Anchor Text Optimization: Best practices For Link Building

Did you know a few carefully chosen words in a hyperlink could once catapult your site to the top of Google? Anchor text, the clickable words in a link, was once the secret weapon behind countless SEO success stories.

But here’s the catch: what once worked like magic can now backfire. Google’s algorithms have grown sophisticated – and aggressive. Over-optimized anchor text can trigger penalties, tank rankings, or leave your link building efforts dead in the water. Many site owners unknowingly sabotage themselves by clinging to outdated anchor text strategies.

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly what anchor text is, why it still matters today, and how to optimize anchors the smart way. You’ll get expert tips, real-world examples, and a clear roadmap for building a backlink profile that boosts your SEO without setting off algorithmic alarms.

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink – usually underlined in blue by default. In HTML, it’s the text between the <a> tag, like in the example: <a href="https://www.example.com">Example Anchor Text</a>. Users see “Example Anchor Text” as the link. Anchor text tells people and search engines what the linked page is about. Clicking it takes you to the referenced page.

In the context of SEO, anchor text plays an important role in conveying the subject matter of the page being linked to. Search engines use anchor text as a hint about the content of the target page. A link’s anchor is essentially a label for another webpage.

For example, if many sites link to an article using the anchor “healthy smoothie recipes,” Google will associate that article with healthy smoothie recipes. Anchor text thus helps search engines understand relevance – it’s like crowdsourced context for the page.

Equally important, anchor text affects user experience. Descriptive anchors let readers know what to expect when they click a link. Phrases like

“download the SEO guide”

“compare pricing plans”

“click here.”

Good anchor text sets clear expectations, improving usability and trust.

In fact, Google’s own documentation advises using descriptive, concise text for links so that users (and Google) can easily make sense of your content.

In short, anchor text is a signal to both users and bots about what lies on the other side of a link.

Why anchor text matters in link building

In SEO, external link building refers to earning or creating links from other websites to yours. The anchor text of those inbound links can influence your search rankings. Google considers external backlinks as “votes of confidence” – and the anchor text of those links as an indicator of what your page is relevant for. As Google’s original founders noted, analyzing anchor text was a key breakthrough in determining a webpage’s topic and relevance.

Historically, anchor text was such a strong ranking factor that it spawned an era of anchor text manipulation. SEO professionals realized that if you could get dozens of links pointing to your page with the exact phrase you wanted to rank for, it often pushed you to the top of the SERPs.

For example, years ago if you wanted to rank a page for “outdoor clothing,” you could build a bunch of backlinks with “outdoor clothing” as the anchor text – and boom, first page rankings would follow. That’s how powerful anchor text used to be. It essentially told Google, “All these sites are literally labeling this page as ‘outdoor clothing,’ so it must be about that topic,” and Google would often comply by boosting the page’s rank.

However, as we’ll explore, this brute-force tactic doesn’t work anymore – it can actually backfire badly. But the reason anchor text still matters is that, in a natural scenario, it provides semantic context about your page. A hyperlink from a reputable site with relevant anchor text is a double vote: one for the page’s authority (the link itself), and one for its relevance (the anchor keywords).

For example, if Search Engine Journal links to your article about no-carb diets with the anchor “zero-carb diet guide,” that link passes authority and also signals to Google that your article is about zero-carb diet. That can help your ranking for related searches.

On the other hand, if all your external links just say “website” or “click here,” they’re not giving Google much clue about your content. The right anchors can therefore bolster your SEO by associating your site with key topics.

It’s worth noting that external anchor text is largely out of your direct control – you often can’t dictate what text another site uses to link to you. And Google knows this. Still, when you engage in intentional link building (through outreach, guest posts, PR, etc.), you usually do have some input on anchor text.

That’s where optimizing it comes in. Done right, it can improve your relevance for target keywords in a natural way. Done wrong, it can trip spam filters or even incur penalties. The sections ahead will delve into how to walk this fine line.

Types of anchor text in external links

Not all anchors are created equal. In external link building, SEOs categorize anchor text by how closely it relates to your target keywords or brand. Understanding these types will help you diversify your link profile and avoid an unnatural pattern. Here are the common types of anchor text:

Exact-match anchor text

An exact-match anchor is an anchor text that exactly matches a keyword you’re targeting.

In other words, the clickable text is precisely the keyword or phrase for which you want the linked page to rank.

For example, if the keyword is “blue sneakers,” an exact-match anchor would literally be blue sneakers (linking to your “blue sneakers” page). This was the classic SEO strategy: get other sites to link using your golden keyword as the anchor.

Exact anchors send a very strong relevancy signal for that specific term – sometimes too strong, as we’ll discuss in the context of spam. In moderation and appropriate contexts, an exact-match anchor tells Google that the linked page is about that exact topic.

Partial-match anchor text

A partial-match anchor includes the target keyword, but with additional words or variations around it. It’s not an exact one-to-one match, but it’s related.

