Anchor Text Strategy
Anchor text is the clickable text in a link, and a signal about the page behind it. Learn the five types, and build a strategy that avoids overoptimization.
The anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. In <a href="/">SEO</a>, the word "SEO" is the anchor text, and it is the single clearest instruction you can give a machine about what sits on the other side of a click.
Anchor text sits at the intersection of two disciplines that SEO usually treats separately: on-page work and linkbuilding. Every link has two ends, and the anchor does something at both.
What the anchor does at each end of a link
| The linking page | The destination page | |
|---|---|---|
| Choice of link | An outbound link should be relevant and credible. Citing good sources supports the expertise and trustworthiness of your own page. | A backlink strengthens the authority of the destination URL. The more relevant and authoritative the linking domain, the more it carries. |
| The anchor text | You reinforce what your own page is about by choosing anchors that describe the topic you cover. Readability comes first. | The anchor tells search engines what the destination URL covers, which supports its rankings for that topic. |
| Placement of the link | The earlier a link appears in the text, the more central it reads as a source for the argument. | A link placed early in a text signals more importance and tends to earn more clicks, which strengthens the destination. |
The five types of anchor text
Exact match. The anchor describes the destination one to one.
Example: Anchor text is one of many factors that shape on-page performance, which makes it a natural extension of your linkbuilding strategy.
Phrase match. The anchor sits naturally inside a sentence, with relevant wording carrying the reader onward.
Example: Alongside anchor text, it pays to work deliberately with internal linkbuilding to strengthen the coherence of your site.
Branded. The anchor is a brand name.
Example: Bonzer has offices in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo.
Naked URL. The anchor is the raw address.
Example: You can read more at https://www.bonzer.io/about-bonzer
Image as anchor. An image and its alt text act as the anchor. That is one of the practical reasons alt text is worth writing properly rather than filling in at the end.
The working rule is straightforward: use the type that reads best for the person on the page. An anchor that looks bolted on to satisfy an algorithm tends to underperform on both counts, because it neither converts nor gets clicked.
How anchor text affects rankings
The exact weighting is unknown, as with every ranking signal. What we do know is that anchors work as a description of the destination. If a page about SEO has inbound links using "SEO" in the anchor, that reinforces to Google what the page is about, and the same holds for internal links.
The history is worth knowing, because it explains why moderation matters. Google's Penguin update in 2012 started looking hard at whether a URL's inbound links carried suspiciously identical anchors, which is the fingerprint of a bought link profile. Hummingbird in 2013 brought natural language processing into ranking, so the system began understanding context and meaning rather than individual words. Two decades of language modeling later, a single word in an anchor is not what decides how a page is understood. The pattern across your whole link profile still is.
That gives you the practical target: a profile that looks like the way people actually link. A mix of branded, phrase match, naked URLs and some exact match, with the exact match anchors distributed across pages rather than concentrated on one money page. Fifty inbound links all reading "cheap running shoes" is the clearest self-report of paid placement there is.
Internal anchors are where you have full control
Backlink anchors are largely decided by other people. Internal links are entirely yours, and they are the underused half of this discipline.
Use descriptive anchors on internal links that give context about the linked page, and let them carry the terms the destination actually targets. "Read more" and "click here" waste the signal completely, and they read worse for anyone using a screen reader. Keep the anchors consistent for a given destination, so the same page is described the same way across the site. That consistency is part of what builds a recognizable topic for a page rather than a scattering of hints.
Two habits are worth adopting. Link from body text rather than only from navigation and footers, since contextual links carry more meaning. And put the link where the reader would naturally want it, which is usually the first time the concept comes up.
How to audit what you have
Start with the inbound picture. A backlink tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Majestic will list the anchors pointing at any URL, along with the referring domains. Read it for concentration: one anchor dominating a page, or the same commercial phrase repeated across unrelated sites, is the pattern to fix. The method behind that reading is covered in link analysis.
Then crawl your own site and export internal links with their anchors. You are looking for three things: important pages with very few internal links, generic anchors on links to commercial pages, and pages described inconsistently across the site.
Anchor text is a small detail that compounds. Get the internal anchors right, keep the external profile honest, and every link you earn afterwards works a little harder. If you want a read on how your link profile and anchor distribution look today, our free SEO analysis covers it, and link strategy is where we take it further.
