Before Google introduced one of its most famous updates, called Penguin, anchor texts were mostly used to determine whether websites were relevant to users or not.
After the update, Google began analyzing anchor texts to determine penalties for poor web optimization or spam.
There is a wide variety of anchor texts, so it's difficult to classify forex database them precisely. However, they can be commonly distinguished into the following categories:
Site URL. These are either identical to the URL or a simplified version of it.
Branded. They use the domain or brand name. They are used for links with lower domain authority.
Exact keyword. These are the keywords you want to rank for on your target page.
Synonyms. They explain the keyword you want to rank for with other words.
Long tail. These contain variations of the main keyword.
Compound. They have a combination of keywords, or a keyword and the brand name.
Page title. These correspond to the title of the destination website.
Generic or unoptimized. They provide no information about the page's content.
Image-based. They don't contain text, but rather an image that redirects to the destination page when clicked.
The use of anchor text is an important factor for organic positioning, as Google crawlers use it to identify website topics.