For instance, “buy blue sneakers online” or “affordable blue sneakers” could be partial-match anchors for a “blue sneakers” page. The anchor contains the keyword “blue sneakers” but also other terms. Partial matches are a way to signal relevance while reading more naturally.

They might include longer phrases, synonyms, or contextual words. Because they’re more varied, partial anchors tend to look less manipulative than exact repeats of a keyword. They still help associate your content with the keyword, though perhaps not as strongly as an exact match.

In practice, most organically given links end up being partial or phrase matches rather than perfectly controlled exact text.

Branded anchor text

A branded anchor uses your brand name or website name as the anchor text.

For example, Nike linking to Nike’s homepage, or “Moz blog” linking to an article on Moz.com. Branded anchors are very natural, especially for companies that are well known.

In fact, many sites prefer to link with brand names as it’s straightforward and non-promotional. These anchors primarily reinforce your brand authority (and they’re great for building brand recognition), but they also contribute some topical relevance if your brand is closely tied to your niche.

For instance, a link that says “Ahrefs” inherently signals something about SEO tools (since that’s what Ahrefs is known for).

Generally, having a healthy proportion of branded anchors is a sign of a natural backlink profile. Most big websites have their brand name as the most common anchor text in their link profile.

Generic anchor text

Generic anchors

Generic anchors are non-descriptive words or phrases that don’t include any specific keywords or branding.

These are things like “click here”, “read more”, “this website”, or “learn more”. They say nothing about the content of the target page. In terms of SEO value, generic anchors are neutral at best – they don’t give Google context about your page.

A few generic links here and there are fine (and often unavoidable), but they’re a missed opportunity if overused. Too many “click here” links pointing to your site could also look suspiciously uniform (ironically, since they’re generic).

Plus, from a user perspective, a page full of “click here” links is poor for accessibility; descriptive text is always better for understanding. So while generic anchor text is common on the web, it’s not something you want a large percentage of your inbound links to consist of. Google’s guidance explicitly recommends using descriptive phrases instead of generic “click here” text.

Naked URL anchor text

A naked URL anchor is when the URL itself is the anchor text.

For example, a link that literally says “https://www.example.com” or “www.yourwebsite.com” as the clickable text. This often happens in citations, forum postings, or when someone just drops a link without formatting it. Naked URLs at least showcase your domain, which can have a branding effect. SEO-wise, they don’t contain keyword context (unless your domain name has keywords in it), but they are perfectly natural.

Many real-world backlinks are just naked URLs. Having some of your external links appear this way is normal and can diversify your anchor profile. It shows that people link to you in a variety of ways. Just don’t rely on naked URLs exclusively, because like generic anchors, they don’t give topical hints to search engines beyond whatever words are in the URL.

Anchor text in image links

Not all links are text – sometimes another site might link to you via an image (like a logo, infographic, or banner). In those cases, there is no visible text, but Google still gets an anchor: the image’s alt attribute is treated as the anchor text.

For example, if a blog posts your infographic and links the image to your site, and the image tag has alt="healthy smoothie recipes", Google will use

“healthy smoothie recipes”

as the anchor text for that link. This is why writing descriptive alt text for images is important for SEO – it doubles as anchor text when images link to pages.

If an image link has no alt text, Google might consider it an empty anchor (or use other cues, which isn’t ideal). So when building links via infographics or badges, ensure the embedding code includes a meaningful alt tag. It’s essentially your anchor text for that external link.

The evolution of anchor text as a ranking signal

Anchor text wouldn’t be such a hot topic if its importance had stayed constant.

In reality, Google’s treatment of anchor text has evolved drastically over the years. To optimize anchors effectively today, one must understand this history – from the heyday of exact-match link bombs, to the crackdowns that changed everything, to the nuanced approach search engines use now. Let’s walk through that evolution and where things stand today.

Early SEO: anchor text as a secret weapon

In Google’s early years (late 1990s into the 2000s), anchor text was like SEO gold. Google’s founders discovered that analyzing the words in links could greatly improve search quality.

Unlike on-page content (which site owners could stuff with keywords), anchor text was external and thus harder to manipulate at scale – at least initially. It became a reliable indicator of relevance: if dozens of sites linked to Page A with the anchor “best digital cameras,” chances are Page A was about digital cameras, and probably a decent resource on it (or why else would so many link that way?). Google heavily factored anchor text into rankings, so SEOs caught on and began leveraging it.

By the mid-2000s, link building and anchor text optimization were almost synonymous. Getting external sites to link to you was step one; getting them to use your target keywords in the link was step two.

If you nailed both, you could dominate the results. It wasn’t uncommon to see a top-ranking site have an unnaturally high proportion of its backlinks using the exact same anchor phrase – clear evidence of deliberate SEO. And for a while, it worked. The ranking boosts from keyword-rich anchors were so straightforward that even non-SEO-savvy businesses noticed.

