An anchor text ratio is the share of your backlinks that use each type of link text: your brand name, your bare URL, a keyword phrase, a generic phrase like “this site”. There is no single magic split. A natural profile for a local business is mostly branded and URL anchors, with a smaller slice of descriptive keyword phrases and very few exact-match keyword anchors. What matters more than any percentage is variety, and the absence of sudden, lopsided spikes.
This guide covers the anchor types, the ranges you will see quoted, why those ranges are softer than they look, and a simple audit you can run on your own site.
TL;DR
- Anchor text is the clickable words of a link. Google uses it to understand the page being linked to, so what those words say matters.
- Commonly quoted targets put branded anchors around 40 to 60% and exact-match anchors at 0 to 5%. Treat those as rough guides, not rules.
- Recent analysis suggests the old “keep exact match under 5%” rule is outdated folk wisdom. A sudden burst of keyword-heavy links is a bigger red flag than a static percentage.
- For a local service business, a mix of brand, URL, descriptive and generic anchors earned over months looks natural and holds up.
- Audit quarterly: export your backlinks, label the anchors, and watch the trend rather than a single number.
Table of Contents
- What anchor text is and why Google reads it
- The main anchor text types
- The ranges people quote, and where they come from
- Velocity and patterns matter more than the percentage
- What a healthy profile looks like for a local service business
- How to audit your anchor text in five steps
- How to earn varied anchors without forcing them
- Our perspective: stop optimizing the percentage
- Doing this on autopilot
- A note on text-to-HTML ratio
- FAQ
- Sources
What anchor text is and why Google reads it
Anchor text, also called link text, is the visible, clickable part of a link. Google’s documentation explains that this text tells people and Google something about the page you are linking to. Its guidance is that good anchor text is descriptive, concise, relevant to the target page and written naturally.
Two links to the same page show the difference. “Click here” says nothing about the destination. “Emergency plumbing repair in Tampa” says exactly what you will find. When other websites link to you, the words they choose become a signal about what your page is about. That is why people track the mix.
The same documentation is clear about the downside: stuffing keywords into anchor text is a violation of Google’s spam policies. So the whole topic of ratios is really a question of how to avoid looking like you stuffed anchors, while still earning links that describe what you do.
The main anchor text types
Most guides sort anchors into the same handful of buckets. Here is each with an example for a fictional roofing company, Ridgeline Roofing, whose page targets “roof repair Denver”.
| Type | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Branded | Your business name | Ridgeline Roofing |
| Naked URL | The address itself | ridgelineroofing.com |
| Exact match | The target keyword, word for word | roof repair Denver |
| Partial match | The keyword plus other words | a guide to roof repair in Denver after hail |
| Generic | Words with no topical meaning | click here, this site, read more |
| Image | The alt text of a linked image | the alt text of a team photo |
A few notes on each.
Branded anchors
These are the backbone of a natural profile because people overwhelmingly link to a company by its name. If you want a deeper look at why they carry weight, see our explainer on what a branded backlink is.
Naked URLs
A reporter, a directory or a partner often just pastes your web address. It looks plain, and that is the point: it is how real people link.
Exact match
The anchor is precisely the phrase you want to rank for. These are the most powerful in theory and the riskiest in volume, because they are the ones that look engineered when there are too many.
Partial match
Partial match anchors contain your keyword inside a longer, more natural phrase. They carry relevance without reading like a keyword list, which is why many practitioners lean on them as the main descriptive anchor.
Generic and image anchors
Generic anchors add no keyword value, but a few of them make a profile look like it was built by humans. Image links pass along the image’s alt text, so write alt text that describes the image honestly.
The ranges people quote, and where they come from
If you search for this topic you will find tables like this one, taken from one 2026 optimization guide that lists general guidelines: branded 40 to 60%, naked URLs 10 to 20%, generic 10 to 15%, partial match 10 to 20%, exact match 0 to 5%. Others suggest that a homepage might sit at 80 to 95% brand, commercial and naked anchors combined. Another guide advises that 50 to 60% of internal links should be partial match.
