How to audit internal anchor-text distribution for over-optimization

How to audit internal anchor-text distribution for over-optimization

Question: is your internal anchor profile so exact-match it reads as manipulative? A measurable check.

— Step 1: crawl the site and export every internal link with its anchor text pointing to your top target pages.
— Step 2: bucket anchors into exact-match, partial-match, branded, and generic ('here', 'this page').
— Step 3: compute the share of each bucket per target URL. A target where exact-match exceeds ~40% of internal anchors is skewed.
— Step 4: diversify by rewriting some exact anchors to partial or entity-rich phrasing — keep meaning, vary words.
— Step 5: ensure each target page has at least a few descriptive (non-generic) anchors, since 'click here' carries no topical signal.
— Step 6: re-export and confirm no single anchor phrase dominates a page's inbound internal links.

Method note: distribution buckets from crawl exports; the 40% line is a heuristic from observed natural profiles, not a published threshold.

Caveat: there's no public confirmed ratio; over-optimization risk is inferred, so treat the threshold as a guardrail, not a law.

Confidence: low