The fact that links pass anchor text, and that the anchor text matters for which position you can reach for a keyword, is both basic SEO knowledge and, in my experience, the biggest trap for newer SEO practitioners. Deeper knowledge about links and their anchor texts still seems to be lacking in many places.
Anyone who has been active in the industry over the past year has likely not missed the SEO company that climbed into the top ten for the keyword “search engine optimization” using sitewide links from their clients’ websites (we don’t need to go into who they are; the goal here is to explain a phenomenon, not point fingers). One of the reasons they were able to climb so quickly is that they used very aggressive anchor texts on these links, and sitewide links quickly generate a large number of inbound links with the same anchor text.
So what does aggressive linking mean when it comes to anchor text?
Let’s start with the basics. A link doesn’t only pass PageRank; it also passes anchor text. These are cornerstones of Google’s search engine. The anchor text (the clickable text of the link) is a good way to describe what the destination page can be expected to be about. As a result, it is also a good way to determine which search results the page should appear in. Naturally, this was something SEO practitioners overused in the early years of search engine optimization, and Google responded accordingly.
There are a number of filters, and it’s possible to receive manual actions if you have too many links with exact or near-exact anchor text. What is commonly referred to as exact-match anchor text is when the anchor text exactly matches the keyword you want to rank for. The most well-known filter related to anchor text is Penguin, a filter that hits sites hard when they have too much exact or partial-match anchor text.
Why is this difficult to manage?
The problem is that it becomes difficult for a beginner to truly understand when anchor text is too aggressive, because aggressive anchor texts produce good results—at first. Anchor text is a ranking factor; more seems better. If you have lots of links that say The Keyword, you will climb for that keyword—until you hit a certain (fuzzy) threshold or until one of Google’s filters runs, and they don’t run all that often.
This means that sometimes you can build these links for years and still keep climbing; sometimes nothing negative happens until someone manually reviews the link profile over in Mountain View. Jeremiah (well, here comes a biblical reference) asks why the wicked prosper. If aggressive link building works, should you stop? Naturally, it depends on your goals with SEO. Top-ranking mayflies are common in SEO, and often this behavior reinforces itself.
If you’ve just climbed to a very strong position for a competitive keyword using something as simple as 50 links with the exact right anchor text—and if you don’t yet have much experience, lacking full understanding of filters and manual actions—it’s easy to think that SEO isn’t that complex after all. There are good psychological reasons to continue the same way, perhaps even with your clients. The problem is that when the hit comes, it often comes hard. That’s not always the case; the SEO company we mentioned earlier has slowly but surely declined in the rankings, and that can happen too. But if you’ve crossed the line far enough that Penguin reacts when it runs, it can take years to return to the top ten—and you’ll likely never regain your previous positions.
Respect the algorithm and take it slow
The only sensible approach—if you don’t intend to be a mayfly—is to take it easy with links. Don’t be overly aggressive; allow results to take time. For highly competitive keywords, it’s not reasonable to climb within one or two months unless you already have enormous authority. Show the algorithm some respect—you haven’t outsmarted the system after six months of doing SEO.
