Anchor Text Mistakes That Weaken Internal Links

Direct answer

Anchor text mistakes weaken internal links when the clickable words mislead readers or search engines. Use descriptive, honest anchor text that matches the linked page: avoid stuffing the exact keyword into every link, avoid generic phrases like "click here", avoid pointing the same anchor at different pages, and never promise something the destination does not deliver.

TL;DR / Key takeaways

• Anchor text is the clickable words of a link. It tells readers — and search engines — what the linked page is about.
• Over-optimised exact-match anchors on every internal link look manipulative and unhelpful.
• "Click here" and "read more" waste the one place where a link can explain itself.
• Using the same anchor for different destinations confuses readers and dilutes the signal.
• An anchor that promises something the page does not deliver breaks trust and increases bounces.
• The fix is usually simple: describe the destination accurately, vary the wording naturally, and check every link you publish.

What is anchor text, and why does it matter?

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. In the sentence "read our guide to internal linking", the anchor text is "internal linking". Everything else in the sentence is context; the anchor text is the label on the door.

It matters for two audiences at once. For readers, it is a promise about what happens when they click. A good anchor lets a reader decide, before clicking, whether the linked page is worth their time. A bad anchor forces them to guess, and guessing is work most readers will not do.

For search engines, anchor text is one signal among many about what the linked page is about. Google's documentation on crawlable links notes that Google uses link text, along with surrounding context, to understand the linked page. That does not mean anchor text alone determines rankings — it does not — but it does mean that misleading or empty anchor text wastes a genuine opportunity to help both readers and search engines understand the site's structure.

Internal links deserve as much care as external ones. On a blog, internal links are how readers discover related articles, how a new post connects to older posts, and how search engines find pages that nothing else links to. If the anchors on those links are vague, repetitive, or dishonest, the whole structure is weaker, even if the articles themselves are good.

How internal link anchor text works

Anchor text should also match search intent and avoid keyword cannibalization.

When a search engine crawls a page, it follows the links it finds and notes the anchor text as a clue to the destination's topic. When a reader scans a page, the same thing happens visually: link text usually stands out in colour or underline, so scanning eyes land on it first. In both cases, the anchor does the job of a signpost.

Good anchor text has three qualities. It is descriptive: it says what the destination is about. It is honest: the destination actually delivers what the anchor promises. And it fits naturally in the sentence: it reads like something a person would write, not like a keyword pasted into a template.

Bad anchor text fails one or more of those tests. The rest of this article covers the four most common failures, each with a before-and-after fix, and then a practical routine for checking your own site.

Mistake 1: Over-optimised exact-match anchors on every link

Exact-match anchor text uses the exact keyword phrase the linked page targets, for example linking the words "internal linking strategy" to a page about internal linking strategy. Used once, naturally, that is fine. The mistake is using the identical exact-match phrase for every internal link to that page, across many posts, regardless of context.

Why is this a problem? First, it reads badly. A blog where every link to the same guide uses the identical phrase starts to feel templated, and readers notice templated writing. Second, search engines have long treated aggressive exact-match anchor patterns as a manipulation signal for external links, and while internal links are treated differently, a site-wide pattern of identical commercial anchors still looks like optimisation for its own sake rather than writing for readers.

Before

> For more, see our internal linking strategy. Also read about internal linking strategy before you publish. Our internal linking strategy guide covers this too.

Three links, one identical anchor, no information about why each link is there.

After

> For more, see how to plan internal links across a whole blog. The guide's section on linking new posts to older pillar pages is worth reading before you publish. If you only have ten minutes, start with the internal linking checklist at the end.

The destination is the same, but each anchor describes the reason for that particular link, and the wording varies naturally. The reader learns something from each anchor even before clicking.

The fix

Link to a page once or twice per article, not in every paragraph. Vary the anchor to reflect the context of each link: the definition, the example, the checklist, or the step the reader needs next. Use the exact keyword phrase occasionally if it fits naturally, but let most anchors be descriptive phrases that a person would actually write.

Mistake 2: Generic anchors — "click here", "read more", "this article"

Generic anchor text says nothing about the destination. "Click here" describes the action, not the page. "Read more" describes nothing at all. "This article" could point anywhere.