A famous example was during the “Google bombing” fad: pranksters manipulated search results by creating many links with specific anchor text (like the classic case where a search for “miserable failure” led to a certain president’s biography – purely due to anchor text shenanigans).

In legitimate SEO, an oft-cited tactic was to ensure your most important inbound links used the exact term you wanted to rank for. That could propel you to #1, even if the on-page content was mediocre.

However, this era was sowing the seeds of its own demise. As more people gamed anchor text, the web began to fill with oddly repetitive, non-editorial links – which was the opposite of what Google wanted to reward. The initial success of anchor-based ranking was predicated on anchors being natural and uncontrived.

Once SEO agencies started buying or exchanging links en masse with identical keywords, the “anchor text signal” became increasingly noisy with spam. By the late 2000s, Google’s engineers were well aware that anchor text had turned from a pure vote of relevance into an easily manipulated commodity.

The Penguin era: crackdowns on over-optimized anchors

Google’s response to anchor text (and link) spam culminated in the Penguin update of April 2012. This algorithm update specifically targeted unnatural link patterns – and anchor text was front and center.

In fact, one of the primary ways Penguin identified manipulative link building was by analyzing anchor text distribution. Simply put, if a site’s backlinks were overloaded with the same few money keywords, it was a huge red flag. Real websites (especially big brands) naturally earn a mix of anchors – branded terms, URL anchors, some generic, some partial keywords.

By contrast, a site that had, say, 80% of its incoming links using the anchor “buy red cars online” was almost certainly trying to game the system.

Figure: Graph showing the percentage of inbound links with keyword-matching anchor text among sites penalized by Google’s Penguin update. Many penalized sites had 80–90% or more of their backlinks using identical or highly repetitive keyword anchors, an unnatural pattern. This illustrates how over-optimized anchor text profiles (far right of graph) were correlated with sites hit by Penguin.

When Penguin hit, the impact was dramatic. Websites that had ranked #1 thanks to aggressive exact-match link building plummeted overnight.

In many cases, their rankings dropped by dozens of positions or vanished entirely. Years of “anchor text SEO” backfired in one fell swoop. Google effectively turned off the value from those manipulative links and, in some cases, applied penalties that demoted the sites until they cleaned up their link profiles.

One case study that became infamous in SEO circles was J.C. Penney. In early 2011 (prior to Penguin, but amid manual crackdowns), this major retailer was outed for an elaborate link scheme. The company’s SEO agency had built thousands of links with exact-match anchors like “black dresses,” “area rugs,” “luggage sets,” etc., pointing to JCP’s category pages.

It worked for a while – JCPenney was ranking number one for a huge range of product keywords. But Google caught on (after a high-profile news exposé), and the site was hit with a penalty. Its rankings dropped by 50–70 spots for virtually all those lucrative terms. J.C. Penney had to scramble to remove or disavow the spammy links. After a few months and a lot of cleanup, Google lifted the penalty and their rankings slowly recovered. The lesson was clear: over-optimizing anchors can make your rankings soar, but it can also make them crash.

Penguin institutionalized that lesson across the board. Instead of relying on manual investigations or reports, Google’s algorithm automatically started devaluing and penalizing patterns of anchor text abuse.

One study at the time found that sites with an extremely high percentage of exact-match keyword anchors were the ones most likely to have been penalized by Penguin. In the aftermath, SEO practitioners had to radically rethink their link building. Tactics like mass article submissions, low-quality directories, or blog networks – all of which often yielded lots of identical anchor links – became virtually toxic.

After 2012, the new best practice was anchor text diversification. Rather than trying to get 100 links all saying “best cheap smartphones,” SEOs began aiming for a natural mix: some brand anchors (e.g. “TechWorld magazine”), some partial matches (“cheap smartphone review”), and plenty of benign anchors. The idea was to erase any obvious “footprint” of manipulation. Anchor text strategy shifted from maximizing keyword density to mimicking what would occur organically.

In short, Penguin taught the industry that less is more – less exact-match, more variety, and more caution.

Google didn’t stop with Penguin. They continued refining their algorithms to neutralize link spam.

For instance, in 2019 Google announced that it would start treating the nofollow attribute as a hint and introduced rel=”ugc” and rel=”sponsored” – signaling a more nuanced approach to link evaluation. By 2023, Google’s Gary Illyes (a Search Analyst) stated that Google needs “very few links” to rank a page and that over the years they’ve made links less important.

This reflects how far we’ve come from the wild-west era of link spam. Google has gotten much better at identifying and ignoring unnatural links and anchors, so much so that they explicitly downplay backlinks as a ranking factor now.

In 2024, Google even edited their official ranking documentation: it used to say “links are an important factor in determining relevancy,” but was changed to “links are a factor” – notably removing the word “important”.

However, what Google says and what Google does are often two very different things...

