Google has used anchor text, the clickable text of a link, as a search ranking signal since 1998. How a site chooses to use it in link building decides whether a backlink helps its search engine optimization: varied anchors with a brand name read as natural, while one exact-match keyword repeated on every link is the pattern spam filters look for.
Four anchor text facts for SEO and link building
- Definition
- Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link: it helps users and search engines understand what the linked web page is about.
- Backlink mix
- Brand names and naked URLs dominate a healthy backlink profile; an exact-match keyword anchor, for example "electric bike", stays rare in any SEO link building campaign.
- Link context
- Google reads the content around the link text almost as closely as the anchor itself; internal links can use looser rules.
- Spam risk
- Google search spam policies name keyword-optimised anchors in distributed content as link spam, a recurring topic of the Link Hunter blog and its netlinking news.
What is anchor text in the HTML code?
Anchor text, called texte d'ancre in French, is the words placed between the opening <a> tag and the closing </a> tag of an HTML document. The href attribute carries the destination address, while the anchor text carries the meaning. In <a href="https://example.com/city-bikes/">choosing an electric bike</a>, the reader sees "choosing an electric bike" and never the URL behind it.
This clickable text serves two audiences. For the reader, it announces what they will find after the click: a well-named hyperlink avoids backtracking and makes navigation easier. For search engines, it sums up the topic of the target page, in the same way as its title or its subheadings. Google's SEO Starter Guide and its documentation on crawlable links ask for descriptive, reasonably concise anchor text that is relevant to the page being linked, and they warn against generic wording such as "click here".
A good anchor text definition also covers what it leaves out. The anchor is the text only: the title attribute, the URL and the rel value sit in the code, out of sight. People reading the page judge the link on its words alone, and screen readers announce those words outside their sentence, so the anchor has to make sense on its own.
Anchor links inside a single page
Anchor links carry a second, more technical meaning on the web: a link to an exact point of the same document, often called a jump link. The target is an HTML element carrying an identifier, and the address ends in a hash followed by that identifier. A table of contents at the top of a long guide usually works this way, each entry sending the reader to one heading.
The two meanings coexist in web vocabulary, and SEO is mainly concerned with the first one: the link text connecting two pages. Jump links still help, and structured data plays no part in them, since Google sometimes shows them as "jump to" links under a result, and they make long pages easier to scan.
How to create a link and its anchor text, in the code or in WordPress
Creating a link with anchor text requires three elements: the a tag, an href attribute filled in using the full URL for an external link (or a path starting with a slash for an internal link), and link text that reads well out of context. Adding target="_blank" opens the destination in a new tab; in that situation, rel="noopener" protects the original page.
To place an anchor within the same document, the approach changes slightly:
- give the target element an identifier, for example
<h2 id="pricing">; - write the link to that anchor using a hash:
<a href="#pricing">see the pricing</a>; - from another page of the site, add the path before the hash:
/offers/#pricing.
The old name attribute on the a tag is obsolete in HTML5: the id attribute, valid on any HTML element, replaces it. Mozilla's MDN documentation details these rules and gives ready-to-copy code examples.
WordPress spares its users the code. In the Gutenberg editor, select the words, click the link icon and paste the URL: the selected text becomes the anchor. For a jump link inside a post, click the target block, open the "Advanced" panel and fill in the "HTML anchor" field; that name, written in lower case and free of spaces, becomes the identifier to target after the hash. Clicking an existing link in the editor opens its toolbar, where the address, the new-tab option and the nofollow attribute can be edited directly. An agency managing several WordPress sites gains from a naming convention for anchors, in lower case and hyphenated, so the code stays clean from one site to the next.
Why anchor text matters for search engines and for people
Anchor text is one of Google's oldest ranking signals. In "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", published by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998, the text of incoming links already described a page, even when that page never contained the search term itself. The principle still holds: when dozens of sites point to an address using similar words, the engine associates that address with that topic.
This power fuelled abuse. For years, SEO practitioners bought or manufactured links that all carried the same keyword, as an exact match, to push a page up the rankings. Google answered in April 2012 with the Penguin update, aimed at artificial link profiles and anchor over-optimisation. Since September 2016, Penguin runs in real time inside the core algorithm, and the SpamBrain system, put forward during the December 2022 link spam update, neutralises links judged unnatural. Today's Google spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites" among the forms of link spam.