This mistake is common because it feels polite and neutral, and because many templates and buttons use it by default. But in body text it is pure waste. A reader scanning the page sees a row of identical "click here" links and cannot tell them apart without reading the surrounding sentences carefully. A search engine gets no topical clue from the anchor, only from the surrounding text, which may or may not be helpful.

Generic anchors are also an accessibility problem. People using screen readers often navigate by jumping between links, hearing the anchor text out of context. A list of links all reading "click here" is unusable that way, while a list of descriptive anchors works fine. Good anchor text is therefore not just an SEO habit; it is a basic usability habit.

Before

> We wrote about this before. Click here to read it. For keyword research, click here too.

After

> We wrote about this before in our internal linking strategy guide. For the research step, see keyword research for small business websites.

The after version is shorter, clearer, and each link explains itself. The reader can decide which link matters without re-reading the sentence.

The fix

Replace every "click here", "read more", and "this page" in body text with a short description of the destination. Reserve generic labels for genuine buttons, where the surrounding design supplies the context — a "Read more" button under an article card, for example, where the card title already says what the article is about. In running text, the anchor should carry its own meaning.

Mistake 3: The same anchor pointing to different pages

This is the mirror image of mistake 1, and it is more confusing than it sounds. It happens when a blog reuses a popular phrase as a link, but points it at a different page each time. One post links "SEO checklist" to the beginner checklist; another links "SEO checklist" to a post about audits; a third links it to a tools page.

For readers, this breaks a basic expectation: the same label should mean the same destination, at least within one site. A reader who learned that "SEO checklist" leads to the beginner guide will be surprised, and then annoyed, when it leads somewhere else.

For search engines, the same problem applies in a weaker form. If one anchor phrase points to several different pages across the site, the signal about which page that phrase belongs to is diluted. No single page gets a clean association with the phrase, and the site's structure looks muddled.

This mistake usually grows accidentally. Different authors, or the same author months apart, pick the same natural phrase for different destinations. Nobody notices until a reader complains or an audit surfaces it.

Before

> Start with our SEO checklist before drafting. > > (In another post) Run through this SEO checklist after publishing. > > (In a third post) Our SEO checklist covers keyword checks.

One phrase, three destinations, no way for the reader to predict where a click goes.

After

> Start with our beginner SEO blog writing checklist before drafting. > > (In another post) Run through the Search Console checks after publishing. > > (In a third post) The SEO keyword generator tool covers keyword checks.

Each anchor now names its own destination, and the three pages are no longer competing for the same label.

The fix

Pick one primary anchor concept per important page and stay roughly consistent with it. Variation is fine — a page can be linked as "beginner checklist", "SEO writing checklist", and "checklist for beginners" — but the anchors should all clearly describe the same page, and the same anchor phrase should not be used for a different page. A periodic link audit, even a simple one, catches drift: export the site's internal links, group them by anchor text, and look for one anchor pointing to multiple URLs.

Mistake 4: Anchors that promise something the page does not deliver

This is the most damaging mistake because it breaks trust. The anchor says "free template", the page has no template. The anchor says "step-by-step guide", the page is a short opinion piece. The anchor says "pricing", the page is a sales pitch with no prices.

Readers who click and find something else do not just leave that page; they become less likely to click the site's next link. Search engines, similarly, notice when visitors bounce quickly from a page that did not match its promise, and a pattern of mismatched links undermines the site's credibility in a way that is hard to measure but easy to feel.

This mistake often comes from good intentions: an author wants the link to sound appealing, so they dress it up. Or a page changes over time — the template is removed, the guide is shortened — and nobody updates the anchors pointing to it. Either way, the fix is the same: the anchor must describe the destination as it is today, not as it was planned or as it sounds best.

Before

> Download our free keyword research template to get started.

(The linked page is a guide to keyword research. It contains no downloadable template.)

After

> Read our guide to keyword research for small business websites to get started.

If a template genuinely exists, link to it with an anchor that says so, and make sure the destination delivers it. If it does not exist, do not promise it.

The fix

Before publishing, click every internal link and check that the destination matches the anchor's promise. After any page is substantially rewritten, search the site for links pointing to it and update anchors that no longer match. This check takes minutes for a single post and saves the trust that a broken promise costs.