Modern perspective: value and limits of anchor text

Today, anchor text is best viewed as one of many signals that search algorithms consider – useful, but not a magic bullet.

Google has become far more sophisticated in semantic analysis. With advances like the Hummingbird update and neural matching, Google can often grasp what a page is about from the content itself, even if anchor texts pointing to it aren’t keyword-rich.

Context matters more now: Google looks at the words around the link (co-occurrences) and the overall theme of the linking site, not just the anchor text alone.

In other words, a link from a highly relevant website – even with a generic anchor – might carry more weight than a link from an irrelevant site that forced in an exact-match keyword anchor.

Modern Google is also smarter at detecting manipulation. Thousands of “optimized” anchors won’t help if they’re coming from low-quality or unrelated sites; Google will either discount those links or, worse, penalize you if it appears you orchestrated them.

Quality of links trumps the specific anchor text they carry. A single backlink from a respected, authoritative site (even with a benign anchor like your brand name) can easily outperform 100 backlinks from dubious sources that all say “best {Your Keyword}”.

This is not to say anchor text has zero importance. It still provides additional context. In competitive niches, a few well-placed keyword anchors can give you a relevancy edge – as long as everything else is in place. There’s ongoing debate in the SEO community about how far to go with anchor text optimization in 2025. Some experts point out that they continue to see benefits from carefully using keyword anchors.

In fact, a large-scale study by Ahrefs a few years ago (across ~16,000 keywords) observed a strong correlation between higher Google rankings and the presence of exact-match or partial-match anchors pointing to the page. In their analysis, pages ranking at the top tended to have more backlinks with keyword-rich anchors than lower-ranking pages. This suggests that, all else being equal, anchor text can still move the needle.

However, even that study cautioned against chasing anchor text as a standalone tactic. The same data showed that when you control for overall link authority, the correlation weakened – implying that having a robust backlink profile matters far more than just stuffing keywords in anchors.

Or as the study concluded: focusing on a single ranking factor (like anchor text) will get you nowhere if you ignore the bigger picture.

The prevailing viewpoint among most modern SEO professionals is that anchor text should be optimized prudently, but not obsessively. Think of it as the icing on the cake: it can make good content perform a little better, but it cannot turn a bad page into a winner on its own.

There are still opposing schools of thought – a minority of practitioners in black-hat forums might argue that with the right tactics you can push rankings via exact anchors (temporarily, at least), while mainstream experts warn that those gains are short-lived and risks are high.

Generally, if you’re sticking to Google’s guidelines and aiming for long-term success, you’ll lean toward a conservative anchor text strategy.

To sum up the evolution: once a primary ranking lever, anchor text is now a secondary signal that works best in harmony with content relevance and link quality. Abuse it, and Google will simply tune it out or penalize you; use it wisely, and it’s still a helpful relevance cue.

In the next section, we’ll cover how to get that balance right with concrete best practices.

Best practices for optimizing anchor text in external links

Optimizing anchor text is about sending the right signals without raising red flags. It’s a delicate balance between relevance and naturalness. Here are the key best practices to follow for external link anchor text:

Ensure relevance and context

Always make sure the anchor text makes sense in context and relates to the content of the page you’re linking to. An anchor should indicate what the user will find after clicking. Google’s own documentation emphasizes that good anchor text is relevant to both the current page and the target page.

If you have control over a backlink’s anchor (say you’re contributing a guest post), choose wording that aligns with your page’s topic.

For example, if your page is about marathon training tips, an anchor like “marathon training plan” or “training for a marathon” is relevant; an anchor like “great info” would be vague, while “buy running shoes” would be off-topic.

Relevant anchors not only help with SEO but also prevent user confusion. The person reading should feel the link is a logical next step, not a non-sequitur. A good mental check is to read the sentence with the anchor text by itself – does it give a hint of the linked page’s subject? If yes, you’re on the right track.

Additionally, pay attention to the surrounding text. The words immediately before and after the link contribute context. Search engines look at these neighboring words as “co-occurrence” signals.

So, ensure the link is placed in a semantically relevant sentence.

For instance,

“For a detailed marathon training plan, check out this guide,”

“Click here for a guide,”

stuck at the end of an unrelated paragraph. By anchoring in a contextually rich way, you reinforce the relevance and avoid the appearance of keyword-dropping.

Keep anchors concise and descriptive

Brevity is a virtue when it comes to anchor text. A good anchor is usually a short phrase, not a run-on sentence. We recommend roughly 2-5 words for most anchor texts. There’s no hard rule on length, but overly long anchors can look spammy or dilute the relevance.

For example, “guide to running your first marathon injury-free” is probably longer than necessary as an anchor – “marathon training guide” would suffice and stay on point.

The anchor should function like a headline or label for the target page. That means using descriptive keywords (not necessarily exact-match, but clear in meaning). If the page is a product page for noise-cancelling headphones, an anchor like “wireless noise-cancelling headphones” is descriptive and concise.

