Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. In SEO, it matters because Google uses those words to understand what the linked page is about, and readers use them to decide whether to click. Good anchor text SEO comes down to one standard Google spells out itself: describe the destination in a few natural words. The risk sits at the other end, where keyword-stuffed anchors placed on other sites count as link spam.
What changes the right anchor is not a formula. It’s who controls the link, where it sits, and whether anything was exchanged for it. I’ll walk through each case the way I decide it on client sites.
What Does Google Actually Say About Anchor Text?
Google’s link best practices page is short and clear. The key line: “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to.”
The same page gives a few practical tests. Don’t leave a link with empty text. Avoid vague words like “click here” or “read more” on their own. Keep anchors reasonably short instead of turning a whole sentence into a link. And resist cramming related keywords into anchors, because keyword stuffing breaks Google’s spam policies.
My favorite tip from that page is the simplest. Read the anchor out of context. If you can’t guess what the destination is about, the anchor needs more words.
The Five Types of Anchor Text
Every SEO guide uses roughly the same labels. Here’s what each one means, with an example for a page about emergency plumbing in Austin:
| Anchor type | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | The target keyword and nothing else | emergency plumber Austin |
| Partial match | The keyword inside a longer, natural phrase | our guide to finding an emergency plumber in Austin |
| Branded | The business or site name | Smith Plumbing |
| Naked URL | The raw address as the link text | smithplumbing.com |
| Generic | Words that say nothing about the topic | click here, this page, read more |
There’s a sixth case people forget. When an image is the link, Google uses the image’s alt text as the anchor. A linked logo with an empty alt attribute is, in practice, a link with no anchor at all.
None of these types is “bad” in itself. Branded and naked URL anchors are what people naturally write when they cite a business. Exact match shows up when someone writes about the topic. Generic is the weakest for clarity, but it isn’t spam. Problems start when one type shows up in a pattern no human would produce.
Is There an Ideal Anchor Text Ratio?
No, not one that anyone can source. You’ll find plenty of guides promising a perfect split, so much branded, so much partial, a small slice of exact match. Put two of those guides side by side and the numbers disagree, and I haven’t seen one cite Google or a published dataset that would back its split. I treat these ratios as folklore.
Here’s why they’re also the wrong question. A ratio pushes you to manufacture anchors to hit a target. That’s exactly the behavior Google’s spam policy describes. Natural links don’t follow a quota. They follow how people talk about you, and for most small businesses that’s mostly the brand name and the URL.
Anchor Text SEO: The Four Variables That Decide Your Anchor
Before choosing words for any link, I check four things:
- Who controls the link? Your own site, a site where you’re placing content, or someone else entirely.
- Is the link internal or external? Internal links are yours to optimize. External links built by you are where the risk lives.
- Was anything exchanged? Money, products, a guest post swap. If yes, the rel attribute matters more than the words.
- Does the anchor read naturally in the sentence? If a human editor would rewrite it, Google probably reads it as engineered too.
The Main Path: Anchors on Your Own Site
This is where you have full control and the least risk, so I spend most of my anchor effort here. Google’s own guidance says paying more attention to internal anchor text helps both people and Google understand your site and find your pages. It also says every page you care about should get a link from at least one other page on your site.
If you’re linking to a service or category page, use a descriptive, keyword-relevant anchor. “Our technical SEO audit service” is fine. Internal links aren’t a spam policy concern in the way bought external links are.
If you’re linking to a blog post, use the phrase that matches the reader’s question. When I link from one post to another, I write the anchor as the thing the reader would search, like “how to check if a link is nofollow” instead of “this article.”
If you have several pages on similar topics, give each one a distinct anchor and stick to it. Pointing the same phrase at two different URLs muddies which page you want to rank, which is a quiet cause of cannibalization.
What I don’t do is force the same exact phrase into every internal link to a page. Varying the wording slightly reads better and gives Google more context about the destination.
Branch 1: Links You Place on Other Sites
This branch covers guest posts, press releases, sponsored articles, partner pages and anything else where you or your team write the link. Google’s spam policy names this directly as link spam: “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites.”
If you’re writing a guest article or a press release, link with your brand name or the plain URL. If the publisher wants a contextual link, a descriptive partial phrase is the most I’d use. Keyword-rich anchors here are the exact pattern the policy describes.
