The main types of anchor text
- Branded: “Sojuva”. The safest and most natural anchor type.
- URL: “sojuva.com”. Common in citations and reference lists.
- Partial match: “our guide to press releases in Malaysia”. Descriptive and natural.
- Exact match: “press release distribution Malaysia”. Powerful in small doses, risky in large ones.
- Generic: “this report”, “read more”. Natural but carries little context.
What a healthy anchor mix looks like
If most of your links use the same commercial keyword, that's a pattern, and patterns get noticed.
There's no official ratio, and anyone quoting one precisely is guessing. The principle is simple: your anchor profile should look like other people chose it. When publishers link to a company naturally, they mostly use its name, its URL or a descriptive phrase from the sentence.
A practical rule of thumb: mostly branded and URL anchors, a solid share of natural descriptive phrases, and only an occasional exact-match keyword, never the same one over and over.
Look at your existing backlink profile in Ahrefs or Semrush before choosing anchors for new placements. If exact-match anchors already dominate, make your next ten branded.
What to do in the next 30 days
Export your current anchor-text report. If one commercial phrase appears in more than a small fraction of your links, switch upcoming placements to branded and descriptive anchors.
How many links per article?
Fewer, better-placed links look editorial. Many links look sold.
A 700-word article with six outbound commercial links reads like an advert, and publishers who allow that usually allow it for everyone. Our quality check caps articles at roughly one link per 200 words and requires every anchor and target link to actually appear in the body before an article can go to the client.
- 600–800 words: one or two links to you, plus one to an authoritative source if it helps the reader.
- 1,000–1,500 words: two or three links to you at most.
- Link to a neutral authority (a government statistic, a study) where it genuinely supports a claim.
Where the link should point
Deep links to relevant pages usually help more than another homepage link.
If an article discusses payroll software for Malaysian SMEs, link to your payroll page or a relevant guide, not your homepage. Relevance between the article, the anchor and the target page is what makes the link useful to readers and meaningful to search engines.
- Service or product pages for commercial topics.
- Guides and research for educational topics, these also attract natural links later.
- Your homepage for brand-led stories, interviews and company news.
What to do in the next 30 days
For your next five placements, write down the target page and why it's the best match for the article topic before you choose the anchor.
Frequently asked questions
Can exact-match anchors still help?
Yes, in moderation and in context. The problem is repetition. A few natural exact-match anchors among many branded and descriptive ones are normal; the same keyword on every placement is a pattern.
Does the position of the link matter?
Links inside the main body, near relevant text, tend to be read and clicked more than links in author bios, footers or sidebars. Put the link where a reader would actually want it.
What if a publisher changes our anchor text?
That's often a sign of a real editorial process. As long as the link points to the right page and the anchor is accurate, accept reasonable edits.
Should we link to competitors or other sources?
Linking to a genuinely useful third-party source, a statistic, a regulation, a study, makes the article more credible. Avoid linking to direct competitors, but don't make your link the only one on the page.
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