Anchor Text: Types, Best Practices and Risks

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. In <a href="https://example.com/tents/">lightweight backpacking tents</a>, the anchor text is "lightweight backpacking tents". It's a small detail, but it does real work: it tells readers what they'll get if they click, and it gives search engines a short description of the page on the other end.

Because anchor text carries that meaning, it has also been heavily abused. This guide covers the main types of anchor text, what Google's documentation recommends, where over-optimization becomes a risk, and how to handle the anchors you fully control: your own internal links.

Why anchor text matters#

Google's link best practices describe good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both the page it's on and the page it links to. The reasoning is straightforward. A reader skimming a page should be able to tell where a link goes without reading the whole paragraph, and a crawler benefits from the same clarity.

Anchor text also matters for accessibility. Screen reader users often pull up a list of all the links on a page and navigate from there. A list of ten links that all say "click here" is useless out of context. Descriptive anchors fix that for everyone.

The main types of anchor text#

Here are the categories people usually talk about, each with an example linking to a hypothetical outdoor gear store's tents page.

Exact match#

The anchor is the exact phrase the target page is trying to rank for.

<a href="https://example-gear.com/tents/">backpacking tents</a>

Useful when it reads naturally, but when many backlinks use the same commercial phrase, it starts to look engineered.

Partial match#

The anchor includes the key phrase along with other words.

Our guide to <a href="https://example-gear.com/tents/">choosing a tent for backpacking trips</a>

This tends to read more naturally and gives more context.

Branded#

The anchor is a brand or company name.

<a href="https://example-gear.com/">Example Gear</a>

For most sites, branded anchors make up a large share of natural backlinks, because that's how people refer to businesses.

Naked URL#

The anchor is the URL itself.

<a href="https://example-gear.com/">example-gear.com</a>

Common in citations, reference lists and forum posts.

Generic#

The anchor is a non-descriptive phrase.

To see the full range, <a href="https://example-gear.com/tents/">click here</a>.

Generic anchors happen naturally, but Google's documentation specifically recommends avoiding phrases like "click here" or "read more" on your own site because they don't describe anything.

Image anchors#

When an image is wrapped in a link, there's no visible text. Google's documentation says that for linked images, it uses the image's alt attribute as the anchor text.

<a href="https://example-gear.com/tents/">
  <img src="/images/two-person-tent.jpg" alt="Two-person backpacking tent">
</a>

A linked image with an empty or missing alt gives search engines and screen readers nothing to work with. Write the alt text as if it were link text.

Brand plus keyword#

A hybrid, such as "Example Gear's backpacking tents". It's descriptive and natural, which is why it shows up a lot in editorial writing.

What Google recommends#

Google's guidance boils down to a few principles:

1. Be descriptive. The anchor should give a reasonable idea of what the linked page is about.
2. Be concise. A few words or a short phrase, not a full sentence stuffed into a link.
3. Avoid generic text. "Click here", "this page" and "read more" don't help anyone.
4. Don't stuff keywords. Google explicitly warns against cramming every related keyword into anchor text, because that crosses into keyword stuffing.
5. Mind the surrounding text. The words around a link add context. A clear sentence with a moderately descriptive anchor works better than a vague sentence with a keyword-heavy anchor.

Here's a before and after:

<!-- Weak: generic and uninformative -->
We wrote about tents. <a href="/guides/tent-sizes/">Read more here</a>.

<!-- Weak: stuffed -->
See our <a href="/guides/tent-sizes/">best tent sizes backpacking tent sizing
guide two person tent vs three person tent</a>.

<!-- Good: descriptive and concise -->
If you're unsure whether you need a two- or three-person model, our
<a href="/guides/tent-sizes/">tent sizing guide</a> compares floor space and weight.

The risk of over-optimized anchors#

Anchor text became a target for manipulation because it once had an outsized effect on rankings. People built large numbers of backlinks with identical, exact-match commercial anchors. Google's spam policies now call out several related practices as link spam, including paid articles carrying optimized links and keyword-rich links placed in forum comments, signatures and profiles.

What does over-optimization look like in practice?

• Most of your backlinks use the same exact commercial phrase, like "cheap backpacking tents".
• The anchors don't match how people naturally talk about your brand.
• Many of those links come from unrelated sites, guest posts on low-quality blogs, or paid placements.

Natural link profiles are messy. People link using your brand name, your URL, a phrase from your headline, generic words, or a description of what they found useful. That variety is what earned links look like.

You'll sometimes see specific "safe" percentages for exact-match anchors. Google has never published any such figure, so any precise ratio you read is someone's guess. A better test is to ask whether your anchor profile looks like the result of people choosing to link, or the result of someone placing links.

What to do if yours looks unnatural#

• Stop building the pattern. If you're doing outreach or guest posting, suggest branded or descriptive anchors, or let the editor choose.
• Earn links that diversify your profile by publishing content people want to cite.
• Don't panic about a few odd anchors. Scraper sites generate strange anchors for almost everyone. See how to check backlinks for how to review your anchors in Google Search Console, where the Top linking text section shows the most common ones.

Internal link anchors: the ones you control#

You rarely control the anchor text on other sites, but you control every internal link on your own. That makes internal linking the most practical place to apply good anchor text habits.

Be descriptive, even if it's exact match#

Internal links with descriptive anchors are fine, including exact-match phrases, as long as they read naturally. If your page is about tent sizes, linking to it with "tent sizing guide" is exactly what Google's documentation asks for.

Vary naturally#

You don't need to use the same anchor every time you link to a page. Writing naturally usually produces variety on its own: "tent sizing guide" in one article, "how much floor space you need" in another.

Fix generic navigation where it matters#

Buttons like "Learn more" on a homepage grid are common. Where you can, make them specific, such as "Learn more about ultralight tents", or make sure the card heading itself is the link.

Don't point links at dead ends#

An internal link with a perfect anchor that leads to a 404 page helps nobody. Our Broken Link Checker scans a page and flags links that return errors, so you can update or remove them. For redirected links, updating the href to the final URL avoids unnecessary hops.

A quick anchor text audit#

Use this process to review a single important page:

1. List the internal links pointing to it. Google Search Console's Links report shows internal links for each page.
2. Review the anchors. Are they descriptive? Are any generic or stuffed?
3. Review the page's own outbound links. Run the page through our SEO Checker to check on-page elements, and scan its links for dead URLs.
4. Check linked images. Every linked image should have meaningful alt text.
5. Rewrite the weak ones. Prioritize links in main content and navigation over footer links.

Anchor text checklist#

• Describe the destination in a few words.
• Avoid "click here", "read more" and similar phrases on your own pages.
• Don't cram multiple keywords into one link.
• Give every linked image descriptive alt text.
• Let external anchors vary naturally, and favor branded or descriptive anchors when you have input.
• Use descriptive internal anchors, and keep them pointing at live pages.

Good anchor text isn't a ranking trick. It's clear writing applied to links, and it happens to help readers, accessibility and search engines all at once. For the bigger picture on links themselves, start with what is a backlink.