For the user, the SEO impact is secondary: they want to know where the click leads. A clear anchor reduces drop-offs, makes content more accessible and encourages further reading, which helps the reading comfort of the whole page. Anchor text that serves the reader almost always serves search engine optimization; the reverse is rarely true.
Six types of anchor text and the signal each one sends
Anchor types are classified by how much of the target keyword they contain. Each family sends its own signal to search engines, and a healthy profile mixes them. Take an electric bike shop trying to rank for "electric bike" as the running example:
| Anchor type | Example | Signal sent | Over-optimisation risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Branded anchor text | "Cyclo Lumière" | reputation, spontaneous recommendation | very low |
| Naked URL | "cyclolumiere.fr" | source citation | very low |
| Generic anchor text | "this site", "read more" | no information on the topic | low, yet the link carries little value |
| Partial match anchor | "choosing an electric bike for the city" | clear topic in natural wording | moderate |
| Exact match anchor text | "electric bike" | keyword alone, the strongest signal | high when repeated |
| Image link | logo carrying alt text | the alt attribute acts as the anchor | low |
The brand name and the naked URL form the foundation of a natural profile: a blogger recommending a shop writes its name first. The partial anchor brings context without repeating the keyword word for word, and each wording can differ from one link to the next. The exact-match anchor concentrates the strongest and most closely monitored signal; Google spots it easily when it recurs, identical, on unrelated sites.
The generic anchor deserves a comment. It triggers no penalty, yet it adds almost nothing to SEO and hinders people browsing by keyboard or screen reader. In a blog post, a generic anchor can nearly always give way to the words that name the destination. A rich anchor, packed with several commercial keywords, sits at the other extreme and reads as written for the crawler.
Which anchor to pick for each link: a selection by situation
The best anchor text depends on who places the link and where. A press mention, a guest post and an internal link to a pillar page call for distinct wording, and the right choice for one would look forced in another. The grid below sums up the anchor text examples we recommend for the most common situations, from the safest to the most exposed.
| Situation | Recommended anchor | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Press mention, partner page, directory | brand name or naked URL | a journalist cites a source by its name |
| Sponsored post on a closely related blog | partial match inside a full sentence | conveys the topic while reading naturally |
| Strongest link of a campaign, on a site of the same niche | exact match, once | reserved for the most relevant host |
| Link from a broad or loosely related site | brand or brand plus a descriptive word | an exact keyword there contradicts the host's theme |
| Internal link to a pillar page | descriptive text close to the target keyword | navigation first, no comparable risk |
Two criteria settle any hesitation. First, the relevance of the host: the closer its topic is to the target page, the more descriptive the anchor can be. Second, the existing distribution: an exact anchor that would be harmless on a fresh domain becomes one too many on a profile already full of them.
Balancing the anchor text of a backlink profile
No official ratio exists: Google publishes no threshold, and the percentages found on the web come from SEO agencies' observations, which vary from one sector to another. One rule nevertheless emerges from every link audit: the brand and the URL dominate, and the exact-match anchor remains rare, kept for links from the sites closest to the topic.
Back to the electric bike shop. A series of ten backlinks could be split this way: four branded anchors, two naked URLs, two partial anchors such as "choosing an electric bike for the city", one generic anchor and a single exact match, "electric bike". The proportions shift with the competitiveness of the query; what matters is the order, brand first and exact match last.
Two points round out this balance. The existing distribution counts towards the total: before any link building campaign, a survey of current anchors, for example in the Top linking text table of the Google Search Console Links report, avoids adding an exact-match anchor too many, which is hard to undo. Timing matters too, because the pace of link acquisition gives away an artificial profile as surely as identical anchors do.
Internal linking follows its own rules
Internal links follow another logic. On their own site, publishers can use descriptive anchors close to the keyword without a comparable risk: internal linking serves navigation first, and Google treats it as such. Varying the wording still pays, and the same anchor should never point to two distinct pages, which blurs the target and invites cannibalisation.
- Who chooses the anchor: on an internal link, the site's publisher; on a backlink, the citing site or the link buyer.
- Exact match: acceptable internally when it describes the target page; rare on backlinks, kept for the best hosts.
- Main objective: navigation and hierarchy for internal links; authority and topic for backlinks.
- Main risk: cannibalisation between two pages internally; an anti-spam filter or an ignored link externally.
The words around the link: context counts
The surrounding link text weighs almost as much as the anchor itself. Google reads the sentence, the paragraph and the subheading next to the link to understand how the two pages relate, and its documentation on links says so: the words around a link help search engines understand it. A link placed in a paragraph about the topic passes on more than a link isolated in a footer or in a list of partners at the end of a post.