Read those as a description of what a typical, organically grown site tends to look like, not as a target Google has published. Google has not published any ideal ratio. One practitioner guide puts it bluntly: distributions differ by industry, page type and how a site earns links.
That last point matters for you. A plumber with a few local news mentions, a chamber of commerce listing and a supplier directory will have a very different profile from an e-commerce brand with thousands of reviews and affiliates.
Why the 5% exact-match rule is shaky
The rule that exact-match anchors should stay under 5% dates back to the early days of Google’s Penguin updates, roughly 2012 to 2016. A 2026 portfolio checklist from LinkGuard argues it is outdated: its Ahrefs-based analysis found top-ranking pages often sit in a 6 to 13% exact-match range, while the median exact-match share across rankings was 0%. Its conclusion is that the metric has weak individual correlation with performance.
Be careful with what that does and does not show. It does not show that exact-match links are safe to build in bulk. It shows that a page with 14% exact-match anchors is not automatically in trouble, and that blaming a ranking drop on that single number is often wrong.
Velocity and patterns matter more than the percentage
The more useful way to use a ratio is as a smoke alarm. One practical guide on anchor text best practices suggests a sudden spike, such as 30 to 50 new exact-match anchors from unique domains within 30 days, is a stronger risk indicator than a static portfolio percentage. The goal, it says, is diversity rather than a fixed ratio.
That fits how a site really earns links. Real links arrive unevenly: a mention here, a directory there, a burst after a local news story. What looks unnatural is a flat, repetitive pattern: dozens of links, all from low-quality sites, all with the same commercial phrase.
A backlink audit from Siteoscope describes that tell in a sample of spammy sites. Foreign-language article directories made up 34% of it, publishing machine-translated articles stuffed with keyword-rich anchors pointing at unrelated commercial sites. The anchor distribution gave them away. If links like that point at you and you did not build them, the guidance in that audit is to evaluate before you disavow. In many cases, they are simply ignored.
Does Google punish or ignore bad anchors?
Search professionals note that Penguin is now part of Google’s continuous core ranking system, so low-quality link patterns are more often discounted than penalized. Pages showing clear evidence of large-scale manipulation can still be suppressed. The takeaway is not “anything goes”. It is that earning a few awkward links will not sink you, while a deliberate campaign to manufacture them can.
What a healthy profile looks like for a local service business
Here is a realistic illustration, not a benchmark. Imagine a home services company with 60 backlinks after a year of steady work:
| Anchor type | Links | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Branded | 27 | 45% |
| Naked URL | 10 | about 17% |
| Partial match | 10 | about 17% |
| Generic | 7 | about 12% |
| Exact match | 3 | 5% |
| Image | 3 | 5% |
Nothing about it is perfect, and that is the point. It is dominated by the brand, includes a handful of descriptive phrases and does not lean on any single keyword.
Small profiles swing wildly. With 20 links, one extra exact-match anchor moves the ratio by 5 points. Do not chase percentages until you have enough links for them to mean something. At that stage, ask a simpler question: would a stranger reading this list believe real people wrote these links?
Different pages, different mixes
Your homepage will naturally collect mostly brand and URL anchors. Service pages and blog guides are where descriptive and partial match anchors appear, because other writers link to them for a specific topic. Do not force every page into the same ratio. Look at them separately.
How to audit your anchor text in five steps
- Export your backlinks. Use Google Search Console’s links report for a free view, or any backlink tool you already have access to.
- Label each anchor. Put branded, URL, exact, partial, generic and image in a spreadsheet column. For a small site this takes under an hour.
- Calculate the shares, for the whole site first, then for your top three pages.
- Check the timeline. Sort by date first seen. Look for clusters of similar anchors arriving within a few weeks.
- Check the sources. A keyword-rich anchor on a respected local publication is a different thing from the same anchor on an unrelated directory.
If something looks off, the fix is usually additive: earn more branded and varied links so the mix rebalances, rather than deleting what you have. Reserve disavow for clear, large-scale spam you did not create.
