Keywords and Anchor Text Classification

Keywords

Anchor Text often contain Keywords or “Search Keywords” which are phrases consisting of one or more words in the searcher’s language.

Ranking high in search engines for important Keywords is the main objective of SEO.

Therefore, links to specific URLs are often using Anchor Text consisting or containing Keywords.

Keywords Types - Classification of Keyword Phrases in Anchor Text

Keyword phrases present in Anchor Text are classified for the purpose of risk management.

There are different link risks estimated depending on the anchor text classification, and many derived data points from that. For example a single money keyword phrase in the anchor text is usually problematic, but when you have large volumes of identical money keyword phrases, those (parts of) links could be considered higher risk.

The linking keywords can be categorized into the following:

Brand Keywords

Brand Keywords contain something that can be associated with you (as a personal brand) or your company.

That can be a certain product, service or the company name / domain name itself.

Examples:

  • iPhone, Apple products, apple.com and Steve Jobs would be Brand Keywords for apple.com
  • cemper.com, Christoph C. Cemper, LinkResearchTools or would be Brand Keywords for www.urlinspector.com.

A Brand Keyword of your competitor can be a Money keyword for you.

  • Iphone is a Money Keyword for a mobile shop, but of course a Brand keyword for Apple.
  • Try to think like a trademark lawyer here - who OWNs that name? That owner has that word as a Brand keyword.

URLs are always classified as Brand Keywords, as they point to one of the most important parts of your brands online - your website! We do that classification automatically for you.

Example:

Compound Keywords

Compound keywords are keywords that are partly Brand partly Money keywords.

Examples:

  • smartphone accessories at Apple.com is a Compound Keyword for apple.com, because it includes both a Money keyword (smartphone accessories) as well as a Brand keyword (Apple.com).
  • Apple smartphone accessories would be a Money Keyword for an mobile phone e-Commerce shop

Money Keywords

Money keywords are the keywords that people want to rank for and pay big $$$ in paid advertising.

Money keywords are also called commercial keyword or “commercial keyword phrase”, sometimes even more correct with the “generic keyword phrase”.

In the above example “Best Link Tool” is generic, as it doesn’t contain any clues about LinkResearchTools (which you hopefully also think is the best link tool).

Examples:

  • espresso machine is a Money keyword phrase for nespresso.com
  • buy iPhone is a Money keyword phrase for an mobile phone e-Commerce shop BUT a Compound for Apple.com)
  • the generic smartphone accessories is a Money Keyword for apple.com

Other Keywords

All keywords that don’t fit in the above categories are Other Keywords and without any association to you or your company.

Examples: click me,great site, here are good examples for Other keywords products can be classified as Other keyword for an e-Commerce shop.

Example of Keyword Classes

The following practical example is for the product website of the brand Link Detox® www.linkdetox.com. The column “Anchor” shows you the anchor text of the link.

Example of Keyword Classes

  1. typical Other keyword
  2. URLs pointing to the brand are a clear signal for Brand
  3. “plans-pricing” was actually parsed out of a URL, but the two words “plans” and “pricing” are very generic, and certainly something that people would search for (in combination with other words). Therefore it is a Money phrase.
  4. Competitive Link Detox® is a sub Brand of Link Detox®
  5. “Disavow File Audit” is a generic phrase, although coined and established as trademark in the marketplace we would not call this a trademark exclusive enough for the product Link Detox, so it’s a Money phrase.
  6. About Link Detox is clear brand phrase, pointing exclusively to the Brand Link Detox
  7. Benefits - generic, so classified as Money
  8. “2. analysis modes of Link Detox”… is a combination of the money phrase “analysis modes” in conjunction with the brand Link Detox, and so Compound
  9. “Link Profile Audit” is your exercise that you can answer based on what you learnt above. Please decide how you would classify it and comment below.

If you have multiple links from a page, then each of them can have a different keyword classification category.

The following example from a view in “Source Pages” is a drill down of above for www.linkdetox.com

drill down to all links on a page and their keyword class

  1. the “20” next to the detail +/- sign means that there are 20 link on that source page
  2. the anchor text “about link detox” is classified correctly as Brand, as explained above.
  3. “disavow toxic backlinks” is a generic keyword phrase, thus Money
  4. “read more” is a typical Other keyword
  5. “cleaning up your backlink profile” is a Money keyword phrase

TL:DR FAQ for Keyword Phrase Types (Keyword Classification Type in LRT)

What is an example for a money keyword phrase?

The phrase “Best Link Tool” is the “money anchor text” for the brand LinkResearchTools.