What is random anchor text?

Any anchor text can be used to build up a natural anchor profile. This involves looking at the 9 different anchor texts that are read in the search engines. Random anchor text is one of them. But what does it mean exactly? What do you have to think about? And how effective is a random anchor text? 

Definition of random anchor text

We all know what an anchor text is. It is a word or several words that serve to describe a linked URL. It is therefore necessary for link building. Usually it serves as a description or a brand name is used (also called a branded anchor text). However, this is not necessary. There can also be other ways to add a link to a website. For example, using random anchor text. 

A random anchor text is a text that doesn't explain anything about the destination page. In other words, no further information is given. They offer the visitor the possibility to click through, but they do not help you to understand what the page is about. Examples of random anchor texts are:

• Click here
• Click here Read more
• View
• Website 

As you can see, these anchor texts don't tell anything about the page you are linking to. Usually you don't prefer a random anchor text, because it has nothing to do with the search values you want to be found on and it's not related to the page either. However, to build a natural link profile it is important to use different types of anchors. Random anchor texts can comprise about 5% of your total amount of links. 

How important is random anchor text? 

The importance of random anchor text varies. It is especially important to use different types of anchor texts during link building. Therefore random anchor texts should certainly not be forgotten. It is also good to remember that a random anchor text can also inspire the reader or give extra motivation to click through. After all, it does arouse interest immediately. Most people can't stop themselves and will click on the link anyway. This while a descriptive anchor text doesn't always have this effect. 

Even though a random anchor text doesn't give a clear description of the page it's pointing to, this certainly doesn't mean that relevance doesn't count anymore. Again, it is important that your page matches the topics that are dealt with on that website. Irrelevance is strongly punished by Google. You should always avoid this. A random anchor text does not mean that you place a random link.