Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. When you read a sentence that contains a link, the words you click on are the anchor text. In SEO, anchor text matters because it gives both users and search engines a signal about what the linked page is about. The words used as anchor text can influence how Google understands the relevance and topic of the destination page.
What are the different types of anchor text?
Anchor text falls into several categories:
- Exact match: the anchor text contains the exact keyword the destination page is targeting, for example linking to an SEO page using the anchor text "SEO services"
- Partial match: the anchor text includes a variation or partial version of the target keyword, such as "learn more about SEO"
- Branded: the anchor uses the brand name, such as "Phoenix Media"
- Generic: non-descriptive text such as "click here" or "read more"
- Naked URL: the URL itself is used as the anchor, such as "www.phoenixmedia.co.th"
- Image: when a linked image has no visible text, Google uses the image's alt text as the anchor text
How does anchor text affect SEO?
When another website links to yours using descriptive anchor text relevant to your page's topic, it reinforces to Google what your page is about and can strengthen its relevance for those terms. Internally, using descriptive anchor text in your own links helps Google understand the relationship between pages on your site and can help specific pages rank for relevant terms. Anchor text is also a signal Google watches for manipulation: a backlink profile that is overwhelmingly made up of exact-match keyword anchors can look unnatural and trigger a penalty.
What are the best practices for anchor text in SEO?
For internal links on your own website, use descriptive anchor text that tells the reader and search engine what the linked page covers. Avoid generic anchors like "click here" wherever possible. For external backlinks pointing to your site, a natural profile includes a mix of branded anchors, partial match anchors, and generic anchors, with exact-match anchors making up only a small proportion. Over-optimised anchor text in backlinks is one of the patterns Google's Penguin algorithm was specifically designed to identify, so diversity and naturalness are important.