Some Anchor Text Guidelines for SEO Projects and Free Downloadables to Help Your SEO Brainstorming

As anyone in SEO will tell you, anchor text selection and use is fundamental to proper SEO for any website.

The biggest issue, though is that many are not aware that there are different types of anchor text.

In many cases, people tend to use the same type of anchor text over and over again, which ultimately runs the risk of over-optimizing their AT ratios and putting their site under a penalty as a result.

First Things First

What is anchor text?

Very simply, when you look at a link on a web page, the text that you can see (i.e., that is "clickable") is known as anchor text, as it "anchors" the link to the a particular (displayed) text.

You see the text, click on it, and due to the HTML code embedded on that web page, your browser will take you to that site and page that the link is pointing to.

Different Types of Anchor Text

As noted earlier, there are lots of different anchor text you should consider when linking to your site.

• Branded Anchor Text:  This type of link includes any link where the anchor text is a brand name. In this context, "brand" essentially means the same as the name of the domain.  For example, if your domain name is bestseo.com, then the "brand" anchor text you can use would be Best SEO, best SEO, www.BestSEO.com, etc.  

• Naked URL's: This type of link includes any link where the anchor text is the URL of the site or page you’re linking to.  For example, www.BestSEO.com, bestseo.com, https://www.bestseo.com, and others similar to these are all considered naked URLs anchor text.
• Image Anchor Text:  In some cases, the link which points back to your site won’t appear as a hypertext link, but instead be embedded inside of an image.  So, how can an image posted on your site have anchor text associated with it? Simple, use the alt= tag in the HTML code for the image itself, with the appropriate anchor text after the = as the anchor text. Search engines will index alt text -- and a nice additional payoff is that people with special needs, who use reading devices while visiting web pages, can have those devices read (out loud) the alt text (as well as mouse pointer popups and other page elements) to help them.  As well, you can use the alt image tag to help your image appear whenever conducts an image search.

• Long Tail Anchor Text: These keyword phrases are usually 3-4 words (or even longer) in length and included phrases like "gutter repair services in Baltimore" or "divorce attorneys in Houston Texas" for example.
• Generic Anchor Text: As the title suggests, these are very general types of anchor text -- click here, this site, etc.  In fact, some people will use phrases like this when linking naturally, and as such, it’s natural for your site to have links with this type of anchor text.

 Critical: Balance Things Out

If you are looking to avoid search engine penalties due to bad link building, specifically the over-use of certain anchor text, you should vary your anchor text as much as possible.

Very important overall guideline: If you are doing any LEGIT mass-submitted linking (such as press release distributions or old-fashioned style article directory submissions), you want to use brand or naked URL's as your primary anchor text within that type of content.  

Since these links are likely to be distributed across many different pages and referring domains, you want to “play it safe” and brand and naked URL anchor text is the best choice to make.

Anchor Text Ratios We Currently Recommend

(Note that we are giving overall guidelines -- each market is somewhat different)

60-70% -- These should be brand or URL anchor text, using all types of variations:

www.domain.com -- https://www.domain.com -- domain.com -- Domain.com -- Domain -- domain -- https://www.Domain.com, etc.

We cannot stress this enough: This should be your primary focus, and make sure to tap into the power of all possible variations of it, including the following compound terms.

What does "compound" anchor text refer to? Here are some examples:

Visit bestroofingpartners.com

This company, bestroofingpartners.com

The roofing experts over at bestroofingpartners.com

As you can see from the above, a compound AT is text where you combine the brand or company URL with a set of keyword(s).

10% -- Should be made up of compound terms, as detailed above.

10%-15% -- Should be made up of related and partial match anchor text. Related phrases are phrases that are related to your main keyword (i.e. weight loss or fitness if your main keyword is exercise equipment). A partial match AT includes the main KW target in the anchor text. (If your main keyword is exercise equipment then used exercise equipment would be a partial match because it contains the primary target (exercise equipment) in it.)

Alternatively, a partial match anchor text would include at least one of your keywords within it. For example, "used workout equipment" would be a partial match to "exercise equipment" because it contains the embedded keyword "equipment" within it -- and just as importantly, the word "workout" is synonymous with "exercise".

However, it gets tricky sometimes: Using the anchor text "used hockey equipment" would not be considered a partial match in this case because someone looking for "exercise equipment" isn't necessarily going to be interested in "hockey equipment" or "baseball equipment" or equipment one would need to do anything other than exercise or workout

5%-10% -- These should be generic anchor text (click here, this site, for more information, etc.). Again, vary these and sprinkle them in as you do your linking.1%-2% -- The

1%-2% -- The main target keyword phrases you are actively trying to rank for. These should be used very sparingly. A few high-quality links (think high Domain Authority as a useful metric for evaluating what types of sites to place these on) -- and you are after high-quality sites for placement of these links and a "light touch" to avoid search engine Penguin-related penalties. You should use these very, very little because of the risk they pose if over-used. These percentages should be considered the absolute maximum -- and it's more than OK to have less than that.

Overall Goals:

In summary, when building links to your site, there are a couple of key things you want to keep in mind in order to avoid any Penguin-related penalties:

1. Vary the types of links you build. Get links from as many different sources as possible, and don't just stick to one corner of the Internet. Get press release links, get directory links, get links from social bookmarking sites, and anywhere else you can get them.
2. Vary your anchor text as much as possible. In a perfect world, you would use a brand new anchor text each and every time you get a link, but since that's not feasible, use the  above-noted ratios as a good template to follow. When in doubt, use conservative anchor text (brand, naked URL, compound, related) to avoid any potential issues.
3. Avoid, at all costs, using the same AT over-and-over again. If not, your site will end up in the penalty box, perhaps for a long time
4. Use your Brand/URL as well as related phrases as your dominant anchor text. As noted above, you can use these types of anchor text as your "default" if you are ever unsure of which anchor text to use.

Keep Good Records

Finally, as you add more links from various sources over time, it’s easy to lose track of which anchor text you’ve used in the past, which ultimately can lead to over-optimization… and a Penguin penalty.

So, make sure you keep some sort of record (Excel or even a text file is better than nothing at all), and use it in conjunction with some sort of good link-tracking tool (I personally like Ahrefs) that allows you to inspect your incoming backlinks for anchor text used, as well as referring domains (the actual domains having links posted, that point back to your site).

Help for Brainstorming Generic Anchor Text

Since your brand/URL, phrase match, and related term anchor text are going to vary depending upon the keywords you’re targeting and the URL of your site, it’s difficult to provide you with an exact list of potential anchor text you can use.

That being said, I can definitely help you when it comes to all of the different kinds of generic anchor text you can use when pointing links to your site.

With that in mind, you can find some download links below for a couple of files (in PDF, Excel, and plain-text formats) which contain a list of many different examples of generic anchor text you can use.

To make things even more simply, I’ve even sorted them by the total number of words used in the phrase (i.e., 1-word, 2-word, 3-word phrases, etc.).

Coming up with generic anchor text can be difficult once you get beyond "click here" and "this site," so instead struggling to come up with new, fresh examples on your own, just download one of these lists and refer to it whenever you want to use a generic anchor text when linking to your site.

You'll Find All Three Formats of Generic Anchor Text Lists (.txt, CSV, PDF) At This Link

 I hope you have found this discussion helpful -- and enjoy your free downloads!

Since 2007 Rob Andrews has worked in the SEO and Content Marketing fields and is an established writer and trusted provider of thought-leadership for hundreds of SEO, advertising and marketing agencies worldwide. Since 2013 he has served as a managing Project Manager at Posirank.com, the leading SEO white label service provider.