Avoid filler words in anchors – e.g., instead of “check out our article about different types of running shoes,” just “different types of running shoes” is sharper.

Google actually advises keeping link text reasonably concise and specific. This makes it easier for users to grasp the context at a glance, and it concentrates the SEO signal on the key terms.

In practice, a tight anchor also leaves less room for error; you’re less likely to slip into awkward or spammy phrasing if you limit the word count.

One more tip: Front-load important words in the anchor.

If your anchor is slightly longer, try to have the core terms at the beginning. Studies on link usability show that users often scan the linked text, so starting with the most informative words (e.g., “running shoes review – best models” instead of “Check out our review of running shoes”) can improve both usability and SEO.

Diversify your anchor text profile

Using the same anchor text over and over is a recipe for trouble. Not only will it look fishy to search engines, it also ignores the reality that websites reference others in many different ways. Aim to mix up your anchors across all external links you build or earn. This means incorporating all the types we discussed: branded, generic, partial match, etc.

If you guest-post on five different sites, don’t give yourself the exact same keyword anchor in each article – alternate between maybe one exact, a couple partial variations, one brand name, one URL, and so on. A diverse anchor set is a strong signal that your links are organic. Google’s Penguin algorithm specifically hunts for unnatural anchor patterns, so you want to avoid any discernible pattern at all!

What does diversity look like in practice? Let’s say your target keyword is “email marketing software.” Out of 10 external backlinks you might get:

• 2 use exact or nearly exact anchor (“email marketing software” or “email marketing tool”),

• 2-3 use branded anchors or the company name,

• 2 use partial or long-tail variants (“best software for email campaigns”),

• 2 use generic anchors (“learn more here”, “website”),

• 1-2 use the naked URL or the product name if that’s distinct.

That’s just an illustrative mix, not a formula. The point is to avoid having 8 or 9 out of 10 all saying “email marketing software.”

In fact, for most well-established sites, branded anchors tend to be the largest chunk of their profile by far. SEOs often cite big brands as a model – for example, Amazon’s top anchors are things like “Amazon.com”, “customer reviews”, “check price”, etc., with very few exact keywords.

If you emulate that natural diversity, you’ll stay under the radar. One SEO expert, Kai Cromwell, suggests aiming roughly for a 50%+ share of branded anchors, a good portion of topic-related phrases, and only a small fraction (say ~10% or less) of direct keyword anchors. The exact ratios aren’t gospel, but the overarching idea is: blend in. Don’t let any single anchor text dominate your link profile unnaturally.

Through 4+ years of testing with 70+ e-commerce brands, here's the strategy that consistently delivers results:

1. Build 50% of your links to your homepage using branded anchors
2. Build 25% to collection/category pages using relevant keyword anchors
3. Build 25% to informational blog posts that internally link to your money pages

This distribution naturally mimics how websites are typically linked to on the internet.

─ Kai Cromwell

SEO Coach at Daily Mentor

Avoid generic “click here” anchors when possible

While diversity is important, it shouldn’t come from an over-reliance on completely generic anchors. From an optimization standpoint, anchors like “click here” or “this article” do nothing to describe your content.

Yes, having a few of these is normal and fine – sometimes webmasters will link in a sentence like “For more information, click here.” But you generally don’t want to waste your valuable backlinks on empty anchors if you have a say.

If you’re conducting outreach or providing a suggested link to someone mentioning your site, encourage them (politely) to use a descriptive phrase instead of just “here.” It can be something as simple as your brand name or a topic reference.

For example, instead of

“for more information on our services, click here,”

“learn more in our digital marketing services guide.”

The latter makes for a much richer anchor.

There’s also evidence that generic anchors don’t carry much weight in Google’s algorithm.

Google’s guidelines explicitly mention to avoid generic anchor text and to be descriptive. Overusing generic anchors might not directly hurt you (it’s not like keyword stuffing), but it’s a missed opportunity at best.

At worst, if all your external links were generic, it could look like you’re trying to hide something (since typically, natural linking produces at least some brand or keyword references).

So by all means have a few “read more” or “website” anchors if they come naturally, but try to steer the majority of your backlinks toward anchors that add informational value.

Prioritize natural wording over keyword stuffing

This might be the golden rule of anchor text optimization: if it doesn’t sound natural, don’t force it. Backlink anchors should flow within the content that’s linking to you. If an anchor feels awkward or out-of-place in a sentence, that’s a sign it might be artificially placed or overly optimized – exactly the impression you want to avoid.

For instance, say you’re building a link to your site about Italian cooking.

An unnatural, stuffed anchor might read:

“Many people want to <a href="#">learn Italian cooking online free recipes</a> these days.”

No one writes like that! A natural alternative could be:

“Many people are looking to <a href="#">learn Italian cooking online</a> these days.”

