What is anchor text? Types, examples, and how to use it for SEO

In HTML, it is the text between the opening and closing tags of an <a> element. In Google's own example, <a href="https://example.com/ghost-peppers">ghost peppers</a>, the anchor text is "ghost peppers". Google says this text "tells people and Google something about the page you're linking to." When a link wraps an image instead of words, Google uses the image's alt text as the anchor text.

Types of anchor text, with examples

SEO guides sort anchors by how closely they match the keyword the linked page targets. Take a bakery's guide that targets "sourdough starter":

Type	What it is	Example anchor
Exact match	The page's target keyword and nothing else	sourdough starter
Partial match	The keyword plus other words	how to feed a sourdough starter
Related	A synonym or close variant, without the keyword	wild yeast culture
Branded	The site or company name	Crumb and Co
Compound	The brand plus a description	Crumb and Co's starter guide
Page title	The linked page's title, word for word	How to Make a Sourdough Starter in 7 Days
Naked URL	The address itself	example.com/sourdough-starter
Generic	Words that say nothing about the target	click here, read more, this article
Image	The alt text of a linked image	jar of bubbling sourdough starter

Ahrefs and Semrush label the types slightly differently, but the logic is the same. Semrush notes that exact match, also called "money" anchor text, "can potentially help the linked page rank better for that term", while naked links "aren't ideal for SEO" and generic anchors carry little value.

What Google asks for

Google's link guidance asks for anchor text that is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it's on and to the page it links to." Its test is easy to apply: "Try reading only the anchor text (out of context) and check if it's specific enough to make sense by itself."

The same page lists what to avoid:

• Generic anchors. "Click here" and "read more" say nothing about the target.
• Overlong anchors. Link the few words that name the target, not the whole sentence.
• Keyword cramming. Google asks writers to "resist the urge to cram every keyword that's related to the page that you're linking to."
• Chained links. Links side by side lose their context, and "the words before and after links matter."
• Empty links. No text, or an image link with empty alt text, gives Google nothing to read.

If your site inserts anchor text with JavaScript, Google suggests checking with the URL Inspection tool that the text is present in the rendered HTML.

Exact-match anchors and over-optimization

Anchor text carried a lot of weight in Google's early ranking. Ahrefs quotes the 1998 paper by Google's founders: "anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves." That made links with keyword anchors the cheapest way to rank, and SEOs pointed large numbers of them at the pages they wanted to push.

Google's answer was Penguin, a webspam algorithm first launched in 2012. Recounting the history, Ahrefs writes that "anchor text was one of Penguin's primary targets," and that sites that had been aggressive with exact-match anchors saw their rankings fall overnight. In 2016 Google folded Penguin into its core algorithm and changed how it acts: it "now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site." The current spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as link spam.

How much do exact-match anchors still help? In a 2019 study of the backlinks to 384,614 pages, Ahrefs found "a relatively weak correlation between the percentage of exact-match anchored links and rankings." The ratios that circulate, such as keeping exact-match anchors to between 1 and 5 percent of your backlinks, are rules of thumb that Ahrefs reports without endorsing, and Google publishes no figure at all. Ahrefs' own bottom line: "Don't try to manipulate your anchor text ratios at all."

Anchors on internal links and on backlinks

You choose every anchor on your own site and almost none on other sites, so the advice differs.

Internal links. Google says that "paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help both people and Google make sense of your site." Descriptive anchors that name the topic are expected here, as long as they read naturally; Semrush warns that linking to one page with "the exact same anchor text" every time "can seem unnatural to search engines." Internal linking covers which pages to link and how often, and the post on splitting time between on-page and off-page SEO explains why internal anchors count as on-page work.

Backlinks. The anchors on links from other sites are chosen by their authors, and that is how it should stay. As Ahrefs puts it, "someone naturally linking to your page using the exact target keyword as the anchor is a rare occurrence," and "you have no control over the anchor text used with almost all legitimate white-hat link building strategies." Earning links instead of placing them, the approach link building describes, keeps anchors natural, and how many separate sites link to you, your referring domains, says more about your authority than the words they use. Reading that anchor mix is part of checking a backlink profile, and a high share of exact-match anchors is the pattern Penguin was built to catch.

How Structura handles this

Every link Structura writes into a post uses descriptive anchor text inside a sentence. On paid plans, with internal link optimization switched on, each post links to related posts you have already published, using their exact URLs. Outbound citations come only from the authority list you approved, with anchors that name the source, never a bare URL or "click here". Partner and referral links get a natural anchor that varies from post to post, because repeating one anchor everywhere is a footprint; you can pin an exact anchor when an affiliate program requires one.

On headless sites, delivery checks every internal link before a post goes out. A link whose anchor text matches the title of a published post is pointed at that post's real URL, and a link to a page that does not exist is removed while its text stays in the sentence.

Structura does not build backlinks, so it has no say over the anchors other sites use for you. The blog SEO software page shows what each post includes.

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