A link is a vote. The anchor text is what the vote says.
"Click here" casts a vote for a page about clicking. "Local SEO checklist" casts a vote for a page about local SEO checklists. Same link, completely different value.
This applies to your own internal links as much as to links other people give you — and internal anchors are the half you fully control. It sits in the on-page layer of our SEO guide; link structure is covered separately in internal linking, and this page is about the words.
The types
| Type | Example | Use it |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | local seo checklist | Sparingly. Powerful, and the one that looks manipulated in volume. |
| Partial match | this checklist for local SEO | Freely. The natural workhorse. |
| Branded | Digital Hangover | Freely. The most natural-looking anchor of all. |
| Naked URL | digitalhangover.in | Occasionally. Common in citations and forums. |
| Generic | read more, click here | Avoid. Wastes the signal and is poor for screen readers. |
| Image link | the alt text acts as the anchor | Always write real alt text — it is doing this job. |
Why distribution matters more than any single anchor
Google's spam policies name links with optimised anchor text, built at scale, as a link scheme. The signal that separates earned from manufactured is not any one link — it is the pattern across all of them.
Think about how people naturally link to things. They use your brand name. They use the article title. They use a phrase from the sentence they were writing. They use the bare URL. Almost nobody spontaneously writes your target keyword as the anchor.
Internal anchors: the half you control
Internal anchor text is where this becomes genuinely actionable, because you write every one of them.
- Describe the destination, not the action. "See our local SEO checklist" beats "click here to see it".
- Vary it across pages. Five different pages linking to the same target with five slightly different phrasings looks like five people writing naturally — which is what it is.
- Keep it inside a sentence. A link that reads as part of the prose carries more weight and more clicks than a bare list item.
- Do not stuff. Repeating the same exact-match anchor eight times on one page does not multiply the signal; it just reads badly.
- Make it make sense out of context. Screen reader users often navigate by pulling up a list of every link on the page. "Read more" tells them nothing.
External anchors: the half you do not
You cannot dictate what other sites write, and trying to is where most anchor-text penalties come from.
What you can influence, legitimately:
- Your page title. People link using the title of the thing they are linking to more than anything else. A precise title produces useful anchors by itself.
- Your brand name. Strong brands get branded anchors, which is the most natural distribution there is.
- What you ask for. If you are placing a guest post or a citation, ask for something natural. Asking every publisher for the same exact-match phrase is exactly the pattern that gets flagged.
The tactics for earning those links are in link building.
A quick audit
- Export your inbound anchors from Search Console's Links report or any backlink tool.
- Sort by frequency. If one commercial phrase dominates, that is your risk.
- Check whether branded and URL anchors exist at all. A profile with none of either is unusual for a real brand.
- Crawl your internal anchors too. Most sites find dozens of "read more" links they could turn into descriptive ones for free.
- Fix the internal ones first — they are free, immediate and entirely within your control.
Where to go from here
Crawl your own site and list every internal anchor. Turn the generic ones into descriptions of where they go.
That is a couple of hours of work, it costs nothing, and it improves both your relevance signals and your accessibility at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, so it influences what that destination page is understood to be about. It applies to internal links on your own site as well as to links from other domains.
What are the types of anchor text?
Exact match uses the target keyword precisely. Partial match includes it within a longer natural phrase. Branded anchors use a company name. Naked URLs use the address itself. Generic anchors are phrases like 'click here'. For image links, the alt text performs the same role.
Can anchor text hurt your rankings?
It can, when the pattern looks manufactured. Google's spam policies name links with optimised anchor text built at scale as a link scheme. The risk is not in any single link but in the distribution — a profile where most inbound links use the same commercial phrase is not something a natural linking process produces.
What is a good anchor text distribution?
We are not going to publish a percentage split, because every one circulating online is invented rather than measured. The honest instruction is to write the anchor a normal person would write in that sentence. Natural profiles are dominated by branded anchors, titles and partial matches, with exact matches rare.
Should internal links use exact match anchor text?
Some can, but vary them. Five pages linking to the same target with five slightly different phrasings reads as natural writing, which is what it is. Repeating one exact phrase on every internal link does not strengthen the signal and makes the content read badly.
We rewrite the anchors before we chase new links
Internal anchor audits and an external profile check — the free half of link equity, done first.