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
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.
Related terms
Backlink
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to yours. It is the same object as any hyperlink - 'backlink' simply names it from the perspective of the site being linked to.
Dofollow vs nofollow links
A nofollow link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking credit through it; a dofollow link is simply an ordinary link with no such attribute. 'Dofollow' is informal shorthand - there is no rel="dofollow".
Toxic backlink
A toxic backlink is a link from a site whose only apparent purpose is to manipulate search rankings - link farms, private blog networks, hacked pages, or directories with no editorial standard. The term is an SEO-industry label, not a Google classification.
Editorial link
An editorial link is a link someone chose to add because it was useful to their reader, with nothing given in exchange. It is the category of link search engines are trying to reward.
Link equity
Link equity is the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. It is the modern, less-jocular name for what SEOs long called 'link juice', and it descends from PageRank, Google's original method of scoring pages by the links pointing at them.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
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