Anchor Text Optimization for Cannabis Dispensary Local SEO

Anchor text are the visible, clickable words in a piece of content used to link to another site. When using anchor text, you can choose from several different formats:

Exact Match

This is when the anchor text is the exact keyword phrase you’d like to rank for on your site.

Ex: foottraffik is data driven digital marketing focused on increasing leads.

Exact match anchor texts used to be much more useful in the past, but since the introduction of Penguin by Google, that is not the case anymore. In some cases, exact match anchor texts can be a signal to Google that your site is using a ‘spamming’ type tactic for link building.

Partial Match/Phrase Match

This is when the anchor text contains the keyword phrase you’d like to rank for on your site.

Ex: foottraffik is data driven digital marketing focused on increasing leads.

Partial match anchor texts are an excellent way to link out to other sites and develop a natural and efficient outbound linking profile.

Branded

This is when the anchor text is your company’s brand name.

Ex: foottraffik is data driven digital marketing focused on increasing leads.

Branded anchor texts are the safest to use unless your website is an exact match domain. Many large sites (like Best Buy, etc.) have a larger number of branded anchor texts compared to other types.

Naked URLs

This is when your anchor text is the URL of the site you are referencing.

Ex: www.foottraffik.co is data driven digital marketing focused on increasing leads.

Generic

In this case, the anchor text is nonspecific and usually will be marked by either “click here” or “this site”.

Ex: foottraffik is data driven digital marketing focused on increasing leads. Click here to go to their site.

LSI

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI refers to any variations of your main keyword. In other words, synonyms.

Ex: foottraffik is data driven promotional advertising focused on increasing leads.

Tips on optimizing anchor texts

Now that we have an understanding of the different types of anchor texts, we can begin to understand how to optimize them.

1. Keeps Anchor Text Relevant: In order for your site to take full advantage of anchor texts, you must make sure that the anchor text that is being placed makes sense and is relevant to the content surrounding it. The more relevant the content is to the target keyword, the more ‘link juice’ you’ll get from your anchor text.
2. Diversify Wisely: Your anchor text distribution can make or break your search engine ranking, so make sure to diversify the styles of anchor texts used to get their full benefits.
3. Toxic Links: This goes without saying, but do not link to toxic links or toxic sites when creating outbound links.

Having a fluid and natural anchor text profile can be very useful for any site whether you’re starting from scratch or continuing to grow. Since the Penguin update, it’s important to be careful about the types of anchor texts that are being built out for your website. There is such thing as NSEO (Negative SEO) and you do not want this to work against your efforts.