Anchored and unsanctioned links: examples, differences, and correlation

In this article, you will find detailed information about what anchors are and why they are important to promote your site, learn about their types, and how to create an anchor list. I hope you already know the importance of the backlink manager tool.

What is an anchor and why is it needed

The entire Internet is riddled with links. You could make an analogy with a big city - it's all made up of streets. To get you to a particular destination, you follow paths or alleys to the right house.

Somehow it works the same way here. Only instead of streets, there are links. And instead of street names, there are anchors.

If you look at the code, each link consists of two parts: the link address itself and the text.

<a href="https://postium.ru/">Blog about digital marketing</a>

The words "Blog about Internet marketing" are between the tags <a>...</a>. This is the anchor.

Anchor - this is the text that we click on to follow the link.

With anchors, we add links to the text without breaking the context. Look at the example above, where the links are harmoniously integrated into the paragraph. Both the reader and the search robot understand what they will find when they click on the link.

Anchors play an important role in building a reference profile of the site. This is when other sites link to pages on our site. Over-spamming with keywords in the anchors, can threaten to sanctions from search engines.

The Google Penguin algorithm responds to two things:

• explicitly purchased links, which appear at almost the same time on low-quality web resources;

• links with similar or identical keywords in the anchors.
  

Types of anchors

Types of anchors are distinguished by the type of text used in them.

Anchors with a direct occurrence of the keyword

As an anchor uses the main keyword used to promote the page to which the link is made.

Such anchors are most often used in internal relinking. To promote links, they should be used carefully so as not to attract sanctions from search engines (a little further talk about what percentage of such anchors should be in your anchor list).

This anchor also uses a keyword, but it may be slightly modified - for example, put in the plural, or words in it are rearranged. This is done in order to link organically fit into the text. Usually declined "uncomfortable" keywords such as "buy cheap phone Moscow" - a key in the anchor can be easily replaced by "buy a cheap phone".

These can also include anchors containing synonyms, declined words.

Unlinked links

There are links where there is no "fake" text. The test of a link is the link itself. These are called anchorless links.

They are considered the most natural because if a simple person decides to share a link to the site with someone else, he is likely to leave it that way.

These are the main types of anchors. Neil Patel, a Western SEO expert, identifies several other types:

• General. These are the anchors "here", "here", "there", "find out more". They can also refer to unanchored links.
  

• Branded - when the anchor is the name of the company or the name of its director or founder. The link usually leads to the home page.
  

• Header - when the link goes to the article, and as an anchor is used its title. Such links can go not only to the article, but also, for example, to a blog, a book, a file for downloading or viewing.
  

• Image. You can also link to the image, but then the actual anchor is the text of the ALT attribute of the image.
  

Correct percentage of anchor and unanchored links

There are significant differences in the use of anchors for internal and external linking.

We have already talked about external linking in a separate article. The main principle of anchors is to make the link look natural and clearly explain what the user will find if he clicks on it. Therefore, anchors here are keywords that are relevant to the acceptor page, a short description or title. Common anchors, anchorless links, branded anchors are not used here.

Perceive the internal link is more like an additional element of navigation on the site. Your direct task is to help the visitor understand whether to click on it or not.

As for external links, everything is much more complicated here, because external links are tracked by search engines. And as I wrote above, it is very easy to attract sanctions if you buy links on an industrial scale with keyword anchors. For search engines, this is a direct hint that you are trying to screw up your position.

Link profile of your site should be diverse. Different experts give different examples of the proper ratio of anchors. There is no one formula for all: much depends on the age of the site, the niche, whether the business is local or global.

Most often you can find a universal "formula" anchor-list:

• 20% anchor links (direct / diluted entry, branded, etc.)

• 80% of unanchored links.
  

How to create an anchor list

Anchor list is a list of all link anchors that lead to a particular page. You need it just to make the most natural link profile. If you will put links "at random", it is unlikely you will be able to adhere to any proportions. For example, let's make our anchor list in Google Table for one of the pages of the site. For example, we need to promote a page that describes the service [flower delivery round the clock in Moscow].

If you make an anchor list, you will know how many and which links to put on each specific page.

The best place to start is with an analysis of your competitors.

1. We look at our competitors for flower delivery. We enter a keyword into the search and choose 5-10 sites from the top about our age.

2. Next, we look at their anchor lists through the link analysis tool, Ahrefs (Backlink Analysis). For free the tool will show the top 5 anchors.

By looking at your competitors, you can understand how to build your anchor list. See what ratio of anchor and unanchored links they use, and what specific keywords they put in the anchors. On the screenshot you can see that the competitor uses mostly unanchored links.

3. Add brand anchors to your anchor list. A common mistake here is to include only the name of the company or the main product. You can also specify the name of the founder/owner of the company, mix it with the name, city, use the name of the site, add the word "company", write the name in transliteration (or vice versa, if the original name is written in Latin characters, write in Russian letters).

4. We enter the anchors in our table. We write the anchor and put a value next to it - how many links with this anchor must be purchased, even in one column, we put a mark on what type of anchor.