Anchor text is one of the few link signals you can partly control, which is exactly why it gets abused. A profile that is 40 percent exact-match anchors did not happen naturally. Google knows it, and so does anyone who audits your backlinks. Getting the distribution right is boring, unglamorous, and one of the highest-return things you can do.
The anchor categories that matter
- Branded: your company name or a variant. The safest anchor and usually the most common in a natural profile.
- Naked URL: the raw address, like yoursite.com. Common in citations and mentions.
- Generic: phrases like "read more," "this study," or "here." Natural in editorial writing.
- Partial-match: your keyword inside a longer phrase, like "this guide to B2B link building."
- Exact-match: the target keyword alone. Powerful, and the fastest to trip a filter when overused.
A distribution that reads as natural
There is no single correct set of numbers, and anyone who quotes exact percentages as law is guessing. But across B2B profiles that rank well and survive updates, the shape is consistent. Use these as ranges to aim for across your whole profile, not rules for any single page.
| Anchor type | Rough share | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Branded | 40 to 55 percent | Should dominate; grows naturally with brand mentions |
| Naked URL | 10 to 20 percent | Common in citations and resource lists |
| Generic | 10 to 20 percent | Editorial links use these constantly |
| Partial-match | 10 to 20 percent | Your main lever for relevance; keep it readable |
| Exact-match | 1 to 5 percent | Use rarely and only where it reads naturally |
The single biggest tell of a bought profile is exact-match anchors sitting well above five percent, especially when they all point at commercial pages. Natural links skew branded and generic because that is how real writers link.
Distribution changes by page type
The whole-profile numbers hide an important nuance: different pages should have different anchor mixes. Informational pages earn keyword-rich anchors naturally, because writers describe what they are linking to. Commercial pages should skew heavily branded, because natural links to a pricing page almost always use the brand name.
If your "alternatives" page has ten inbound links and eight of them are exact-match, that is a problem no matter what your sitewide numbers say. We cover why commercial pages need special handling in our guide on building links to bottom-of-funnel pages.
How to audit your current profile
- Export all referring domains and anchors from Ahrefs or Semrush.
- Bucket every anchor into the five categories above.
- Calculate the share of each category across the whole profile.
- Then repeat the calculation for your top three commercial pages individually.
- Flag any page where exact-match anchors exceed roughly one in ten links.
This falls out naturally from a proper backlink audit. If a page is over-optimized, the fix is not to disavow good links. It is to build new links with branded and generic anchors to rebalance the profile over time.
Practical rules we follow
- Default to branded and natural-phrase anchors unless there is a clear reason not to.
- Never let a client dictate the exact-match anchor for every placement. It always backfires.
- Match the anchor to the surrounding sentence so it reads as something a human wrote.
- Rebalance with new links rather than trying to remove existing ones.
- Watch the trend, not a single snapshot. Distribution drifts as you build.
The mindset that keeps you safe
Ask one question before every link: would a real writer, with no incentive from you, phrase the anchor this way? If the honest answer is no, change it. Natural anchor text is not a trick. It is just what links look like when people link because they wanted to.