Another myth from the ‘make everything look completely unnatural’ school of SEO.
If all the backlinks to your website say exactly the same thing, you might as well wave a massive red flag at Google saying “I’m manipulating links!”
Natural link profiles have variety. Some use your brand name, some use URLs, some use descriptive phrases. Over-optimised anchor text looks fake, and fake isn’t going to help your SEO.
What do you mean by ‘anchor text’, Nikki?
Before diving deeper, let me clarify what I mean by anchor text and why this myth still gets spouted despite evidence to the contrary.
Anchor text is simply the clickable text in a hyperlink. When someone links to your website, the words they use in that link are the anchor text. For example, in “find out more about Nikki Pilkington” the words “Nikki Pilkington” are the anchor text.
This myth persists partly because it worked a decade ago, and partly because it seems logical – if you want to rank for “best accountant Manchester,” surely links with that exact text would help?
Unfortunately, SEO “agencies “gooroos” are still pushing this outdated tactic in 2025, usually bundled with their “guaranteed ranking” packages
This approach is outdated and potentially harmful.
Why?
Because natural link profiles don’t work like that
When you analyse the backlink profiles of websites ranking well for competitive terms, they’re beautifully messy. Real websites get links with all sorts of anchor text:
- “click here”
- “this interesting article”
- “according to [brand name]”
- “read more about garden design”
- “www.[yoursite].com”
- “in this post”
- “[brand name]’s guide to SEO”
No site naturally gets hundreds of links all saying “best accountant Manchester” – unless they’re manipulating things.
Why manipulating anchor text is a bit silly
Google’s good at spotting manipulation. Websites regularly tank after link building campaigns that use the same anchor text over and over. Google’s not stupid. When they see every link to your site using identical commercial anchor text, they know exactly what you’re up to.
Google uses multiple signals to evaluate links, with anchor text being just one factor among many. They’re looking at:
- Context around the link
- Authority of the linking site
- Relevance between sites
- User behaviour signals
- Overall linking patterns
Be sensible about your backlink anchor text
With a better understanding of how anchor text works in SEO, here’s how to handle it without shooting yourself in the foot:
Focus on earning natural links
Create content worth linking to. Make your resources so valuable that people genuinely want to reference them. These natural links will have varied anchor text without any effort on your part.
Let people link how they want
When you get coverage or mentions, don’t micromanage how people link to you. That’s a fast track to looking suspicious. Natural variety is your friend, not your enemy.
Think about context, not just keywords
The text surrounding a link often provides more contextual information than the anchor text itself. Google understands this context, so a natural mention with branded anchor text can still help you rank for relevant terms.
Build relationships, not link schemes
Develop genuine connections with others in your industry. When people link to you because they value your content or relationship, those links carry far more weight than manipulated exact-match anchors.
Sites with diverse, natural anchor text profiles have the potential to rank brilliantly for competitive terms. Meanwhile, websites obsessing over exact match anchors could struggle to maintain their positions.
When sites get penalised, excessive exact match anchor text is often the smoking gun. It’s leaving a trail straight to your link building schemes. And even though Google now ignores a lot of obviously toxic links, link manipulation is still on their radar.
Stop trying to control how people link to you. Focus on being worth linking to in the first place. Create content that naturally attracts references. Build genuine industry relationships. Let your anchor text profile develop naturally.
Because if you’re good enough to earn natural links, you’re good enough to rank well. Sites with genuinely earned links don’t struggle because their anchor text isn’t perfectly optimised.
Remember: Natural looks messy. It looks random. It looks unoptimised. And that’s exactly what Google wants to see.
There are so many SEO Myths out there that I wrote a book about them – SEO Myths Debunked.