How to earn varied anchors without forcing them
You cannot fully control anchor text on other sites, and trying to dictate it is what creates patterns. You can shape the inputs.
- Publish pages worth linking to. Original guides, local data and clear service pages invite descriptive, natural anchors. Our guide on writing SEO content that ranks covers how to build them.
- Make your name easy to use. Consistent business naming on your site, profiles and press materials leads to branded anchors by default.
- Pursue mentions, not just links. When a local outlet covers you, a link often follows. Our walkthrough of press mention reclamation shows how to turn unlinked mentions into links.
- Choose link types that suit local search. See our breakdown of the best backlink types for local SEO.
- Keep your own internal links descriptive. Internal anchors are fully in your control, so use clear partial-match phrases there, as Google recommends.
If you are still getting oriented, the basics are in what backlinking is and why it matters, and the practical side is in how to get backlinks that actually boost rankings.
Our perspective: stop optimizing the percentage
We talk to a lot of local business owners who have been told their link profile is “over-optimized” because a tool flagged a number. Usually the number is the wrong thing to look at.
Our view is that anchor text is an output, not an input. If you publish useful pages steadily, show up in real conversations and earn links from relevant sites across several months, the anchors diversify on their own. The profiles that get into trouble are the ones built in a rush, with one commercial phrase repeated across one type of site.
That is why we build for consistency. At MySearchHero, each month’s deliverables are spread out rather than dumped in a batch: published articles, backlinks from a publisher network, Reddit mentions and social posts. A steady cadence is what keeps velocity looking like the way a growing business really grows. Our write-up on 2 to 4 pieces a month and authority backlinks explains the thinking.
So our advice is simple. Watch for spikes, keep brand and URL anchors as the majority, let descriptive phrases do the topical work and do not agonize over whether you are at 4% or 9% exact match.
— Mike
Doing this on autopilot
If auditing anchors and earning links is not how you want to spend your week, that is what we built MySearchHero for. It is a done-for-you service for local and service-based businesses: AI-generated SEO articles published to your site, authority backlinks through a publisher network, Reddit brand mentions and social posts, delivered monthly. Plans start at $197 per month for Spark and $297 per month for Authority. Hero is $397 per month and bundles SEO, backlinks, CTR boosting, Reddit presence and social posting in one place, backed by a 45-day money-back guarantee if organic metrics do not improve. See the plans.
A note on text-to-HTML ratio
Searching “ratio” next to SEO also brings up the text-to-HTML ratio, which is a different thing: the volume of visible text compared with page code. It is not an anchor metric. Google’s John Mueller has said, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable, that it makes no sense for SEO and reports flagging it should be ignored. If a site audit warns you about it, you can move on to something that matters, like your links.
FAQ
What is a good anchor text ratio?
There is no universal number. Commonly cited guides put branded anchors at 40 to 60% and exact match at 0 to 5%, but these are descriptive norms, not Google rules. Aim for a varied mix that is mostly brand and URL anchors.
Is exact-match anchor text bad?
No. It becomes a problem when it is overused, repeated and concentrated in a short time on low-quality sites. A few exact-match links among many varied ones are normal, and some top-ranking pages carry more than the old 5% rule allows.
What is partial match anchor text?
It is an anchor that contains your target keyword within a longer phrase, such as “a guide to roof repair in Denver after hail”. It signals relevance while reading naturally, which is why it usually forms the main descriptive share.
How often should I check my anchor text distribution?
Quarterly is enough for most small sites. Look at the trend and at any sudden cluster of similar anchors, rather than reacting to small shifts in percentages.
Should I disavow links with bad anchor text?
Only for clear, large-scale spam you did not build and that you believe is hurting you. Google is generally good at ignoring junk, so a single odd anchor is not a reason to act.
Sources
- SEO Link Best Practices for Google, Google Search Central
- Anchor text portfolio health checklist, LinkGuard
- Anchor Text Best Practices for SEO, ID Agora
- Backlink Quality Audit, Siteoscope
- Google Says Text To HTML Ratio Makes No Sense For SEO, Search Engine Roundtable