This reading of context offers real room for manoeuvre. A branded anchor, inserted in a sentence about urban electric bikes, conveys the topic without repeating the keyword. The author gains naturalness, the target page receives the useful information, and the profile stays balanced. Conversely, an exact-match anchor dropped into an unrelated text, on a site of another theme, sends a contradictory signal that filters pick up. Sitewide links sit at the bottom of this scale: a footer link repeated on every page, next to the privacy policy and the legal notice, carries little topical weight.
A link therefore gains from sitting in the body of the content, early in the page, inside a paragraph developing an idea close to the destination. Readers look for the same thing: a source that extends what they have just read. The nature of the link also matters, since a dofollow or a nofollow attribute changes what the target site receives.
Anchor text across languages and markets
Anchor text gets harder to manage once a site targets several countries. Each market builds its own profile: links from German sites point to the German version, links from Spanish sites to the Spanish one, and every language needs its own mix of brand, URL and descriptive anchors. A keyword translated word for word rarely matches the way people search locally, so the anchor should follow local keyword research, never a dictionary. Digital marketing teams that run several markets usually keep one anchor plan per language.
Two traps come up again and again in international audits. The first is an English exact-match anchor placed on a French or Italian page, which reads as foreign to the host's audience and stands out in the profile. The second is a single anchor duplicated across every language version, which recreates the identical-anchor pattern that filters look for. Planning anchors per market, the way multilingual link building market by market works, keeps each version consistent.
Mistakes that turn anchors into a spam signal
Anchor text optimization is mostly a matter of writing for the reader, then checking the overall result. Every beginner's guide to SEO repeats how to write good anchor text, but the habits that matter fit in a short list:
- name the destination, never the page the link comes from: the anchor describes what the user will find after the click;
- keep the anchor short, usually two to six words, readable outside its sentence;
- vary the wording from one link to the next, synonyms and full phrases included;
- drop "click here" and "find out more", which say nothing about the target content;
- check every URL: a link to a redirected or deleted address loses part of its effect.
Common mistakes follow the opposite path. The most costly remains repeating the same exact-match anchor across dozens of backlinks, typical of rushed campaigns. Next come anchors unrelated to the target page, which mislead the user, and links buried in blocks of ten addresses at the bottom of a post. Keyword-rich links hidden in widgets or templates belong to the same family, and Google's spam policies name them explicitly.
A technical SEO check finds these flaws quickly: a backlink analysis tool or the Search Console data lists the anchors in use, and a broken link checker run during a site audit flags dead links. Phrase match anchors, anchors like "best electric bike" repeated on a specific page, show up at once in these reports. After publication, one more check is essential: the agreed anchor must actually appear in the text, and no attribute should have been added by mistake.
Choosing the anchor of a purchased link
A purchased link rarely leaves the choice to an independent writer: the buyer sets the anchor and the target page before ordering. This freedom calls for discipline. Link audits show the same pattern again and again: penalised profiles almost all share an overabundance of commercial anchors chosen one by one, without any overall view.
In content marketing as in link buying, the same question comes first: does the anchor improve the reader's path? Three checks guide the choice. Which distribution does the target site already show? Which page hosts the link, and is the anchor natural in its sentence? Is the destination page really about the topic the anchor announces? On our Link Hunter platform, the buyer chooses the anchor and the target page when ordering; our team checks that it fits naturally into the publisher's text and flags an anchor that would clash with the content.
Changing an anchor after publication remains possible with some publishers, yet each change leaves a trace and draws attention to the link. Setting the anchor from the outset, taking the existing profile into account, is the safer way. Buying and monitoring links follow the same logic, from choosing sites to sensitive niches.
Image links, edited anchors and audit tools
Does a clickable image count as an anchor?
A clickable image passes on its alt text as the anchor: Google uses the image's alt attribute to understand the destination. A descriptive alt naming the target page plays the same role as anchor text, while an empty alt leaves the link without information.
Can you change the anchor of a backlink that is already published?
Changing the anchor of a published backlink is feasible if the publisher agrees, but each change shows up in the link's history. Setting the anchor before ordering, after a survey of the existing profile, avoids this need.
Which tool should you use to survey your anchors?
The Links report in Google Search Console lists, free of charge, the most frequent linking text pointing to a site. Commercial backlink analysis tools extend this survey by showing the distribution by anchor type and the discovery date of each link.