Now that you have a firm understanding of all the different anchor text you can use, I’m going to show you the anchor text percentages that will keep your websites safe through every Penguin update. Keep in mind: These percentages are what work for me. Always test your own techniques and play with the percentages. Branded Anchor Text: 70% Google wants you to create a brand. Not a fly-by-night operation. One of the easiest ways for them to differentiate between a “brand” and a spam website is to look at the amount of branded anchors hitting the site. In the next section, I’m going to show you the best platforms for getting quality branded links. Naked Links: 20% As I mentioned above, naked links are a very safe and a very natural anchor text. A bulk of your backlinks should be using naked links. Generic Anchors: 5% Generic anchors keep your link profile looking “natural” and are a necessity. Try not to use “click here” for every single one. You can pretty much use any word in the English language that isn’t related to your keyword, and it will be considered generic. LSI, Partial Match Anchors: 1-5% Okay, so after branded, naked, and generic anchors, you are left with around 5% leeway for keyword-rich anchors. The majority of the last 5% anchors should be variations of your main keyword. Exact Match Anchors Text: Less Than 1% I use exact match anchor text as a LAST resort, not a first option. Keep one important fact in mind: The less exact match anchor text you use, the more powerful it becomes. Also remember that assigning a distribution percentage to exact match anchor text is a very, very, VERY dangerous idea!