If any money, product or service changed hands, the link must be qualified. Google’s policy says paid links are fine when marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". That’s the rule, plainly. The anchor choice doesn’t fix an unqualified paid link. My guide to dofollow vs nofollow links covers how each rel value works.
If it’s a business profile or directory listing, the platform usually decides the anchor for you, and it’s normally your business name or URL. That’s also how I approach foundation link building: real profiles and listings with your actual brand details, not keyword anchors dressed up as company names.
Branch 2: Links Other People Give You
You don’t control earned links, and that’s the point of them. A journalist, blogger or customer picks the words.
If someone links to you with your brand name, leave it. Branded anchors are the most natural signal there is.
If someone links with a generic anchor like “here”, I still leave it. Asking a publisher to change “here” into your money keyword turns an earned link into an engineered one, and you risk annoying the person who did you a favor.
If an earned link has a factual problem, like the wrong business name or a broken URL, asking for a correction is completely fair. Fixing accuracy isn’t anchor manipulation.
Edge Cases That Change the Answer
- Your brand name contains your keyword. A company called “Austin Emergency Plumbing” gets exact-match anchors naturally. That’s normal. Don’t panic about it, but don’t treat it as a loophole for keyword anchors elsewhere either.
- Sitewide navigation and footer links. Repeated menu anchors on your own site are fine. Widely distributed footer or template links across other people’s sites are listed in Google’s link spam policy.
- Old links built with keyword anchors. If a previous agency built them, judge the pattern, not each link. My notes on toxic backlinks explain when old junk actually matters.
- Image links. Write alt text that describes the destination or the image honestly, since it acts as the anchor.
Anchor Text Decision Matrix
| If the link is | And | Then use |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | Points to a service or category page | Descriptive, keyword-relevant anchor |
| Internal | Points to a blog post | The reader’s question or topic phrase |
| External, placed by you | Guest post or press release | Brand name or URL |
| External, placed by you | Paid in any way | Any natural anchor plus rel="sponsored" |
| External, earned | Brand or generic anchor | Leave it as written |
| External, earned | Wrong name or broken URL | Ask for a factual fix only |
How Do You Audit Your Anchor Text?
Start with Search Console. The Links report shows “Top linking text,” which Google’s help page says covers only links from outside your property, and it also lists your internal links. Tables there are limited to 1,000 rows, so on bigger sites you’ll want the export.
When I review anchors, I’m not counting percentages. I’m looking for patterns:
- The same commercial keyword repeated across unrelated sites
- Keyword anchors on sites that clearly sell posts
- Anchors in languages or topics that have nothing to do with your business
- Internal pages with no descriptive internal links pointing at them
If the external pattern looks engineered, that’s a job for a full backlink audit. For judging individual links rather than patterns, I use the checks in how to evaluate backlink quality.
Does Over-Optimized Anchor Text Still Get Sites Penalized?
It can still cost you, though usually more quietly than in the past. Since September 2016, Google says Penguin runs as part of its core algorithm and works by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than hitting the whole site. In practice that often means manipulative links simply stop counting.
Manual actions are still possible when a link scheme is obvious. If Search Console shows a manual action for unnatural links, that’s past the point of tweaking anchors, and you should treat it as a cleanup project. For a second opinion on where you stand, our free SEO audit is a reasonable place to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Good Anchor Text Example?
“Our guide to choosing a roof contractor” is good anchor text for a page about choosing a roof contractor. It’s descriptive, short and matches the destination. “Click here” is weak, and “best roof contractor cheap roof repair near me” is stuffed.
Does Anchor Text Still Matter for SEO?
Yes. Google’s own documentation says it uses anchor text to understand linked pages, and it tells site owners to write descriptive anchors. What changed is tolerance for manipulation, not the value of clear link text.
How Many Exact Match Anchors Are Too Many?
There’s no published threshold from Google, so I don’t give one. The question I ask is who placed them. Exact match anchors you put on other sites are the risk. Exact match anchors in your own internal links are normal.
Should Internal Links Use Exact Match Anchor Text?
They can. Internal links are where descriptive, keyword-relevant anchors make the most sense. I just vary the wording slightly and keep each phrase pointing to one page only.
Last updated: October 2026 by Mizanur Rahman
