Backlinks | Anchor Text SEO Best Practice

The importance of anchor text concerning a linking strategy cannot be emphasized. Backlinks are a huge part of the search engine algorithm. When initiating a linking campaign, it is vital that external sites link utilizing the proper keywords and terms in the anchor text.

Almost always, linking candidates will use the company name as anchor text. That does not provide any description of the target brand’s products or services. Certainly, it may be great for branding purposes, but it isn’t usually needed. In most instances, companies already rank very high (if not first) for searches that incorporate their brand.

Here is an example using fictional company “LNCO Marketing Saskatchewan”:

Most people will link naturally using the terms “LNCO.” That is alright, but it does not represent the business’s products or services, nor provide any context. By adding the word “Marketing” or term “Marketing Services” (i.e. “ELNCO Marketing” or “ELNCO Marketing Services”), you may be able to drive additional traffic that may not have otherwise attained the corporate site.

ADVANCED backlinks STRATEGY

Types of backlinks Anchor Text

Optimizing your anchor texts requires having a clear understanding of the various types of anchors. That will help you create a backlinks profile consisting of a diverse range of organic anchors. Learn all about the different forms of backlinks anchor text below:

• • Generic anchors – As the name implies, generic anchors are regular anchor texts like “click here” or “go here.” For instance, in the sentence “Click here to download your free eBook,” click here is the generic anchor.
• • Branded anchors – A branded anchor is any anchor that utilizes the brand name as text. These are safe to use unless your website is an exact match domain.
• • Naked link anchors – These are the anchors that link back to a site by solely using the URL.
• • Brand + Keyword anchor– Using brand and keyword anchors is another safe and efficient method for building a strong anchor profile. That is a combination of your brand name and your choice of keyword. For instance, “SEO services by ELNCO” is an example of a brand + keyword anchor.
• • Image anchors – To vary your anchor profile even further, you should examine using image anchors. In an image, Google analyzes the “alt” tag as an anchor text. Leaving this blank will result in a “noText” anchor.
• • LSI anchors – LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It refers to the variations of your main keyword, or so-called synonyms. For instance, if you’re targeting “Marketing Agency,” LSI keywords could include “Market Agency Online,” “Marketing Company,” “Marketing Studio,” and so on. You can notice the related searches at the end of the SERP for each query.
• • Partial match anchor text – The partial presence of keywords in the anchor text is said to be a partial match. Examples of partial match anchors would be: “useful backlinks building guide,” “learn more about backlinks building,” etc.
• • Long Tail Anchors – Those are related to partial match anchor text plus the fact that they’re longer. Good examples could be: “anchor text is a crucial part of links building” and “these rankings are a result of anchor text.”
• • Exact match – Exact match anchors are undoubtedly the most important type of anchor text. Although they play a crucial role in enhancing your ranking, they also could be the cause you get penalized by Google. As the name suggests, those anchors are the exact match of your target keyword. For instance, your target keyword is “links building,” so your anchor is also “links building.”

BACKLINKS & SEO STRATEGY

Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a web page links to any other page, it’s called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the major metric for the ranking of a web page. A page with a lot of backlinks tended to rank higher on every major search engines, including Google.

The principal type of backlink anchor texts that are both safe and effective are naked backlinks anchors and branded anchors. Focus on building your links organically using quality content and a diverse range of anchor texts with proper co-citation and co-occurrence. This will help you optimize your backlinks profile and make it next to impossible for Google to penalize you.

The Importance of Backlinks

Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine Optimization, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts. We hope you have a better understanding of why you need good quality inbound links to your site and have a handle on a few helpful tools to gain those links.