Anchor links and anchor texts

[illmasterj]

I'm seeing more and more sites linking internally to anchor links within a different post. These are the types of anchor links that a table of contents plugin usually auto generates.

These anchors links are subheadings within the post, and are usually longer tail keywords that they want to rank for.

When linking internally, they usually use the subheading/words relevant to the anchor link, as the anchor text.

Example URL: adogslife.com/best-breeds/#labrador
Goal keyword for that post: best dog breeds
Anchor text to that anchor link: labradors, labradors are one of the best dog breeds

My question is: are these anchor texts good, or bad for for the receiving URL? Or is it diluting the focus away from the goal keyword?

 

[Ryuzaki]

It's an interesting thing to do. I don't think anything with the "HTML jump link" tagged on the end is considered a unique URL, like might be done with URL parameters where you need to make sure you have canonicals in place. But I think it would be good practice to make sure you do have canonicals in place just in case Google does something silly at some point. If your canonical is in place, than the main URL is getting all the credit (which I think it would without the canonical too, but I'd lean toward the side of caution).

My concern about the anchor text examples you shared are that they are relevant but they could slightly push your relevancy in a different, albeit relevant direction. The 2nd example anchor text would be fine to me, where as the first one is getting away from the goal keyword.

I'm pretty aggressive with my internal anchor text usage and seem to have great success with it rather than seeing any negative effects. I think it's real easy for us to over-estimate how smart Google is or how well crafted their algorithms are. I don't want to leave any room for confusion. It's kind of like meta keywords (which aren't used any more). Those left zero room for confusion. This is a chance to be THAT specific in the one place Google doesn't seem to mind it.