Anchor text in 2014!!?

There's nothing about anchor text diversity. Nothing.

Google spits out something, and by the time it gets passed from
one seo guru to joe blow, it gets twisted 3 ways from Sunday.

I have no clue as to why this is still such a big myth.

Two things about anchor. Don't over optimize in forum sigs,
like "best in the world numero uno champion carrot slicer," and don't
use your keywords as a linked username to your website when doing
blog-like commenting.

That's it. Why on earth would you NOT use keywords in a friggin link?
Makes no sense...absolutely no sense.

Paul

This is exactly what i thought.
i was hearing that the link itself should be URL and the page it links to should then be optimised. again, when hearing this, although true to a point, i did think the lack of keywords within anchor text was ridiculous..

thanks for putting my mind at ease with this!

Google knows what the page is about so a url anchor should be enough sod messing around with anchor text who knows if its a red flag or not to google and each to their own we all have different ideas and views on backlinks but I did see this from a pretty solid marketer today.. Learning From The World's Biggest Blackhat SEO + Massive SEO Shift - SEO Traffic Hacks by Terry Kyle

Hi,
Can you please explain the reason the why i have to beware of this.

If your my competition I highly recommend you only use the following types of anchor-text:

• click here
• subscribe
• this site
• found this site
• good stuff
• etc...

I think when you are playing a game of deception you can get paranoid about your actions. Watching others get caught in the game creates analysis of every nuance of the failed gamers to try to learn from their mistakes. Many gamers are paranoid about perceived over optimization of anchor text.

In my case, I've never understood how avoiding actual linking keywords that you need to rank for was going to work effectively.

If someone wants to rank a guitar site for Ibanez guitars, can they really link to that from 25 different relevant high pr pages on 25 different relevant domains and never once use "Ibanez guitars" as anchor text and still rank well?

Conversely if they use nothing but anchor text of "Ibanez guitars" all 25 times, does that constitute over optimization of anchor text ? If a competitor rats you out and triggers a manual review, does the reviewer get fooled by anchor text diversity?

I think people use the diversity game plan to emulate what they think is a natural linking pattern out of caution or fear, but I wonder if it comes at the expense of ranking. And this issue is important since manufactured quality links in volume can be time consuming and or costly. Every link needs to count.

I think it's about "link earning" now, not link building, but if you are planting links, diversify them, google knows when you are gaming them because they watch what the "gamers" are doing, so if you look like one you'll get caught up in the mix and filtered out; it's a balancing act going grey hat.

It's also about getting quality links now, not quantity, couple that with getting "referral links", i.e. think of building links as getting referrals not just passing link-juice, so that's when you would use your "click here" or use your Name or Brand Name for anchor text.

It used to be you would get any backlink possible, now IMO, you should (and actually CAN) "build it and they will come", of course "building it" means a ton of work like paid marketing, giveaways, newsletters, social, basically doing everything that has nothing to do with SEO right? Except now it all IS SEO!

As you said, Now Google can penalize sites that have a large amount of over-optimized anchor text. So the best way to avoid any penalty would be to mix your anchors up, and make your site backlink profile look maximally natural.

This is how you can achieve that:

1. The first thing you should do to avoid anchor text misuse is to figure out where you are standing. The easiest way to do that is to use any link analysis tool (there are lots of them on the market: free and paid). These apps will let you see your anchor text distribution.

2. While your domains anchor text distribution is important, Penguin can also hit specific landing pages that have been over-optimized. So you need to check anchor text for each page in particular.

3. When done, work out a natural link distribution strategy. As anchor text you may use:

• Brand name/Brand-keyword hybrid (Mortgage calculator Zillow)
• Exact match ("mortgage calculator")
• Partial and broad match ("calculate your mortgage")
• Non-descriptive (click here, read more, Details)
• URLs (Example Domain, example.com, Example.com, EXAMPLE.COM, Example Domain.)

