Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it influences what that page is understood to be about.
Also called: link text, anchor
Last reviewed
Because anchor text is a description written by someone else, it works as independent corroboration of a page's subject - which is precisely why it can be over-optimized. A natural link profile contains a messy spread: brand names, bare URLs, the page's title, and vague phrases like 'this study' or 'here'. A profile where a suspicious share of links use the same commercially valuable phrase looks manufactured, because it usually is.
The practical guidance is unglamorous: let the anchor describe the destination the way the sentence around it needs to, and accept that you do not fully control it. When you are pitching a link, suggesting a natural phrasing is reasonable; insisting on an exact commercial phrase is how a link profile starts to look engineered.
Anchor text is also an accessibility feature, not only an SEO one. Screen-reader users navigate by pulling up a list of a page's links, so 'click here' repeated eleven times is a genuine usability failure independent of any ranking consideration.
Common questions
What is exact-match anchor text and is it risky?
Exact-match anchor text is link text that is precisely the keyword you want the page to rank for. It is not inherently penalized, but a link profile heavily weighted toward one commercial phrase is a recognized spam signal, because natural linking does not produce that pattern.