Reverse-engineering a winning anchor ratio

Reverse-engineering a winning anchor ratio
Spotted in the rankings: a thin site outranking authority pages, and the anchor profile tells you why. Here's how to read it backward:
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Pull the top-ranking page's referring anchors in Ahrefs, bucket them: branded, naked URL, exact-match, partial, generic
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Calculate the percentages. Most safe winners sit near 50% branded/naked, 20% generic, under 10% exact-match
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Now check your own page's mix against theirs — over-optimized exact-match is usually the gap that's holding you flat
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Date-sort the exact-match anchors. If they cluster in one month, that page is living on borrowed time pre-penalty
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Mirror the safe distribution, not the aggressive one — copy the winner's restraint, not their risk
Word is the smart money reverse-engineers ratios, not link counts. The anchor cloud is a confession if you know how to read it. Watch this space.