March 30, 2020 Vance Moore

Partial/Exact Match Anchor Text

What is Partial/Exact Match Anchor Text?

Partial/Exact Match Anchor Text -The anchor text is the text that the user clicks on for a link. It is also what a WebCrawler uses to decide what the linked page is about. Therefore, a link to your website with the anchor text that has the exact keywords you wish for your website is the ideal.

Some types of anchor text are better than others. Here are the four most common types, ranked by quality.

Partial-match

Anchor text is a partial match if it includes a variation of the keyword that describes the linked page’s topic. It clearly informs Google about the page’s topic, especially if there are keywords related to the page’s topic in the anchor text. Not having to worry about getting an exact match with your anchor text and a page’s topic also allows you to write your content as naturally as possible.

An example of anchor text that’s a partial match is “Every SEO should know the importance of domain authority” — the linked page covers what domain authority is, why it’s important, and how to improve it, and the anchor text can convey that message, without explicitly stating it.

Exact-match

Anchor text is an exact match if it includes the exact keyword that describes the linked page’s topic. Just like a partial-match, exact matches also clearly inform Google about the linked page’s topic. But if you anchor your internal links to too many keywords that are exact matches, Google could suspect you’re just trying to rank for those exact keywords rather than providing value to your readers.

Generic

Generic anchor text is a common word or phrase, like “This blog post” or “Read more”. Google actually reads text surrounding anchor text when its bots crawl your web pages, so even if you anchor a link to a generic word or phrase, the surrounding text can still tell Google what the linked page is about. But Google can only know what the link is about if your generic anchor text is surrounded by text that clearly describes the linked page’s topic.

Spammy

Spammy anchor text links to a webpage that has no relation to its hyperlinked keyword. These types of anchor text mislead users into thinking what the linked page is actually about, providing zero value to the user. The sole reason why people use spammy anchor text is to briefly rank for highly competitive keywords like insurance, loans, or mortgage and siphon traffic from those keywords’ SERPs.

People will also use spammy anchor text to hamper their competitors’ public perception on Google. For instance, a company could hyperlink their competitor’s website to the keyword “worst company to work for in 2018” in one of their blog posts, and their competitor’s website could potentially rank for “worst company to work for in 2018” on Google.

Conclusion

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