Anchor text distribution: branded first, no fake 70/30 recipe

Branded names, naked URLs, and natural phrases should do most of the work. Exact-match money keywords should be rare. That is a habit, not a published Google ratio, and not a 70/30 slide we will print on a proposal. Anyone selling you a precise split as science invented it. We will not.

You approve the anchor list on the brief. We will push back if the list is eight variations of the same commercial phrase. A guest post is a sentence in an article a stranger might read. If the only way the sentence works is “best [keyword] casino bonus,” the host is not the problem. The brief is.

English guest posts are $125 / $175 / $250 / $275 / $450. The fee does not change because you asked for a branded anchor. We do not charge extra for “safe” anchors and we do not discount for exact match. The risk sits in the pattern across months, not in a single invoice line.

Because a ratio is easy to put in a deck. Old forum folklore hardened into agency templates. Some templates were built by watching one SERP in one year and pretending it was a law. Google has never published a branded-versus-exact target. What it has published is a link-spam policy that targets schemes — including scaled, keyword-stuffed placements that exist to manipulate rankings. SpamBrain is the classifier that devalues a lot of that layer. Read Google link spam updates for the policy page, not a fear funnel.

A real profile is messy. Press uses the brand. Partners use the company name. Directories use the URL. Guest posts should look like that mess, not like a cleaned spreadsheet. If every new live URL uses a different money phrase, you are not “diversifying.” You are labelling the campaign.

We report the exact anchor on every live URL. That is so you can audit the pattern, not so we can grade you against a fake pie chart. If a publisher rewrites the sentence and the live anchor is not what you typed, the report shows what went live. We do not silently swap in a keyword to “help you rank.”

Stricter. Those verticals already look commercial to classifiers and to human reviewers. Branded-first is the default, not a suggestion. Exact-match “best online casino” and “buy CBD oil” strings are how a profile starts to look like a scheme even when the hosts are real. Casino work lives on iGaming — English $180–$550, quote-only — because the publisher conversation and the copy rules are different.

Licence language belongs in the destination, not in the anchor. Do not stuff UKGC or MGA claims into the link text if the domain does not support them. Sportsbook, poker, and sweeps each need their own sentence. Adult, CBD, and crypto stay Enquire Now. We will not take a general English GP at $125 and hang a hemp exact-match on a lifestyle host who never agreed to the niche.

New casino domains get the slowest, blandest mix. Brand and URL only until the site has a reason to exist in the index. That is a velocity problem as much as an anchor problem. Fifty exact-match links in week one is how launches get deindexed. We will not take that brief.

The surrounding copy is different, so the sentence is different. A guest post gives you a full article. You can earn a brand mention in a paragraph that is actually about the topic. A niche edit is one insert into someone else’s live page. The sentence has to survive the existing tone. That usually means a calmer, more branded or descriptive anchor — not a money phrase bolted onto a 2019 how-to.

English niche edits start at $99, about 20% under the matching guest-post row, quote-only. Do not use a cheaper insert as a place to hide a harder anchor. Editors notice. Readers notice. Classifiers notice. If the only insert that would take your exact-match is a resources dump, the host already failed vetting.

Mixed campaigns should share one anchor policy, not two. The report should not show guest posts as branded and inserts as a keyword list. That pattern is readable. Keep the whole graph boring on purpose.

Branded: the company or product name. Naked URL: the destination as text. Generic: “this study,” “read more,” “source.” Partial: a phrase that includes the brand plus a descriptor. Exact-match: the money query, unmodified. The first three should dominate. Partial is fine when the sentence needs it. Exact-match is a spice. If you cannot explain why this URL needs the spice, skip it.

Generic anchors are not a loophole. A profile of nothing but “click here” on slot farms is still a scheme. The host quality does more work than the string. A branded link on a trafficked industry site beats an exact-match on a DR70 corpse. Traffic and outbound hygiene are the vetting checks. Anchors are the last mile.

rel=sponsored or nofollow does not change the need for a natural sentence. Marked links are reported as marked. Hidden exact-match on unmarked farms is still the thing Google’s policy is aimed at. We will not sell you a “dofollow exact-match package.”

You send preferred anchors or you ask us to mix them. We map them onto the hosts that actually accept the topic. If a host will only run a branded mention, that is what goes live. If your list cannot be placed without stuffing, we stop and say so. That conversation happens before the draft, not in a surprise report.

The popular English guest-post band is DR40+ at $250. You can order that band in the portal or quote a mix. Typical TAT about two weeks, 20-day maximum, replacement if the link drops — including if a publisher later rewrites the anchor into something you did not approve and you want it replaced on a comparable host. Say that on the brief.

International copy uses native writers so the anchor is not a translated English keyword glued into a local sentence. International guest posts start at $175. Digital PR citations often arrive as branded or naked mentions because a journalist chose the words. That is quoted, no public WWB digital-PR price. Do not brief a newsroom with an exact-match list.

Send a short preferred list and a default: brand unless we agree otherwise. Mark which destinations can tolerate a rare exact-match and which cannot. New domains and hard niches should arrive with brand and URL only. If your SEO tool exported forty money phrases, do not paste them into the form. That export is a keyword list. It is not an anchor policy.

We will map the list onto hosts that can carry the sentence. A DR40+ guest post at $250 does not earn a harder anchor than a DR20+ at $125. The host’s archive and the destination’s age do. Paying more for a scarcer badge is not a licence to stuff. Paying less is not a licence either. The pattern across the month is what classifiers read.

After go-live, audit the report the way you would audit a vendor you do not trust — including us. Exact live anchors, not the brief. If three posts in a week all used a different commercial variation, say so. We would rather replace a line than pretend a stuffed week was “diversity.” Typical TAT about two weeks, 20-day maximum, replacement if the link drops. That clock is placement. It is not a reason to rush a worse mix.