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.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
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