Comparison: weak anchors vs strong anchors

The pattern across all four rows is the same: the strong anchor describes the destination accurately, in words a reader can act on, without exaggeration.

Step-by-step: audit your anchor text

Step 1: List your most-linked pages

Start with the pages that matter most: the homepage, pillar pages, popular guides, and key product or service pages. These are the destinations that attract the most internal links, so anchor mistakes there have the biggest effect.

Step 2: Find every internal link pointing to each one

For a small site, this can be done by searching the site's content for the page's URL or slug. For a larger site, a crawling tool or a link-checking tool helps. The broken link checker is a useful companion here: while checking that links resolve, it is a natural moment to check what their anchors say.

Step 3: Group links by anchor text

For each destination, list the anchor texts used. Look for the four mistakes: identical exact-match anchors repeated everywhere, generic anchors, one anchor used for multiple destinations, and anchors whose promise does not match the page.

Step 4: Rewrite the worst offenders first

Fix the anchors on your highest-traffic pages first, then work outward. Prioritise broken promises and generic anchors, because those cost readers directly, then tackle repetition and anchor collisions.

Step 5: Set a simple rule for new posts

Before a new post is published, check its internal links against three questions: does the anchor describe the destination, would it make sense out of context, and does the destination deliver what the anchor promises? If the answer to any question is no, rewrite the anchor. Adding this check to a publishing checklist, like the one in SEO blog writing checklist for beginners, makes it stick.

Step 6: Re-check after major rewrites

When a page is substantially rewritten, re-titled, or repurposed, revisit the anchors pointing to it. A page that used to be a checklist and is now a guide needs its incoming anchors updated, or the site will accumulate mistake 4 silently over time.

How this looks on Rankenza

The manual way to fix anchor text is to open each post, read every link, and rewrite the anchors by hand — work that is easy to postpone, which is why anchor mistakes accumulate. It is also easy to get wrong in the other direction: a writer trying to fix exact-match repetition may swing to vague anchors, or a writer fixing vagueness may swing to stuffing.

Rankenza's way builds the links from the customer's own sitemap, so new articles link to pages that actually exist, using the site's real structure rather than invented destinations. The draft is researched from the top 10 search results for its keyword and passed through an intent filter, so the anchor's context matches what the reader is actually looking for, and a human review step checks the draft before delivery. That review is where a "click here" or an over-promising anchor should be caught, because a human reader notices a misleading link faster than any checklist does.

The first article is free, then $3.60 per article or $89 for 50 articles, with no subscription. A shop fixing its internal links can therefore start with one free article, check whether its anchors are descriptive and honest, and then build out a set of properly linked posts at a predictable cost. For background, see the anchor text and internal linking glossary entries, and the full internal linking strategy for blogs.

There is no fixed number, and anyone giving one is guessing. A sensible rule is to link where a reader would genuinely benefit: to a definition they may not know, a related guide that goes deeper, or a next step they need. A short post may need two or three internal links; a long guide may need more. Links added only to hit a quota are usually the ones with the worst anchors.

No. Using the exact phrase once, where it fits naturally, is fine and often the clearest choice. The problem is repetition: the same exact phrase on every link to the same page, across many posts, regardless of context. Vary the anchor to match the reason for each link, and the occasional exact match will look natural rather than templated.

Long enough to describe the destination, short enough to read at a glance. Most good anchors are two to six words: "internal linking strategy guide" works; a whole sentence as a link is hard to scan and hard to read aloud. If the anchor needs a sentence to explain itself, the surrounding sentence probably needs rewriting, not the anchor.

Anchor text is one signal among many, and internal anchors matter less than the page's own content, its overall link structure, and whether it satisfies the searcher. The honest case for good anchors is broader than rankings: they help readers navigate, help search engines understand the site, and build trust. Treat ranking benefit as a side effect of doing the reader's job well, not as the reason to write good anchors.

Sources

• Google Search Central, "Links that Google can crawl": https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable
• Google Search Central, "SEO starter guide": https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide
• Google Search Central, "Spam policies: link spam": https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam

FAQ

How many internal links should a blog post have?

Is exact-match anchor text always bad for internal links?

Should anchor text be long or short?

Do internal link anchors affect rankings directly?