Types Of Anchor Texts

Let’s specify the types of anchors that can be found on the web. Some of them can be good for a website’s SEO, but others are spammy and should be limited to keep search engines from becoming suspicious.

1. URL

In the case of a naked URL, there is no textual anchor at all, but a bare link instead that is visible on a page.

Example: http://positionly.com/blog

URLs anchors don’t carry any SEO benefit to your site; so the next time you notice one pointing to your site, reach out to a webmaster, and request to have it changed.

2. Zero or Generic Anchor Text

Zero or generic anchor texts refer to completely unrelated (to a linked page) phrases which are a link label. These may include read this,  “website,” “info,” “link,” click here,  “read more,” “visit this page” or other random words that imply scarcity or provoke action. These anchors don’t provide any added SEO value either.  

It’s virtually impossible to know what you can expect to find on the destination page by simply looking at the anchor text itself. 

Generic Anchor Examples:

• click here
• read more
• learn more
• this article

These anchors have no keyword or topical relevance and offer no direct benefit to how your page ranks in SERPs. So, why would an SEO strategist recommend using generic anchor text?

Because it occurs so frequently all over the internet, Google associates generic anchor text with organic, editorial placement and passes link equity from the referring site without hesitation. Generic anchor text is a critical element in a well-balanced anchor text portfolio. 

3. Exact Match Anchor Text

This is the most important anchor type for your SEO ranking. An exact match anchor text has the same keywords highlighted as the targeted keyword of a web page.

For instance, for the Unamo SEO homepage, the exact anchor text is US SEO Software.

An exact match anchor for one of the Wordstream articles would be the keyword “anchor text” hyperlinked to www.wordstream.com/anchor-text like so: anchor text.

This is a very strong anchor text that adds serious SEO value and drives a page’s ranking up. However, exact match anchors shouldn’t be used excessively.

An instant and massive influx of exact match anchors could look spammy in the eyes of search engines. It just doesn’t seem likely that all sites linking to your page would use the same – exact match – anchor. A little variety is very welcome as it looks way more natural.

Of course, it’s best when your anchors correspond to your targeted, high-volume keywords; but they should be differential.

4. Related Anchor Text

Related text anchors are similar to exact-match anchors, with the notable exception that they don’t contain the targeted keyword phrase at all. Instead, they contain words that are semantically related to your keywords. In plain English, related anchor text is conceptually similar to your keyword phrase.

Related Anchor Examples:

• Nike athletic footwear
• Comfy couches from Ikea.
• Rotten Tomatoes’ crowd-sourced film rating system
• SEO Review Tools has a free backlink tool

Related anchors have SEO value because they help Google’s crawlers better understand what your links are about. Moreover, they contribute to the diversity of your link profile.

5. Partial/ Phrase Match Anchor Text

The partial or phrase match anchor type also includes a keyword for a specific page, but this time without any localization. It also covers some other words that make up long tail versions of keywords.

Partial-Match Anchor Examples:

• Buy Nike running shoes here
• Ikea’s fall designs for living room furniture
• The director took exception with the negative movie review by Rotten Tomatoes

Partial match anchors hold SEO value even if they don’t precisely match your targeted keyword. Because they contain your keyword, they still create an association between your keyword and your page.

6. Naked Anchor Text

Naked anchors literally “strip away” any extra words and offer only the URL itself as the clickable link on the page. You most often see naked links in data citations or other attributions for reference materials. 

Naked Anchor Examples:

• Nike.com
• https://www.ikea.com
• www.rottentomatoes.com 
• https://www.seoreviewtools.com/ 

Naked links don’t create an association between a keyword and a target page, but they still provide link equity from the referring page, and they have the added benefit of diversifying your anchor text portfolio.

7. Branded Anchor Text

These are all anchors that include your brand name. Brand and keyword anchor text might combine a brand name with exact or partial match keywords. While nobody (but Google) knows exactly how much weight each kind of text anchor carries, we know that keywords matter. We also know that over-optimizing for keywords in anchor text is a bad thing.

It’s reasonable to think that putting your brand name with a keyword in an anchor text creates a strong association between the two while also passing equity from the referring domain and adding some diversity to your link portfolio.

Brand & Keyword Anchor Examples:

• Nike running shoes
• Ikea living room furniture

8. Hybrid Anchor Texts

Hybrid anchors target various branded and non-branded keywords that are still important to a website.

Let’s look at an example of a hybrid anchor text in one of Positionly’s blog posts: Everything You Need to Know About Meta Descriptions. And a hybrid anchor text for this post would be “what is a meta description?,” “types of meta descriptions,” “Is a meta description necessary for my on-page SEO?,” “meta description SEO best practices” and so on.

The benefit of this approach is that it reinforces your brand while simultaneously giving additional context to the reader and to web crawlers.

9. Image Anchors

Image anchors are basically links on the images that explain and justify the images. The alt text of linked images is indexed in the same way as the text is done.

You might have heard that adding alt text to your images is an important part of on-page SEO best practices. But did you know that alt text has a role to play in off-page SEO as well? If another website features one of your images (for instance, a chart or infographic) and links that image back to your site, Google will read the image’s alt text for context and treat it like anchor text.

Image anchors carry the added benefit of diversifying your backlink portfolio. Remember, the primary function of image alt tags is to provide descriptive information to visually impaired users. Honor that function even when optimizing alt tags for SEO.

10. Other types of anchors

Anchor text also occurs in the form of LSI Keywords (LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing). Such keywords basically refer to the indirect variations of your main keyword and synonyms for a target phrase… or in the case of blog posts, anchors can be an author’s name or a title tag. You can explore your anchors using Unamo’s backlinks tool.

Once you log in, click on the backlink section located in the left margin of the dashboard to view a table with all your links and their specific anchor texts:

SEO-friendly anchor text is:

• Succinct
• Relevant to the linked-to page
• Low keyword density (not overly keyword-heavy)
• Not generic

Keep in mind that you often don’t have any control over the anchor text that other sites use to link back to your own content. So, most of these best practices will govern how to best use anchor text within your own website.

Bottom line

Be careful naming your anchors. Diversify them and always add a link to a naturally related part of the sentence in your copy. Minimize the use of exact-match anchors to 1% or even less.

Be sure that you link to high-quality websites only, as the quality of your on-page links affects the SEO quality of your website. In other words, if you link to spammy sites you will be seen as spam too.

Track upcoming anchors which your website receives, and react if any actions seem unnatural to you. You should be on the alert and ensure you are not over-optimizing, nor using particular anchors extensively.

Write guest articles for relevant websites to create new and high-quality backlinks with beneficial anchors to improve your SEO results. And most importantly, build links and anchors organically.