The second anchor is still relevant (it contains “learn Italian cooking online”), but it doesn’t cram in extra keywords in a clunky way. The goal is that if someone removed the hyperlink, the sentence would still read normally.

Never shoehorn keywords

into every link just because you think it’ll help rankings. Google is very capable of detecting when anchors are being manipulated. If the same exact phrase appears across dozens of sites unnaturally, it’s a dead giveaway. As mentioned earlier, Google even considers “links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases” to be a spam indicator.

In other words, if you’re syndicating content (like press releases or article placements) with keyword-rich anchors, that’s explicitly against Google’s guidelines. A natural press mention might link your company name or just include a URL – it typically wouldn’t link “best affordable headphones” straight to your product page unless it was truly editorial. So keep anchors in proportion to the content. It’s better to have a slightly less “SEO-perfect” anchor that’s natural, than an over-optimized anchor that sticks out.

A good practice is to vary the wording even for similar keywords.

If you need to target a certain concept, rotate through different phrasings.

For example, instead of always using “cheap smartphones,” mix in “affordable smartphones” or “budget-friendly phones” when appropriate.

Not only does this help with naturalness, but it can also capture semantic variations of your keyword (which is great for long-tail rankings). Modern search algorithms appreciate semantic diversity – you don’t need the exact same keyword every time to build relevance.

Finally, remember that the absence of keyword anchors won’t doom your rankings if your content and overall SEO are strong.

I once intentionally shifted a link building campaign to use 90% branded or URL anchors (after previously overdoing keywords). The result? Rankings improved because the links were coming from better content and sites, even though they weren’t keyword-rich. The site gained trust and still climbed for its target keywords, proving that a natural approach can beat a micro-managed one.

Align anchor strategy with quality content and sites

This is a broader best practice that ties in with anchor text: the context of the link matters as much as the anchor itself. A “perfect” anchor text on a spammy site won’t help (and can hurt), whereas a decent anchor on a high-quality, relevant site will carry weight.

Always prioritize getting links from websites that are topically related and authoritative in your niche. If those links come, the anchors will often take care of themselves – people will naturally use either your brand or a contextual keyword. When you do have influence over the anchor, favor placements where the linking site’s content is closely related to yours.

For example, a guest article about “10 Marathon Training Mistakes to Avoid” on a running blog is an ideal spot to link to your marathon training plan page, perhaps with a partial-match anchor like “marathon training plan.” The relevance of the surrounding content amplifies the value of that anchor text.

On the flip side, avoid the temptation to insert keyword anchors in non-relevant pages just because you can. A random forum profile link with “best VPN service 2025” as your anchor, dropped on a cooking forum, is not going to fool Google – the disconnect between anchor and site topic is glaring. Worse, it could be flagged as a manipulative link.

Always ask: Would this link (and anchor text) exist if SEO wasn’t a factor?

If the answer is no, reconsider it. The best anchors come from genuinely relevant references. Sometimes that means your anchor text might be less “optimized” (maybe it’s just your site name mentioned as a source), but in the grand scheme, a natural citation from a high-quality site beats an artificial keyword link from a weak site every time.

Monitor and adjust your anchor text mix

Optimizing anchor text isn’t a one-and-done task – it requires ongoing monitoring of your backlink profile. Use SEO tools (like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush) to analyze your anchor text distribution for incoming links. These tools will show you the breakdown of anchors pointing to your site. Keep an eye on the percentages.

If you notice, for example, that 30% of all your external links use one exact phrase, that’s a sign to dial things back and diversify.

Also, watch for any spikes caused by new link building campaigns. It’s easy to get carried away during an outreach push and accidentally create a glut of similar anchors.

By monitoring, you can catch potentially harmful patterns early.

If you do find an imbalance (say, way too many keyword anchors), you can adjust your strategy for future links. Perhaps focus the next campaign on branded outreach or content that naturally yields different anchor terms.

In extreme cases – like if you hired a bad SEO agency in the past that built lots of spammy exact-match anchors – you might even consider contacting webmasters to tweak or remove links, or disavowing links that are clearly toxic.

Google’s algorithms have become real-time enough that as you improve your link profile, you can recover from past over-optimization issues over time.

In summary, think of anchor text optimization as gradual gardening. You’re pruning here, planting a variety there, and keeping things balanced. The best practices above boil down to a simple principle: anchor text should serve users first, and search engines in a supporting role.

If you follow that, you’ll naturally incorporate relevancy and avoid the worst pitfalls of over-optimization.

Common mistakes to avoid with anchor text

Even experienced SEOs can slip up with anchor text, especially when aggressively pursuing rankings. Here are some common mistakes in external link anchor optimization that you should be careful to avoid:

Using too many exact-match keyword anchors

This is mistake #1, and it’s exactly what Google’s Penguin algorithm hammered sites for. While it might be tempting to have every link to your page say “buy [product name] online” for that immediate relevancy boost, overdoing exact-match anchors is dangerous. It creates an unnatural link profile that screams manipulation.

