Anchor Text: How I Optimize it (Step-by-Step)

this blue underlined text can single-handedly hold you back from the first page of Google it's called anchor text in this video I'll show you exactly how to optimize your anchor text so you can get to the top of Google with the least amount of backlinks but first let me tell you a story the year was 2016 and while everyone was so busy catching Pokemons and talking about how Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Oscar I had a backlink service here was my marketing process when someone ordered a backlink the first thing I do is put their target keyword in a rank tracker for example if they wanted to be on top of Google for the term best dog food I would put that keyword in a Tracker so I could come back later and say hi before I built a link you're in position six and now you're second then I'd offer them a discount to encourage them to keep working with me now let me tell you this the odds of seeing a position jump like that were much higher if I used an anchor text with the target keyword in it for example if the client was trying to be on the first page of Google for the term best dog food an anchor-like top dog food is much more likely to move the needle than something like click here this just shows how much Google cares about the anchor text that you use that said you can't just use Target anchor text over and over again and expect to get away with it Google pays close attention to the anchors you use and if it looks unnatural to them you will get hit by the Google penguin algorithm for example if you have 100 backlinks and 90 of them have the anchored dog food that's a red flag to Google and they'll penalize your site for it in fact that's exactly what happened to me in 2013. I was just starting to get traction with SEO and my sites were doing really good but then bam the penguin algorithm came out and obliterated my sites some of them lost more than 80 traffic overnight but now I know better I've spent so many hours testing different anchor strategies to know exactly what Google wants to see and in this video I'll show you a strategy that gets the best results without pissing off Google and the best part it's not just Theory it's all data backed and tested so you know it works in case we didn't meet before my name is Matt Diggity and I'm the founder of the search initiative a data driven SEO agency that focuses on cutting-edge SEO this is our most Cutting Edge anchor Tech strategy and make sure to stick around to the end because the last technique is a game changer but real quick before we dive in I'd like to invite you to my free SEO training masterclass in this 40 min in class I'll teach you everything that I'm doing today to get sites to the top of Google sign up by using the link in the pin comment now let's start by defining the different types of anchor text the first type is the target anchor and it's any anchor text that has even one word of your target keyword in it for example if you want to be the top Google result for the term best dog food a Target anchor could be buy dog food here best dog food dog food or any anchor that contains the word best dog or food Target anchors are the most important type it's the one that actually improves your ranking but can penalize your site if you overdo it anchor text optimization is about building as many Target anchor texts as possible without looking unnatural to Google we do this by sending a blend of the other anchor types such as the Branded anchor a branded anchor is simply using your business website or author name as the anchor text for example if I'm building links to my website ticketymarketing. com then a branded anchor would be Diggity marketing Matt Diggity Etc branded anchors are the most common naturally occurring anchor text as you can see here 704 domains linked to me with Diggity marketing that's 44.

6 of all my homepage links now it's important to mention that if you have an exact or partial match domain that has a keyword in it that counts as a Target anchor for example if your domain is mydogtreats. com and you're trying to be on top of Google for the term best dog food using your brand name would count as a Target anchor so keep that in mind next we have the URL anchor which is simply the actual URL so if I was building links to diggitymarketing. com forward slash affiliate marketing the URL anchor would be dignitymarketing.