Anchor text
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink — the words that appear highlighted or underlined and take you somewhere when you click. Search engines use anchor text as a strong signal for understanding what the linked page is about. If dozens of sites link to your page using the anchor text “keyword research guide,” Google takes that as evidence that your page is relevant to keyword research. It is one of the simplest yet most powerful on-page and off-page SEO signals.
The history of anchor text in SEO is a cautionary tale about manipulation. In the early days, stuffing exact-match keywords into every link pointing to your site was an easy way to rank. Google’s Penguin algorithm update put an end to that, penalizing sites with unnatural anchor text profiles. Today, a healthy link profile has a natural mix: branded anchors (“Jesper Astrom”), generic phrases (“click here,” “this article”), partial match keywords, and the occasional exact match. If your anchor text distribution looks like it was engineered rather than earned, that is a red flag.
For growth engineers, anchor text is a detail that deserves attention in both your internal linking strategy and your outreach efforts. Internally, use descriptive anchor text to help search engines understand your site structure and pass relevance between pages. Externally, focus on earning links naturally rather than dictating the exact text. A diverse, organic anchor text profile is one of the clearest signs of a site that earns its links rather than manufactures them.