What Is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. In HTML, it looks like this:
<a href="https://example.com">This text is the anchor text</a> When you see a link that says "Manchester SEO consultant" or "click here" or "find out more", that phrase is the anchor text.
Both external links pointing to your site (backlinks) and internal links on your site have anchor text. Both matter for SEO, but in different ways.
Types of Anchor Text
There are several types of anchor text, and a natural backlink profile contains a mix of all of them:
- Exact match: The anchor text is exactly the keyword you are trying to rank for — e.g. "Manchester SEO consultant"
- Partial match: The anchor text contains the target keyword plus other words — e.g. "find a Manchester SEO consultant" or "Manchester SEO consulting services"
- Branded: The anchor text is your brand name — e.g. "MancSEO" or "Manc SEO"
- Naked URL: The URL itself is used as the anchor — e.g. "mancseo.com"
- Generic: Non-descriptive text — e.g. "click here", "find out more", "visit website"
- Natural phrase: The link is embedded naturally in a sentence — e.g. "for more on this, see MancSEO's guide to local SEO"
Why Anchor Text Matters for SEO
Google uses anchor text as a relevance signal. When a high-authority website links to your page with the anchor text "Manchester plumber", it sends a strong signal that your page is relevant for "Manchester plumber" searches.
This is why anchor text is a significant part of how Google understands the topic of your page. Early SEO strategies aggressively targeted exact-match anchor text — and for a time, it worked very effectively. Google's Penguin algorithm update in 2012 fundamentally changed this by penalising over-optimised anchor text profiles.
Today, anchor text remains important, but Google now expects a natural, varied distribution rather than a concentrated mass of identical keyword-rich links.
The Risk of Over-Optimisation
If a large proportion of your backlinks have the same exact-match anchor text — particularly keyword-rich phrases — Google may interpret this as a manipulative link scheme.
Signs of an over-optimised anchor text profile:
- A high percentage (over 20–30%) of links using exactly the same keyword anchor text
- Very few branded or naked URL anchors relative to keyword anchors
- Sudden spikes of identical anchor text from multiple new links
If your site has been penalised for over-optimised anchor text, this can be addressed through a backlink audit, disavow file, and a Google penalty recovery process — but prevention is far easier than recovery.
What a Healthy Anchor Text Profile Looks Like
A natural backlink profile contains a diverse mix of anchor text types that reflects how real websites actually link. A typical healthy distribution for a service business might look like:
- Branded anchors: 40–50% of links (your business name or URL)
- Natural phrases / partial match: 25–35% (keyword included naturally in a sentence)
- Exact match: 5–15% (your target keyword used as the anchor precisely)
- Generic: 5–10% ("click here", "read more")
- Naked URL: 5–10% (the raw URL used as anchor)
These ratios are approximate — the right balance depends on your industry, competition, and existing profile. The key principle is variety and naturalness, not a precise formula.
Anchor Text for Internal Links
Internal links — links from one page on your site to another — also have anchor text, and it also matters. Unlike external links, you have full control over your internal anchor text, and you can use it more precisely.
Best practices for internal link anchor text:
- Use descriptive, keyword-relevant anchor text for internal links — "our technical SEO service" rather than "click here"
- Link from relevant pages to your most important pages using anchor text that reflects the target page's keyword
- Vary the anchor text slightly across multiple internal links to the same page to look natural
- Avoid over-repeating the same exact keyword anchor from many different pages — vary the phrasing
Good internal linking with thoughtful anchor text is one of the most underutilised SEO improvements available to most websites. If you want to improve your site's internal link structure as part of a broader SEO strategy, MancSEO covers this as part of our technical SEO and SEO consultancy services.
