8 Anchor Text Mistakes That Could Cost You a Penalty

Well, saying a penalty is too much, I get very dramatic to encourage that clickbait, but it is true that a poor choice of anchor text may not give you the expected results. And that’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating.

So, since we know you spend your day doubting which anchor strategy to follow and we already gave some tips in the best link building guide 2018 we have published (the only one, in fact), we wanted to compile the most common anchor text mistakes among all of us dedicated to SEO and, especially, link building.

Typical Beginner Anchor Text Mistakes

Are you the fucking king at selecting your anchors?

Do you think you haven’t made any of the mistakes we are going to mention?

Let’s check it out:

Abuse of Exact Match Keyword

SEO experts repeat it more and more, but some still do their own thing.

Seriously, Google is malleable, but it’s not stupid.

As of today, the Giant has an algorithm and a machine learning system capable of detecting that your website is a platform for selling press releases even if you link it with a generic anchor. The important thing is the context of the link and if it has words like “press releases” and “Unancor” around it, that will be enough.

Are you going to rank better by always using exact match anchor? No

Are you going to rank better by always using the same keyword? No

Are you risking a penalty for artificial linking? Yes.

So, why take the risk?

You can include links with exact match anchor, but don’t overdo it and use more types of anchors. In any case, use surrounding content that both search engines and users can intuit what content they will find on the linked page (yours).

SEO Tip: Suggestion from SEO agency BlackBeast. “You can get good ideas to vary the anchor text using Ahrefs and extract the anchor text from the competition for your search intents.”

The exact match anchor can be used in your internal linking or interlinking without any problem.

Always Linking to the Same URL

Although the homepage of a business will always receive more links and more web traffic than any other URL (although this doesn’t always happen: it depends on the niche, sector, or whim of the SEO), the truth is that you cannot base your entire external linking strategy on pointing links to your homepage.

• It’s an unnatural linking and it’s obvious.
• It’s not a good strategy.

It’s preferable to link to different URLs of your domain and even to posts on your blog to give naturalness to your link building.

And, the most obvious of all: you don’t think you will rank all keywords with the homepage, right?

So link the rest of the URLs!

Anchors for Indians

2018 and we are still dragging prehistoric SEO techniques.

It’s not necessary to use anchors without prepositions or conjunctions to rank. First, because it’s not a quick ranking, and second because they don’t form natural sentences. At Unancor, we have problems when writing texts with this type of linking because:

• It’s not natural for the user who is going to read the content.
• It doesn’t result in a grammatically correct sentence.
• It’s a “giveaway” for manual link reviews.

So instead of using the anchor “SEO Agency Madrid” you can use “SEO Agency in Madrid” and you will rank exactly the same, don’t you think?

And that way we don’t make the poor Indians cry, who are good people.

URL Anchors Without Variety

If you are clear about the anchor scheme you are going to follow in your link building strategy, you have to consider all options. For example, if you are going to place “x” URL links, it’s not necessary for all to be: https://www.unancor.com

You can use others. For example:

• www.unancor.com
• https://www.unancor.com/
• https://www.unancor.com/
• https://www.unancor.com
• unancor.com

Note: If you take a look at the official Google recommendations for webmasters, you will see that it does not recommend using the URL of the linked page as link text frequently.

Uppercase, Lowercase, Accent or No Accent

The eternal debate.

And we love a debate!

Let’s see, which anchor would you use from the following options:

• Option 1: seo agency in madrid (why a city in lowercase if it’s a spelling mistake?)
• Option 2: SEO agency in Madrid (this is the one I would choose)
• Option 3: Agency seo in madrid (if it’s not the beginning of a sentence, why an initial capital?)
• Option 4: seo agency madrid (spelling mistake and on top of that Indian, 2×1)

Personally, the issue of uppercase and lowercase seems silly to me. Do they do it to seem more natural because many people write with mistakes in forums? Okay, maybe for outgoing links from forums it’s not a bad idea, but, come on, in a press release from a newspaper? It makes no sense, neither for the user nor for Google.

Regarding the accent, everyone is free to do what they consider. I am in favor of using anchors without spelling mistakes, but to confuse you a bit more on this topic, I started a poll last night on Twitter and these are the results and comments from some SEOs (click on the tweet to check their responses):

When choosing your anchors in #LinkBuilding, do you write them with spelling mistakes (without accents, for example) or do you prefer a well-written anchor? #SEO #blogging

— Unancor (@Unancorcom) January 23, 2018

Hidden Links

This is still very common and we even have to claim it at Unancor from some newspapers.

What’s the point of placing a link in content if it’s not visible and no one is going to click?

Yes, the link juice is transferred the same, but you are not going to obtain all the power you could get if that link also receives clicks and brings traffic to your website.

So, whenever you do link building and they place a hidden hyperlink, without a color that makes it stand out, claim it. Make them put it blue, green, orange, or whatever color they want. But make it clear to the user browsing that it is a link.

Image Anchor Without ALT

Using images with links is a valid strategy, as long as you don’t overdo it. The only requirement you must meet to do it correctly is to add alternative text related to that image, mainly to convey to Google’s robot what you are linking to and what its relation is to the text in which you have inserted it.

In short, the ALT of the image will be your anchor, so don’t put just anything (and don’t use overly long phrases)

These last 2 mistakes mentioned are also pointed out in the previously mentioned Google optimization guide as mistakes to avoid.

Different Anchors to the Same URL from the Same Text

This, to be honest, I have seen for the first time in some Unancor clients and every time I see it I am still surprised.

They buy a unique article, place 4 links to the same URL of their website and do it with 4 different anchors.

For example:

Anchor 1: marketing agency
Url1: agenciademarketing.com

Anchor 2: seo agency
Url2: agenciademarketing.com

Anchor 3: digital marketing agency
Url 3: agenciademarketing.com

Anchor 4: inbound marketing agency
Url 4: agenciademarketing.com

Suck on that, Google.

And well, there are many more mistakes when creating a anchor text strategy for link building. Have you encountered any that left you amazed and we haven’t included in this post?

Tell me in the comments section, I love reading you 🙂