Anchor text is the clickable, visible wording of a hyperlink. Search engines read it as a description of the page the link points to. This page defines anchor text, lists the six types with examples, states why the wording matters for SEO, and shows how to check the anchors pointing at your own site.
What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the visible, clickable wording of a hyperlink that tells readers and search engines what the linked page is about. In the HTML, it is the text between the opening and closing anchor tags, and it is the part a reader clicks.
A link written as <a href="https://example.com/guide/">link building guide</a> carries the anchor text “link building guide”. The wording is one input Google uses to understand the target page, alongside the target’s own content and the text around the link. Backlinks carry anchors chosen by the linking site; internal links carry anchors chosen by you.
What are the types of anchor text?
Anchor text falls into six types: exact match, partial match, branded, naked URL, generic and image. Each type signals the target differently: the first two carry keywords, branded and naked URL anchors name the source, and generic and image anchors carry little topical wording.
| Type | Example | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | buy backlinks | The target page’s main keyword, unchanged |
| Partial match | guide to buying backlinks safely | The keyword inside a longer phrase |
| Branded | Backlink Agency | The business or site name |
| Naked URL | https://backlinkagency.net/ | The address itself |
| Generic | click here | A call to action with no topic |
| Image | (alt text of a linked image) | The image’s alt attribute stands in as the anchor |
The categories are a practitioner convention, not a Google taxonomy. Google evaluates the actual words, and the types give a profile review a shared vocabulary.
Why does anchor text matter for SEO?
Anchor text matters because Google uses link wording to understand the target page, and manipulated anchors are a documented spam signal. Descriptive anchors help; repeated keyword-rich anchors at scale cause harm, so variety across a profile matters as much as wording.
Google’s link guidance calls for anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it links to. Google’s spam policy lists links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites as link spam. Penguin (April 2012) was Google’s webspam algorithm change aimed at link schemes and other violations of its quality guidelines; keyword-rich manipulative anchors were a common footprint, a practitioner reading. The lesson holds: wording that reads as chosen by the linked site invites scrutiny; wording that reads as written by a third party does not.
What makes good anchor text?
Good anchor text is descriptive, relevant to the target page, short, and varied across the links pointing at that page. Four criteria, listed below, separate a useful anchor from a weak one, and each is easy to check by eye on any page.
- Description: the words name the topic the reader finds at the destination.
- Relevance to the target: the anchor matches the page’s title or main heading in meaning.
- Concision: two to six words carry the meaning without padding.
- Variety: each page collects branded, partial-match and generic anchors, not one phrase repeated.
The ratio between those types is its own topic, covered in the guide to a natural anchor mix.
How do internal and external anchor text differ?
Internal anchor text is chosen by the site owner, while external anchor text is chosen by the site that links to you. That difference decides how much control you hold: internal anchors are fully yours to edit, and external anchors follow the linking site’s editor.
Internal links let a site owner repeat a descriptive phrase for a page without a penalty pattern, because the owner controls the whole site. External anchors depend on the linking editor, who writes a brand name, a naked URL or a phrase of their own. Link builders influence external anchors by suggesting wording in a pitch and accept that the editor has the final say.
How do you check your anchor text profile?
Check your anchor text profile by exporting every inbound anchor from a backlink index, classifying each into the six types, and calculating each type’s share. The result shows whether one phrase dominates the profile and which types are missing from it.
- Export the anchors and referring domains for your most important page.
- Label each row with one of the six types from the table above.
- Calculate each type’s share of the total and note any single phrase above a third of links (a working heuristic, not a Google threshold).
- Run the export through the anchor distribution tool to produce the breakdown automatically.
A profile where one exact-match phrase dominates carries the pattern Google’s policies describe, and the guide on exact-match risk explains how to measure and correct it.
Related: anchor-balanced link packages and all learning guides.