The era of exact-match anchors driving rankings is over. What matters now is whether your anchor profile looks natural across the full set of links pointing to a page.
Healthy anchor distribution for a commercial affiliate page:
- Branded anchors: 35-45%
- Naked URLs: 15-20%
- Generic terms ("here," "click," "this resource"): 10-15%
- Partial-match and topical variations: 20-25%
- Exact-match targets: 3-7% max
Exact-match anchors remain valuable. They just can't dominate the profile.
If your current target page has 40% exact-match anchors, the fix isn't removing links — it's diluting the ratio with branded and generic link acquisition, which is often easier to accomplish anyway.
Anchor Theory
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Anchor text strategy in 2024 is more about distribution than optimization.
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