Anchor Text

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink that signals to search engines what the linked page is about.

Anchor text is a strong relevance signal. When many pages link to a URL with the anchor text "best SEO tools", Google interprets that as a signal that the linked page is about "best SEO tools." Over-optimised anchor text (too many links with exact-match keywords) can trigger Penguin algorithm penalties — Google expects anchor text profiles to look natural.

Types of anchor text: exact match (the precise keyword), partial match (includes the keyword with other words), branded (your brand name), generic ("click here", "read more"), URL (the raw URL as text), and naked URL. A healthy backlink profile has a natural mix of all types, dominated by branded and partial match.

For internal linking, descriptive anchor text that includes the target page's keywords is recommended. For external links pointing to your site, a natural distribution is expected — if 90% of your backlinks use the same exact-match anchor text, it appears manipulated.