Anchor text system
Tier strategy + per-page anchor plans. Get this right and 10 links beat 1,000.
On this page
Anchor text makes or breaks RD100 / cloud-template campaigns. The canonical anchor reference; RD100 and cloud link here.
Tier strategy
| Tier | What it is | Anchor text |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Links at your money page | Brand + URL + branded combo (~80%) |
| Tier 2 | Links at Tier 1 properties | Keyword variations |
| Tier 3 | Links at Tier 2 properties | Keyword variations |
Why: Google sees the money page linked with mostly brand/URL anchors (natural). The keyword juice comes from the supporting tiers without polluting your direct anchor ratio.
Per-page RD100 anchor plan
Tier 1 anchors for a page you want to rank:
- Brand name alone (e.g. "AuraWave").
- Page topic keyword (e.g. "Princeton Headshot Research").
- A combo mentioning both ("AuraWave's take on the Princeton Headshot Research").
Tier 2 / Tier 3: - Use the page's H2/H3 headings as anchor text — they map to page sections, which Google rewards as contextual links. - Use natural-sentence phrasings ("AuraWave talked about what the Princeton research actually measured…").
Cloud-template anchor map
- Tier 1 (money page): brand name, anchor % = 100. If the homepage is optimized for one city, add a brand partial-match ("…serving Long Beach"). Delete the generic plain-URL nodes — DAS built that pillow.
- Tier 2: exact-match keywords + variations + entities (see Entities + schema). No real cap.
Manual link-tier anchor counts
If building tiers by hand (not just the cloud template):
| Tier | Anchors |
|---|---|
| Tier 2 (related searches / social) | ~5 different anchor texts |
| Tier 3 | 1 exact-match anchor; ~150 related searches |
| Tier 4 | LSI + variations, ~300–500 |
| Tier 5 (where GSA sits) | ~600, any variety is fine |
Randy Roan resells this exact tiering inside a press-release product and stops at Tier 3 — "generally good enough." For a cloud run, 50–100 anchors is plenty.
What NOT to do
- Don't use the page title as the primary anchor (old social-media OG-tag thinking; concentrates anchors unnaturally).
- Don't use NEO's Keyword Buckets feature — Clint doesn't use them at all.
- Don't single-keyword anchor-blitz a money page — that's a maps-only tactic (see GBP).
Why "10 links beat 1,000"
Competitors push 1,000 links because their on-page is broken and they're brute-forcing. If your on-page + schema + headings are right (On-page), 10 properly-anchored links move the needle. Another 10 moves it more. Save your link budget; spend it on quality, sent slowly.