4. Apply these anchors to your links. That's the most challenging part of the process. As you will will have to contact owners/webmasters of the sites your links are placed on and ask them to change the anchors; disavow links with spammy anchors; and (the most important) remake your link building and link earning strategies with the consideration of all the above mentioned factors.

Just have a look on this, you will get idea which sort of anchor text distribution is working now: SEO Link Building after Google Penguin: Reality of Anchor Text Distribution - allSEOmarketing Dubai, UAE

[natural] Diversity INCLUDES the [natural] usage of proper anchor text, naturally

The most highly prized links to obtain now are given freely and voluntarily by other site owners (not for payment or prize). These 'editorial' links are given by the blogger who genuinely likes your site and wants to recommend it to others. Assuming you can get editorial backlinks from other sites, then you are going to do well with Google. But, if you have to do your own backlinking, from blogs, blog comments and forum signatures, then just try to imitate the words a blogger might use when backlinking to your site. Most likely, they will not use the 'click here' or overly optimized keywords to descibe your site, but will actually state the name of a specific page (such as the page title) or in some way describe the page in the link. Don't be afraid to use many words in your backlink, not just your targeted keyword/phrase as this makes the backlink look more natural.

Here's the anchor text distribution that I strive for and I'm getting great results:

- 25% URL anchor variations (www.site.com, http://site.com, http://www.site.com/...)
- 25% Brand (Site, site, SITE...)
- 5% exact keyword and long tail (dog training, best dog training tips, where to train your dog)
- 20% synonyms (canine obedience, puppy care, ...)
- 20% topic (pet research, animal guides)
- 5% misc (click here, read more...)

The big one that many people aren't taking advantage of these days is synonyms. When you use synonym anchors, you're not only ranking for the synonym, but also you're giving credit to the word its equivalent to, without having to risk over-optimization. It gives you much more leeway.

How was kind of anchor text like this - Shoes, Buy shoes online, Online shoes shop and other. If we have much back link like this would be penalize by Google ?

I heard that 80% of search terms are brand new.. When you use google planner, those keywords aren't brand new. They have all kinda of data on them. If you build too much with the words you find in googles spy oops I mean planner.. You make it easier for them to sniff out. Otherwise, yes do build links with your target keyword but also understand relevance and google suggests words.

The key is to really mix things up, use Urls, Generic anchor texts, brand anchor texts and kw as anchor text

It is better to use keyword phrases than username.

I use this technique to optimize my sites and it works for me

Follow what @DiggitySEO said. I have done plenty of work after Penguin/Panda and this was the same conclusion I had come up with.

Take a look at some of your link profiles in Webmaster tool of sites with completely natural back links and anchors.

Take that profile of anchors and scale it up.

I would definitely recommend varying your anchor text. Use your url, brand name, your name, some keywords.

Take a look at the anchor text profiles of authoratative sites in your niche on majesticseo or similar link analysis tool. That will give you an idea of the variety and composition of the anchor text profile that Google is happy to rank highly.

band's name keywords : 40%
money keywords : 10%
naked url : what ever you want
non optimised ancho texts like " here" read more" etc .. : 20 %
so the idea became clear right now !

Hey there,

I've got a couple ranked videos and sites but lately its been very hard for me to rank. Becuase of all of these algorithm updates, the anchor text percentages that I used no longer work. Anyone have any tips or advice. For exmple what percent of my anchor text should be LSI, what percent should be naked url, branded anchor, the exact keyword and so on???

I've just been mixing it up on every campaign that I create.

It's a must to make your anchor text profile as natural as possible. But also the rate at which you accumulate them. As what people have suggested above. I recommend to actually stick with mostly URL/variations of URL's/generic/related topic keywords/brand. And only about 5% of exact keywords and those should be your most strong

It is important to have a balanced backlink profile. That is, you should create backlinks using a variety of the following anchor text:
your targeted keywords
related keywords (eg: targeted keyword: weight loss & related keyword: lose weight, etc..),
some generic keywords (eg: more info, look here, etc...),
the URL itself.