Remember, in a natural scenario, not everyone will link to you with the same words. If 70% of your backlinks all have an identical keyword phrase, that’s a huge red flag. The penalty risk aside, excessive exact matches can even be counterproductive – Google may simply ignore many of those links because they appear spammy.

It’s far better to have a mix, where your target keyword anchors are just one slice of the pie. A good rule of thumb some SEOs use is to keep exact-match anchors in a low single-digit percentage of your total links (there’s no official number, but “as low as reasonably possible” is a mindset).

In any case, do not rely on one “money” anchor text to carry your SEO. It needs to be part of a diversified approach. Websites that learned this the hard way (like JCPenney and many others in the early 2010s) spent months cleaning up thousands of keyword anchors to get back in Google’s good graces.

Relying on generic or empty anchors for key links

On the flip side, using ultra-generic anchors everywhere (“click here”, “website”, or no anchor text at all in the case of image links without alt text) is a missed opportunity – and can look like a pattern if overused.

We mentioned earlier that generic anchors don’t convey context. If an important backlink (say, from a news article or a top blog in your industry) links to your homepage with just “website” as the anchor, neither users nor Google get any idea what your site offers from that link.

Now, you often can’t control how others link to you in editorial pieces, but when you can influence it, don’t default to generic text. Sometimes web editors will literally ask, “What anchor text would you like for this link?” (for example, if you’re contributing a quote or data to an article). Take advantage of that by suggesting something relevant and concise, rather than saying “whatever you think is best” and ending up with “click here”.

Another concern is empty anchors. These occur if there’s a hyperlink with no visible text (or an image link with missing alt text). Google can fall back on other clues (like the page title of the URL) in those cases, but it’s not ideal.

Avoid creating such links yourself, and if you spot an inbound link to your site that appears as a blank anchor (for example, some directory listings might accidentally do this), consider reaching out to ask for a fix. It’s a small thing, but enough empty anchors could theoretically be seen as a low-effort link scheme. At minimum, they just don’t help your cause.

The bottom line: strive for descriptive anchors whenever possible, and treat every good external link as a chance to reinforce your topic or brand. Don’t squander those chances by letting them all become generic.

Inserting optimized links in syndicated or low-quality content

One of the tactics that got many SEOs in trouble is distributing content (like press releases, article marketing, or guest posts on sketchy sites) with keyword-stuffed anchors. Google explicitly calls out “links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites” as an unnatural linking practice.

If you’re publishing the same press release on 100 sites, and it contains a few “dofollow” links back to your site with exact keywords, that’s seen as an attempt to build links en masse. The recommendation from Google is actually to nofollow such links, treating press releases like paid ads.

The point here is that Google is wary of self-created links in content you control. This doesn’t mean you can’t do guest posting or PR – it means when you do, don’t over-optimize the anchors and ensure the content is truly high-quality and relevant.

Avoid the trap of getting your link on any site that will have you, with a juicy keyword anchor, regardless of context. Links embedded in spun articles, low-quality blogs, or networks solely built for link exchange will hurt more than help – especially if the anchors stand out as the only reason those posts exist.

For example, stuffing a paragraph with something like:

“Our <a href="#">luxury Italian leather handbags</a> are the best – if you want <a href="#">luxury handbags on sale</a>, visit our site”

is a glaring spam signal. Not only are those anchors excessively optimized, but the surrounding text is clearly just there to host the links.

Google’s algorithms (and manual reviewers) can spot this from a mile away. If a site’s sole purpose is to host content with keyword anchors (sometimes called an article farm or PBN), any links from it, no matter the anchor, are risky.

In short, anchor text won’t save a bad link. A good link in a relevant piece will be beneficial even with a neutral anchor, whereas a bad link in junk content won’t be redeemed by having a keyword anchor – it’s likely to be disregarded or penalized either way.

Neglecting anchor text diversity and overdoing one style

This mistake is basically the inverse of the “diversify” best practice: some webmasters, after Penguin, swung too far and used only branded anchors, or only naked URLs, thinking that would keep them safe.

But even that can look unnatural if it’s overdone.

A healthy link profile has a bit of everything. If 95% of your external links all say your brand name, that’s not inherently penalized, but it might indicate you’re only getting links you placed yourself or through PR, and not naturally from content.

Ideally, there’s a distribution. A telltale sign of manipulation used to be too many exact matches; today a potential sign could be too uniform of any kind of anchor.

For instance, if every anchor is branded, one might suspect you’re actively asking everyone to only use your brand (or that you have no content-based links, only references). Google’s algorithms try to gauge what’s typical for a given niche or query space.

If your profile is an outlier (even in being all branded or all generic), it could raise algorithmic eyebrows.

The remedy is straightforward: mix it up. Don’t fear using a keyword here or there, just do it in moderation.

Conversely, don’t stick rigidly to one safe anchor if opportunities arise to get a more descriptive one.

