Anchor Text is the part of a backlink that is clickable by a website visitor.
Why is Anchor Text Important?
Your anchor text profile is an important part of the Off Page SEO part of Google’s algorithm.
Google takes a lot of meaning from anchor text for the site linking out and the website being linked to.
They actually take less meaning than they used to…
…or, more precisely, the way they take the meaning is more nuanced.
Way back in 2011 before Google’s Panda and Penguin penalty and filter algorithms, you could get tons of links with the exact anchor text you wanted to rank for and your rankings would skyrocket for those and related keywords.
Nowadays, anchor text is still important, but I would say it is less important because they consider many more properties of a link and your website’s link profile.
How important is anchor text for your rankings?
Anchor text is still important in a lot of ways, but it isn’t as critical as it used to be…
…you definitely still should pay attention to anchor text.
I prefer to be conservative overall with it.
What is interesting is that if you can avoid anchor text penalty by having a high DA.
Basically, when your website has a lot of link authority, then you go on a different part of the algorithm and penalties that might hit lesser websites, won’t hit yours.