level it's not a site-wide thing where an under optimized page would offset an over optimized one each page is on its own let's first talk about how not to optimize your anchor text if you Google how to optimize anchor text you'll find many articles recommending a cookie cutter anchor distribution they'll tell you to do something like 18 exact 16 phrase 31 brand 18 URL and 17 other anchors they'll tell you that every single page should have a cookie cutter breakdown like this but trust me this is the worst thing you can do every Niche is different you must find a distribution that looks natural for your Niche and you can easily do it by reverse engineering or competition you see getting to the top of Google is like playing poker Superman you can always use your X-ray vision to see your opponent's hands and adjust your strategy accordingly in the same way you can use SEO tools to spy on your competitors anchor text distributions after all Google picked them as the top result for a reason we can do this using a tool like ahrefs let's say you want to be the first Google result for the keyword best protein powder the first thing you do is plug in the URL of your top competitor in site Explorer in this case it's Food Network next go to the anchors tab this will bring up a list of all anchors pointing to that page now export this list into a spreadsheet you just need the anchor text and referring domain columns so delete the rest also add a new column and name it anchor type from there you can start categorizing your anchor text label each anchor with its corresponding type for example the first anchor is empty so you put an a the next anchor is obviously a URL so type URL the third one is eight best protein powder so that goes under Target and so on go through this and do it for all your anchors now you can make a pivot table to count the number of anchors in each category to make a pivot table click on insert pivot table and create in the row section add anchor type we don't need the totals so just make sure to uncheck the show totals box and the value section add refrain domains now you have a pivot table showing the number of referring domains for each anchor category I like to order it from highest to lowest so my target anchors on top so in the row section order by descending and sort by sum of referring domains I also like to have a visual representation of the data so you can make a pie chart by clicking on insert then chart and ta-da now you have a pie chart displaying your competitors anchor text distribution the next thing I want you to do is repeat these steps for each of your top five competitors then take the average this will give you a good idea of what a natural anchor text distribution looks like for your Niche now did you know that even if you have a similar anchor text distribution to your competitors Google can still penalize you there are other factors that make your anchor text look unnatural here are eight more anchor optimization techniques I'll make sure you never get hit by the penguin algorithm the first technique is not to use the same Target anchor text more than once the whole point of optimizing your anchor text is to look natural and even if you had a great anchor text distribution How likely is it that 110 different people linking to you use the exact same Target anchor not very likely at all so mix it up use different variations and don't repeat Target anchors this will ensure not only safer but better results the next technique that no one was really talking about is leveraging the SEO title your SEO title is the title that shows up on the search search engine result page and the data shows that it's a very common anchor if you're doing on-page optimization correctly your SEO title should include your target keyword and if you've already maxed out on your target anchor limit you can leverage your SEO title to build a few more Target anchors without risking over optimization the third Technique we have is to match the anchor with the link type there are many sources of links blog articles linked lists sidebars forms blog comments and so on now my data shows that certain anchor types occur more often with certain link sources for example in blog articles writers usually use descriptive anchors to let their readers know what they can expect from the linked article so you end up with Target anchors linked lists on the other hand usually have branded or naked URLs as anchor text sidebars will have topical or empty anchors form anchors are usually the URL or the SEO title of the page and finally blog comments usually have the author's name as the anchor by matching your anchor with the link Source you'll look more natural to Google and get a better result the next technique is to break up your keyword phrase sometimes you just get stuck and you can't break into the top of Google no matter matter what you do for some reason breaking up your keyword phrase into individual anchors can get you out of that rut if you're trying to be the top result for plumber Chicago just send the word plumber or just the word Chicago and this will help break the plateau the next technique is to write in proper English as you know your goal is to look natural how natural does this look I've tried many plumber Chicago and this one is the best not natural at all instead write it as I've tried many plumbers in Chicago and this one is the best you'll still get to the top of Google for the same keyword but proper English will make your links look much more natural to Google and the readers the next technique is to diversify your url anchors the problem with seos is that they think like seos they look at their anchor text distribution think okay I need five URL anchors but what they forget is that there's many different variations of your url there's the standard URL one with a backslash at the end one without the www one without the https Etc and if you're trying to mimic what would happen in the natural course of the internet variation is what would happen the next technique is to add keywords or around your non-target anchors it's a common industry practice that's surrounding your non-target anchors with keywords will help Google better understand what your page is about for example if your main keyword is best protein powder you can write something like to learn more about the best protein powder on the market click here Google will understand that your page is about protein powder I must say this is just an assumption I haven't tested out myself so I have no data to back it up but I will test it too so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on my findings the next technique is my personal favorite because it allows you to add more relevancy to your anchors without risking over optimization at all I'm talking about using synonyms Google understands that a car automobile and vehicle all mean the same thing so if you maxed out on target anchor text you can use a synonym and keep building hyper relevant anchors and my final tip is to subscribe for more videos just like this one