Anchor text SEO is the practice of choosing the clickable words in a link so they describe the destination naturally. Google says good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant, and warns against forcing keywords in. Vary your wording, favour branded and descriptive anchors, and do not chase a fixed ratio.
- Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link, and Google uses it to understand what the linked page is about
- Good anchor text SEO means descriptive, short and relevant wording that reads naturally in the sentence
- Forcing keywords into anchors is treated by Google as keyword stuffing
- No major source proves an ideal anchor ratio, so natural variety beats any fixed percentage
- You control anchors on your own site, but not on most links other sites give you
- Guest posts and advertorials with optimised anchor text are on Google’s list of link spam
Table of Contents
What anchor text is and why anchor text SEO matters
Our guide to how SEO backlinks work lists anchor text as one of the signals around a link, and this post looks at it closely. Google’s link best practices describe anchor text as the visible text of a link, and say it tells people and Google what the linked page is about.
How much it matters for rankings is less clear. Ahrefs’ anchor text study found only weak correlations between anchor types and rankings, and Ahrefs itself notes that correlation does not prove causation. It concludes anchor text plays a minor role and advises against manipulating ratios. Treat anchor text SEO as a quality habit, not a lever.
The main types of anchor text
Our post on how backlinks work behind the scenes explains where anchors sit among other signals, and the types below are the ones SEO guides most often name.
| Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Branded | Atomic Artisans |
| Exact match | SEO backlinks |
| Partial match | our guide to SEO backlinks |
| Naked URL | https://atomicartisans.com |
| Generic | click here |
| Image | the image’s alt text |
Ahrefs and Semrush both use these categories, and Semrush adds related terms and page titles. Semrush flags exact match and compound anchors as the ones most likely to look suspicious when overused on backlinks. That is vendor advice, not a Google rule.
Is there an ideal ratio?
Our post on guest posting touches on anchors in outreach, and the ratio question comes up there too. Ahrefs cites an unnamed SEO blog saying most SEOs keep exact match anchors to roughly 1 to 5 percent of a profile, but Ahrefs does not verify that figure and does not prescribe a ratio itself. Semrush gives no percentages either.
So treat any quoted ratio as folklore. A natural profile reflects how people actually link: brand names, page titles, plain URLs and descriptive phrases, with exact keywords only occasionally and by chance.
Seven anchor text SEO rules for natural links
Our guide to SEO for small businesses covers the wider basics, and these seven rules apply to the links you write yourself.
1. Describe the destination
Google asks for anchor text that is descriptive and relevant to both the current page and the linked page. A reader should be able to guess where the link goes.
2. Keep it short
Google says reasonably concise. Semrush recommends five words or fewer, which is a guideline with no test behind it, but a full sentence as an anchor is clearly too much.
3. Read it on its own
Google’s test is simple: if the anchor text does not make sense out of context, it needs more detail. Avoid anchors such as “click here”, “read more” and “article”.
4. Vary your wording
Semrush advises against repeating the same exact anchor to the same page. Mix branded, descriptive and partial phrases as the sentence allows.
5. Write for the sentence
Google says that if you feel you are forcing keywords into the anchor, it is probably too much. Cramming them in counts as keyword stuffing under its spam policies.
6. Add alt text to image links
Google says it uses the alt text of an image link as anchor text, so describe the image or destination honestly.
7. Use crawlable links
Google can generally only follow links built as an anchor element with an href attribute. A button or script with no href may not be followed reliably.
Anchor text SEO for internal links
Our SEO backlinks service focuses on earned links, yet internal links are the part of anchor text SEO you fully control. Google advises descriptive anchors for links within your site and says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page.
Link to related pages in context, space the links out and avoid overloading a page. Using the same descriptive phrase for the same destination is fine on your own site, because the repetition helps clarity.
Links other sites give you
Our guide to choosing a white hat link building agency explains how to judge outreach, and anchors are part of that. You cannot control most anchors other sites choose, and you should not try to dictate keywords to people who link to you.
Google’s spam policies list advertorials or guest posts that pass ranking credit or use optimised anchor text as link spam. Paid links are acceptable only when qualified, as our post on nofollow vs dofollow explains.
How to audit your anchor text
Our post on cleaning up bought backlinks shows how to review a profile, and the same method works for anchors. Export your backlinks, group them by anchor type and look for patterns, such as one exact phrase repeated across many unrelated sites.
For your own pages, Semrush’s Site Audit flags links with no anchor text or non descriptive anchors. Check Google Search Console’s Manual Actions report for any link related penalty. Semrush suggests removal or disavowal mainly when you have many low quality links and a manual action, which is vendor advice.
Examples
These are illustrative scenarios rather than client case studies, but they show how anchor text choices play out.
A florist used “click here” on every link in her blog. She rewrote them as “wedding flower packages” and “delivery areas”, which made each link understandable on its own, as Google recommends.
A directory partner offered to link to a plumber using the same keyword phrase on twenty sites. The plumber asked for varied, natural wording instead, which avoided the repeated exact match pattern that guides warn about.
A consultancy used the exact same phrase for every internal link to its main service page. It kept that phrase for clarity but added varied descriptive anchors in blog posts, so the links read naturally.
Ready to get anchor text SEO right
Natural anchors come from useful content and honest outreach, not formulas. At Atomic Artisans we earn editorial links through our SEO backlinks service and keep anchor text SEO natural. Take a look at our pricing, book a call with our team, or get in touch through our contact page to get started.
