6 Tips: Diversifying Anchor Text
Do you vary your anchor text? Surprisingly, many individuals that do their own SEO and link building activities don’t diversify anchor text enough. Today, over use of your keywords can lead to some pretty severe consequences – penalties, ranking drops and traffic decreases.
Luckily, there are easy ways to combat the issue of over optimized anchor text. Diversifying the keywords pointing to your domain is the best way to avoid this issue. Here are 6 tips to help you understand your options when diversifying anchor text.
Branded Anchor Text
The easiest way to start diversifying your anchor text is to use your brand as the keyword phrase. For large brands, the anchor text most often used when linking to their sites is their brand name already.
Use a tool like Open Site Explorer to examine your backlinks. Use their distribution of anchor text tab to help you see what keywords are being used most often. How often is your brand name used, or variations of your brand name? Keep an eye on the keyword variations showing up in your backlinks and actively pursue opportunities that will allow you to link to your site using your brand name: social profiles, directories, guest blogging, etc…
Misspelling
It’s natural to see keywords misspelled or used incorrectly. This is true too, of your backlinks. Purposely misspell and use keywords incorrectly every now and again. Sure, it’s not a best practice always but when you’re trying to find ideas on how to diversify your backlinks – this is an option.
Natural Unoptimized Terms
Do you know who ranks #1 for “click here”? Adobe of course! Think about it – many sites link to Adobe for their Acrobat Reader. “Click here”, “Download”, etc… are all anchor texts that are used. While this is an extreme case, it certainly can be a good lesson. Natural anchor text is sometimes not keyword oriented but action oriented. Build a few links to your domain using natural and unoptimized anchor text.
Long Tail Anchor Text
Another option you have when diversifying anchor text is to use a long tail term to hyperlink. Having a long tail SEO strategy is always a good idea, as long tail terms can over time draw in the targeted traffic you’re looking for. Try using a question or a quote as the anchor text or look for specific long tail phrases using keyword research that have some search volume.
URL as Anchor Text
Using your URL as your anchor text is an option. Sites that allow you to have a company profile often link to you using just the URL as the anchor text. Seek out these opportunities and try placing not just your homepage as the URL. Look to place internal page URLs as the anchor text as well.
Synonyms
Last but certainly not least, your option to vary anchor text may come down to identifying other similar keywords. Use a Thesaurus to help you come up with synonyms that will still apply to the keywords you wish to focus, but help in diversifying exact match anchor text. You may even find some of the keywords convert better than the broad match terms you’ve always tried to focus on.
Do you have tips to help users diversify anchor text? Tell us in the comments below!
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Kailia, Great tips. Do you have a formula you use for your anchor diversity? Like a certain percentage of each?
Jen Franklin recently posted..Vigrx Plus
I’ve got burned on not diversifying anchor text. From what I have heard, most of the people in the industry recommend maximum of 80% weight of any anchor to a single page. The rest should be other anchors. Do you agree?
Stan recently posted..Physical Therapy Specialties
Hi Kaila,
The long tail in combination with synonyms can give you good traffic and in the same time good ranking in the serp.
Hi.. Thanks for the great tips here.. Anyway, only few people are more familiar with differentiating anchor text.. This can help..
Kazzsandra recently posted..Gout Relief
Interesting article – I thought using the same anchor text will just strengthen a good position in SERP. Thanks for sharing.
Debbie recently posted..Reasons for Being Certified for CPR
Anchor text is definitely important in every blogger and I hope these tips can be a big help to us.. Thanks!
Carol recently posted..http://www.flatratemovers.com/movers-arlington.php
A good method that I find myself in terms of varying anchor text is by using keywords that you would usually use to link to a “deep page” and simply link to the “home page” with those keywords… adds variation and another layer… plus it’s still niche related
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Jacob recently posted..Revitol Rosacea Treatment Cream
I’ve got burned on not diversifying anchor text. From what I have heard, the majority of us in the industry recommend maximum of 80% weight of any anchor to a single page. The rest should be other anchors.
Great read Kaila – “Natural anchor text is sometimes not keyword oriented but action oriented.” I had never considered this before but it makes complete sense. I have some updating to do now, thanks!
Annabel S. recently posted..Irving Cockroaches – Removal & Extermination
Misspelling, seriously? Why the heck I never thought about this earlier? I usually use unoptimized term, site address, varied anchor text to build my links.
Ricky recently posted..How to Print Instagram Photos for Personal Use
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It’d be quite cool to see a few suggest percentages each time – ie how many times should we mention the URL, etc. Although, there’s clearly no obvious answer, I guess it depends a bit on the industry.
This is definitely some text for all SEO freaks to think about. Especially after latest Google updates link diversify will gain more and more value for top rankings spots
Found your post while looking for a list of un-optimized phrases to use for backlinking, glad I came across it even if I didn’t find what I originally set out to find.
Jacob who commented above had a good point also, a lot of your links should hit the home page and linking with keywords that are actually targeted on an internal page seems all to natural as at one point that post (WP sites) was there at some point anyway so people would link to the home page if they didn’t understand the workings of a blog style site.
Chris recently posted..How to Get Unique Article Wizard Discount (Bonus is its Every Month!)
This is an nice information as back links are count not as a link but you have a click from some where some how.
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