How defined does the anchor text need to be for a domain url?

[Warren.W]

Ok, I'm looking to clean up my domain with irrelevant Anchor text linking to specific URL's. Whether, it's my root domain or a particular product URL. I'm finding a wide variety of terms (anchor text) pointing to my homepage, category and finally my product pages.

Example, the Anchor text "Paragon Print Systems" is pointing to my homepage "barcodefactory.com" does this hurt my homepage enough to either have the link/anchor text removed from linking to my homepage?

thanks much!,

Warren

[aarongray]

Hey Warren,

Personally irrelevant Anchor text isn't bad at all it shows that your site is doing true link building as google wants other people to be building the links and choosing the Anchor for you.

Sometimes it can help you break up your Anchor text  too which is great as Big G doesn't like overused Anchor texts.

I love using ahrefs.com Anchors Cloud to really get a good understanding of Anchors. I would be more worried if an Anchor is been over used.

[Toddfoster]

Hi Warren,

Generally speaking, it is very common to see most links pointing to the Home Page of a website. This may not be the case in e-commerce sites which specialize in the niche product. In that case, you might expect heavy inbound linking to your product pages rather than your Home page. If irrelevant links make up the majority of your link profile (i.e. Automotive links pointing to a Lawyer's website) then they will not do much to help you and may harm your relevancy score with Google.

In your example, if nothing on barcodefactory.com features "Paragon Print Systems", then it is not doing you as much good as if your site had a page dedicated to it.

There are some great video tutorials Rand did on the value of anchor text:

Anchor Text General Rules:

https://moz.com/blog/all-about-anchor-text-whiteboard-friday

How To Avoid Over-Optimization With Anchor Text:

https://moz.com/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization

Where Anchor Text Is Now:

https://moz.com/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday

Generally speaking, you want to make sure that anchor text from links is branded rather than commercialized. What this means is that you want your brand to show up in the anchor rather than the product itself. For example, if you wanted to sell Goodyear tires, you would want the anchor text to read "Goodyear tires" rather than "tires for sale" or "cheap tires".

To answer your question in brief, unless the link is coming from a completely irrelevant or spammy source, you are probably gaining more from it than you would removing it based on the anchor text alone.

Hope this helps and feel free to follow up with me if you like,

Rob

[Warren.W]

thanks Rob! much appreciated

Warren