How To Optimize Anchor Text Effectively In 2024

According to statistics from the SEO Guru Neil Patel, backlinks contribute as the most essential factor to a website’s ranking. Getting backlinks from multiple websites to your website is no less important than posting content that is ‘from the users to the users’.

As a seasoned SEO analyst, I have experienced it myself. Backlinks coupled with effective anchor text placements and valuable content, can do wonders for your website.

While the backlinks to your website drive more traffic which, by the way, is good, there is certainly more to it. It helps Google identify your website as legit and boosts the domain authority (DA) of your website. It gives your website a vote from the other websites that have good DA.

Irrelevancy in your anchor text and the web page it’s linked to can cause higher bounce rates. These high bounce rates may cause an unsettled ranking of your website on the Google search engine. There are ways to help skip the fuss and improve your ranking through anchor text optimization.

But before we dive into the how-to part of this article, let’s understand what’s anchor text.

Elaborating Anchor Text

A different-looking text in a pool of text that upon clicking leads the users to a different website or another page of the same website.

In the first line of this article ‘SEO Guru Neil Patel’ is an anchor text. The anchor text can be multiple. These are the types of anchor text:

• Generic: Anchor text like ‘click here’, and ‘link’ are generic anchor texts. They don’t help Google know about the topic in the link
• Branded: Those anchor texts that include the name of the brand or a company in them. For instance,
• Exact match: Anchor texts that exactly include the primary keyword of the linked page. ‘Fastest car in the world’ for a page targeting exactly this keyword
• Broad match: The anchor text that incompletely includes the primary keyword. Best internet service providers for cable TV and internet providers
• Naked: The URL of the website serving as an anchor text is a naked anchor text. Like www.google.com

Now that you have registered what is anchor text, let’s go through some tips that can help you rank better through optimized anchor/link text.

Anchor Text Narrative

Recall the time when you tried to incorporate an anchor text that wasn’t directly related to the topic. Yeah, I reckon it might have ended up bad. I happened to go through the same, and once the page was live, that backlink increased the bounce rate and my website’s ranking was affected.

So, what do you do when you are through the same scenario?

Google loves the content that is natural and isn’t out of the place.

Your anchor text narrative for your ranking is the same as the water is for a fish. Keep this in mind, that readers are dumb. You have to guide them step-by-step through every single thing.

Before placing your anchor text, you need to create a context that is related to your anchor text and blends smoothly like a knife through the butter with the topic.

In this way, the readers will be aware of what they are about to visit and won’t bounce off the page owing to the unexpected redirection that they didn’t even want to engage with.

Avoid Using Generic Keywords

Generic keywords don’t do any good to your website’s ranking. You might receive the traffic but that would be futile because the users that are visiting your website likely won’t be interested.

Users and the search engine, both will have trouble finding out what that page is about the anchor text is backlinking to. You will be waiting for the results that are never supposed to come.

You want your anchor text to entice the relevant users to click. Remember the ‘relevant’ users. There’s no harm if some of the browsers come and bounce off but if a big chunk of them do, your site’s ranking will be affected.

The solution? Use descriptive anchor texts that can pretty much clarify what that backlink page is going to be about for the users. Not to forget, include keywords in them.

Not to forget, make sure to dodge the fuss of internet problems when doing extensive keyword research. On such an account, I use Windstream Internet. It is termed one of the reliable ISPs in the US with flexible internet plans, a safe internet network, and responsive Customer Service.

Quality Over Quantity

1. So, here’s the thing. Google earns money by making the user experience good. The more users use the search engine, the more the search engine will make. And the search engine is termed good only when it fetches relevant and quality results.

The same happens for the anchor text and their backlinks. Too many is not fine. Whenever the bots find that a site is using too many backlinks, it’s a warning red flag for them and potentially the website will be penalized by Google.

So, it’s best to avoid:

• Overmuch reciprocal links
• Buying/selling links
• Guest posting schemes with keyword stuffing

While this shady business isn’t liked by Google, there is another part of the backlinks strategy that Google doesn’t appreciate. So, no desirable website ranking.

That other part includes inferior-quality links with a nominal number but keywords over-stuffed anchor texts, ads that pass link equity, bookmark site links, and links in the header or footers of multiple sites among others are not recommended by the search engine.

The Bottom Line?

The ranking of your website is substantive. I know it takes significant effort and that too with consistency but the reward is even sweeter. The ROI is great and the anchor text is one of the judgmental parts of it. So, make sure to use my proven tips in building quality backlinks that will help your website rank on the Google search engine.

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