Sometimes I see site owners so scared of Penguin that in guest posts they only link their homepage with the site name every time, even when a deeper page with a contextual anchor would make more sense. That’s over-correction. You can use descriptive anchors – just do so judiciously and in the right context.

If you catch yourself or an SEO agency building links and repeating the same pattern, stop and recalibrate. A real-world link profile is messy and varied. Embrace that, and you’ll avoid the trap of monoculture anchors.

Case study: Anchor text over-optimization and recovery

To see these principles in action, let’s examine a timeless case study that illustrates the impact of anchor text strategy: the J.C. Penney link scheme and its aftermath.

This example, though from 2011, remains a cautionary tale that SEO professionals still talk about – because the core lesson is highly relevant today.

Background

In late 2010, JCPenney (a large U.S. department store) was ranking #1 for a stunning array of competitive keywords – from “living room furniture” to “dresses” to “area rugs.”

This raised eyebrows, because JCPenney’s on-page content wasn’t particularly special on those topics. An investigation by the New York Times revealed that JCP’s SEO firm had been engaging in an elaborate link-building scheme.

They secured thousands of backlinks from hundreds of different websites, many of them low-quality or completely unrelated to retail. The common thread was anchor text: these links had meticulously chosen anchors like “casual dresses,” “greetings cards,” “tablecloths” – precisely matching JCPenney’s product categories.

Some links were on forum comment spam, others on thin content sites, even footer links on unrelated websites – but all with keyword-rich anchors pointing to JCP’s pages.

The fallout

In February 2011, Google (prompted by the expose) took manual action against JCPenney. Virtually overnight, JCPenney’s pages fell from the top of the search results.

Searches that used to list JCPenney at #1 now saw it around #70 or not at all. The penalty was broad and devastating: being effectively invisible on Google for popular terms likely cost the company significant revenue.

Importantly, it wasn’t just the sheer number of links that got them in trouble – it was the blatant over-optimization of anchor text. Google’s webspam team (led then by Matt Cutts) made it clear that the exact-match anchors across unrelated sites were a major factor in flagging the issue. This was a pre-Penguin manual penalty, but it foreshadowed what Penguin would later do algorithmically.

JCPenney, upon being penalized, fired their SEO agency and began damage control. They had to contact webmasters or use the disavow tool to eliminate the bad links. They also stopped the aggressive link building.

After about 90 days, Google lifted the penalty. JCPenney’s rankings slowly climbed back, but not to the same dominating positions as before – which is telling.

Post-recovery, JCP had to compete on a more level playing field, relying on genuine SEO merit rather than artificial anchor text influence.

Key lessons: This case study underscores a few points:

• Anchor text can trigger penalties: JCP’s strategy “worked” for a while, boosting rankings, but it accumulated a profile that was clearly artificial. When uncovered, the penalty was directly tied to those manipulative anchors. Google explicitly looked at anchor text patterns as evidence of a link scheme.

• Recovery is possible by cleaning up anchors/links: Once penalized, the path to redemption was to remove or disavow the spammy, keyword-stuffed links. JCP had to practically strip out the very anchors that once helped it rank. Only after the anchor text distribution became more natural (i.e., those links were gone) did Google trust the site again. This mirrors many Penguin-era recoveries, where companies had to drastically dilute their anchor text concentration to recover rankings.
• Sustainable SEO vs. short-term gains: JCPenney enjoyed top rankings for months, perhaps over a year, thanks to black-hat anchor tactics. But the reckoning wiped that out and then some, causing negative press and loss of traffic. The case is often cited by SEOs when explaining to executives why not to chase quick wins with exact-match link spam. The short-term benefit was far outweighed by the long-term cost. It’s a “live by the sword, die by the sword” scenario.

Modern relevance

Even though this happened over a decade ago, the principle remains: If your backlink profile is unnaturally heavy on a few money anchors, you’re walking on thin ice.

Today, Google might algorithmically ignore many of those links before it even hits a penalty threshold, but the risk of a penalty or demotion is still there for egregious cases. Numerous other brands – Overstock.com (penalized in 2011 for edu-site link schemes with scholarship anchors), Expedia (allegedly penalized in 2014 for advertorial links with keyword anchors), and more – have faced similar fates.

It’s not just an issue for big brands either; smaller sites get caught by Penguin updates all the time for trying the exact-match anchor trick.

In a positive spin, what JCPenney went through also highlighted how to do things right. After the penalty, SEO experts advised JCP (and companies in general) to focus on earning links from relevant, authoritative sites – even if those came with branded or generic anchors.

For instance, a mention in a New York Times article like “According to JCPenney spokesperson…” is infinitely more valuable than 100 junk blog links saying “buy Samsonite luggage online.”

The case study thus illustrates both the wrong way and the right way: don’t over-optimize anchors, but rather secure truly good links and the anchors will naturally take care of themselves.