Backlink profiles are a critical component of SEO. It used to be that having lots of backlinks was enough to boost a website in Google’s SERP. Since back-linking is an easy tactic to abuse, Google has evolved through several generations of link scoring. Today, a website’s backlink profile is scored based on the quality of the websites providing the links (as well as their backlink profiles).
Anchor text itself also plays a role. Based on information provided in the SEMRush report, it may be true that exact match inbound anchor text is damaging in some cases. However, much of this is based on observed patterns, so the correlation might be more coincidental than causal. In other words, don’t automatically disavow backlinks just because SEMRush indicates they may be toxic.
When using the “backlink audit” tool in SEMRush, you’ll find several types of anchors listed as a result of the audit. Here they are:
- Money
- Compound
- Branded
- Organic
- Other
- Naked
- Empty
To understand what each of these is and how to spot them online, read the document linked below. There, you’ll find explanations with examples, screenshots, etc.
https://www.semrush.com/kb/semrush-reports-tools/projects/backlink-audit-tool/about-anchor-texts/