{"id":14,"date":"2026-06-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/?p=14"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:00:00","slug":"anchor-text-distribution-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Anchor Text Distribution Explained, With Sensible Defaults"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anchor text is one of the few link variables you fully control, which is exactly why over-control is the most common mistake we see in audits.<\/p>\n<p>Natural profiles are messy. They contain brand names, bare URLs, awkward phrases and a lot of sentences that were never optimised for anything.<\/p>\n<h2>A sensible starting distribution<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Branded: around 40\u201350% \u2014 your company name in various forms<\/li>\n<li>Natural language: around 20\u201325% \u2014 &#039;this guide&#039;, &#039;according to their research&#039;<\/li>\n<li>Partial match: around 15\u201320% \u2014 a target phrase inside a longer sentence<\/li>\n<li>Bare URL: around 5\u201310%<\/li>\n<li>Exact match: 5% or less, and only on pages that can support it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why exact match stays small<\/h2>\n<p>Exact-match anchors are the strongest relevance signal you can send and the clearest fingerprint of intentional link building. Used sparingly on a profile that is otherwise natural, they help. Used repeatedly, they turn a page into an obvious target.<\/p>\n<h2>Plan across the campaign, not per link<\/h2>\n<p>The mistake is optimising each placement in isolation. Keep a single anchor ledger across every link you earn, per target page, and let it guide the next brief. If a page has taken three partial-match anchors in a row, the next one should be branded.<\/p>\n<h2>Let the host publication win ties<\/h2>\n<p>If an editor prefers a different anchor because it reads better in their sentence, take their version. A slightly weaker anchor on a placement that stays live beats a perfect anchor on one that gets stripped in the next content audit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to plan anchor text across a campaign so your profile looks earned rather than engineered, plus the ratios we start from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankbridge.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}