What Is Anchor Text?

Every link on the web has two parts a reader rarely thinks about separately: the place it goes, and the words you click to get there. Those words — the anchor text — do a surprising amount of quiet work. They tell the reader what to expect, help people using assistive technology navigate, and give search engines a clue about the page on the other end. Writing them well costs nothing and improves all three at once. This guide explains what anchor text is, the main types, and how to get it right.

What it is

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink — the words a reader actually sees and clicks to follow a link. In a sentence like "read our guide to backlinks", the words "guide to backlinks" are the anchor text, while the destination address is tucked away in the code.

In raw HTML, the two parts are separate:

<a href="/marketing/what-is-a-backlink">guide to backlinks</a>

The part inside href is where the link goes; the part between the tags is the anchor text. That small piece of text is the human- and machine-readable label for the link, and choosing it thoughtfully is a quietly important habit. Anchor text matters both for the links pointing into your site from elsewhere and for the internal links you create between your own pages.

Why anchor text matters

Anchor text earns its keep in three distinct ways.

For search engines, anchor text is a clue about the topic of the page being linked to. When many sources link to a page using phrases about, say, "energy-efficient boilers", search engines take that as evidence the page is about energy-efficient boilers, which influences the searches it shows up for. The same logic applies inside your own site: descriptive internal anchors help search engines understand how your pages relate and which terms each one is relevant for. This is why anchor text is treated as one of the signals in the wider authority side of search engine optimisation.

For readers, good anchor text sets expectations. A link that says "compare the best cash ISAs" tells you exactly where you are going; a link that says "click here" makes you guess or hover. Clear anchors help people decide whether a link is worth following, which is part of building a trustworthy, usable page.

For accessibility, anchor text can be the difference between a usable page and a baffling one. Many people using screen readers navigate by pulling up a list of all the links on a page and jumping between them. Read in isolation, a list of "click here, click here, read more, click here" is useless, whereas "download the 2024 price list, read the safety guidance, contact the support team" is perfectly clear. Writing descriptive anchors is a basic courtesy that the W3C's accessibility guidance specifically recommends.

A simple test for any link: read the anchor text on its own, with no surrounding sentence. If a stranger could not guess where it leads, rewrite it.

The main types of anchor text

Anchor text is usually grouped into a handful of types. You do not need to memorise the jargon, but recognising the patterns helps you keep a natural mix.

• Exact-match — the anchor is precisely the keyword for the destination, e.g. linking to a page about meta descriptions with the words "meta description". Effective in moderation, but risky if overused.
• Partial-match — the anchor includes the keyword within a longer, natural phrase, e.g. "how to write a meta description". Often the sweet spot.
• Branded — the anchor is a brand or site name, e.g. "Daily Junction". Very natural and safe.
• Naked URL — the anchor is the raw web address itself, e.g. "dailyjunction.org". Common in citations.
• Generic — vague filler such as "click here", "read more" or "this page". Easy to overuse and weak on every measure.
• Image links — when a link wraps an image rather than text, the image's alt text acts as the anchor, so descriptive alt text matters here too.

A healthy, natural set of links uses a blend of these. Real websites that earn links organically end up with a varied mixture, simply because different people describe the same page in different ways.

Writing anchor text well

A few principles cover almost every situation.

1. Be descriptive. The anchor should briefly say what the linked page is about. "Our refund policy" beats "click here" every time, for readers, search engines and screen-reader users alike.
2. Keep it concise. A few well-chosen words is ideal. Linking an entire long sentence dilutes the signal and looks untidy.
3. Make it relevant. The anchor must genuinely reflect the destination. Misleading anchors — promising one thing and delivering another — frustrate readers and erode trust.
4. Vary it naturally. Avoid using the identical keyword-stuffed phrase for every link to a given page. Variety is what natural linking looks like.
5. Avoid generic filler. Reserve "click here" and "read more" for the rare cases where nothing better fits, and even then, try to do better.
6. Mind the surrounding text. Search engines also read the words around a link for context, so a link embedded in a relevant sentence carries more meaning than one floating alone.

The risk of over-optimisation

There is a way to get anchor text badly wrong, and it is worth understanding so you avoid it. In the early, cruder days of SEO, people tried to manipulate rankings by acquiring large numbers of links that all used the same exact keyword anchor. Search engines learned to spot this. Today, an unnatural pattern — say, hundreds of inbound links all reading "cheap car insurance UK" — can look manipulative and trigger a penalty rather than a boost.

The lesson is not to fear anchor text but to keep it honest. For links you control on your own site, simply write relevant, varied, reader-friendly anchors and you will never have a problem. For links from other sites, which you control far less, the goal is a natural profile: a healthy mix of branded, descriptive and other anchors, earned because your content is worth linking to. Trying to engineer perfect keyword anchors at scale is exactly the behaviour search engines are designed to catch. This sits within the broader principle that links should be earned, not manufactured, as we explain in our guide to backlinks.

How it fits the bigger picture

Anchor text is a small detail that touches several bigger things at once: it shapes how search engines understand your pages, how easily everyone can navigate them, and how confidently readers follow your links. Thoughtful internal linking — using clear anchors to connect related pages — also helps guide visitors deeper into your content and supports the journey from first click to action described in our marketing funnel explainer. None of it is complicated. It is simply a matter of describing, in a few honest words, where each link leads.

The bottom line

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, and although it is easy to overlook, it quietly serves readers, accessibility and search engines all at once. Descriptive, concise, relevant anchors tell people and machines what to expect, while vague filler like "click here" wastes the signal and frustrates screen-reader users. Keep your anchors natural and varied, make them genuinely match their destinations, and never try to game rankings with repetitive keyword-stuffed links. Get this small habit right across your site, and you make your content easier to navigate, easier to understand, and easier to find.