Anchor text

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Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. It is the short phrase a reader sees, usually underlined or coloured differently from the surrounding text, and it hints at what the linked page covers before anyone clicks. When you read a sentence and one phrase in it is a link, that phrase is the anchor text. It is a small piece of writing that carries a large responsibility: it must tell the reader, honestly and briefly, where the link goes and why following it might be worthwhile.

Every link has two parts that matter to the reader: the destination, which is the page it points to, and the anchor, which is the visible promise about that destination. If the promise is vague, readers hesitate. If the promise is wrong, readers feel misled and are less likely to trust the next link. Good anchor text is therefore a matter of reader trust first, and search understanding second.

What anchor text is, and what it is not

Anchor text is the visible, clickable words themselves. It is not the web address behind the link, which most readers never see, and it is not the title of the destination page, although a good anchor often resembles that title. Think of it as a signpost: short, specific, and placed exactly where a reader who wants more detail would naturally look for it.

It is not a place to repeat a search phrase at every opportunity. A link whose anchor is the same exact phrase every time it appears looks mechanical, reads badly, and tells the reader nothing new. Natural writing varies the wording: sometimes the anchor is the topic of the linked page, sometimes it is a descriptive phrase about what the reader will find there, and sometimes it is simply the name of the thing being linked to.

Anchor text is also not a substitute for the surrounding sentence. The sentence around a link should already make sense, and the link should feel like a natural continuation of it. A reader who reads only the sentence should understand why the link is there. If the link only makes sense when clicked, the anchor and its context both need rewriting.

Finally, anchor text is distinct from a backlink, although the two are related. A backlink is a link from another site pointing at your page. Anchor text is the wording of any link, whether it points within your own site or from someone else's site to yours. When another site links to you, you usually do not control their anchor wording, which is one more reason your own internal anchors deserve care: they are the ones you can control.

How anchor text works

For readers, anchor text works as a decision aid. A reader scanning a page uses linked phrases to judge which detours are worth taking. A descriptive anchor such as a guide to planning a content calendar lets the reader decide in a glance whether that guide matches what they need. A vague anchor such as "click here" forces the reader to read the whole surrounding sentence, guess, or skip the link entirely. Most readers skip it.

For search engines, anchor text is one clue among many about what the linked page is about and how pages on a site relate to each other. When several pages on a site link to one guide using varied, descriptive wording about that guide's topic, the engine gains a clearer picture of the guide's subject and its place in the site. This is part of how internal linking builds a coherent structure: links are not just navigation, they are statements about relationships between pages.

That mechanism has limits worth stating plainly. Anchor text alone does not determine how a page performs, and manipulating it at scale, by forcing the same phrase into every link, has historically been treated as a manipulation signal rather than a helpful one. The honest approach is the boring one: describe the destination accurately, vary the wording naturally, and let the links reflect the real structure of the site.

Anchor text also matters for accessibility. Screen readers can list all the links on a page out of context, so a reader can jump straight to a link of interest. A list full of "click here" and "read more" entries is useless in that view, while a list of descriptive phrases works like a table of contents. Writing anchors that stand alone is therefore not just good style; it is part of making a page usable for everyone.

Why anchor text matters for a blog post and for search

For a blog post, anchor text matters because posts rarely stand alone. A good post points readers to related posts, to a service page, to a source, or to a tool, and each of those pointers is a small act of guidance. Descriptive anchors help readers move through a site with confidence instead of bouncing off vague links, and they help a small business turn a single visit into a longer exploration of what it offers.

For search, the honest scope is structural. Thoughtful anchors help search engines understand which pages cover which topics and how those topics connect, which supports topical authority: the sense that a site covers a subject thoroughly rather than in isolated fragments. Anchors do not replace good content, accurate titles, or a sensible sitemap. They are the connective tissue between those things.

There is also a conversion angle that small businesses often miss. The anchor on a link to a booking page, a contact page, or a product page is often the last piece of wording a reader sees before deciding to act. A specific anchor that names the benefit or the next step tends to earn the click more reliably than a generic one, because it removes doubt about what happens next.

Common mistakes

The classic mistake is "click here". It tells the reader nothing, it tells search engines nothing, and it is useless in a screen reader's link list. The same applies to "read more" used on its own, "this article", and bare web addresses pasted into the text. Each of these can usually be fixed by folding the link into a descriptive phrase that already exists in the sentence.

The second mistake is repeating the identical anchor for every link to the same page. If ten posts all link to one guide with the exact same phrase, the pattern looks artificial and wastes the chance to describe the guide from different angles. Vary the wording to match the context of each linking post, while keeping it accurate to the destination.

The third mistake is over-long anchors. Linking a whole sentence, or even a whole paragraph, makes the link hard to scan and dilutes its meaning. A handful of words, rarely more than a short phrase, is almost always enough. If the phrase needs a full sentence to make sense, the surrounding text probably needs restructuring first.

The fourth mistake is misleading anchors: promising one thing and delivering another. A link that says it leads to a pricing guide but lands on a homepage breaks trust quickly, and readers remember that. The anchor should match the destination page's actual content, not the page the writer wishes it were.

The fifth mistake is linking for its own sake: adding links to phrases that do not need them, or linking every mention of a topic rather than the first useful one. Too many links in a paragraph make the text harder to read and each individual link less noticeable. Choose the moments where a reader would genuinely want to go deeper, and leave the rest as plain text.

How to apply it step by step to a small-business blog

Start with a list of the pages on your site that matter most: the main service pages, the best guides, and the pages where a reader can get in touch or buy. These are the destinations your internal links should most often point to, because they are the pages a new reader most needs to find.

Next, when drafting a post, mark the natural places where a reader might want more detail: a concept you mention briefly, a related guide you have already written, or a next step the reader could take. For each, write the anchor as a short phrase naming what the reader will find, such as a guide to choosing blog topics or a checklist for beginners, rather than a generic instruction to click.

Then check each anchor against its destination. Open the linked page and ask whether the anchor still describes it accurately. If the destination has changed since the link was written, update the anchor or the link, not just the destination. The broken link checker can help find links that no longer lead anywhere, which is the first step before judging whether the surviving anchors still fit.

After that, read the post's links in isolation. Most editors let you tab through links, and screen readers list them; either way, the list of anchors alone should read like a rough outline of where the post can take a reader. Any entry that is vague on its own should be rewritten.

Finally, keep a light record of which anchors you use for your most-linked pages, so new posts vary their wording rather than repeating one phrase forever. You do not need a complex system for this; a simple note alongside each key page, listing a few accurate anchor options, is enough. The guide on internal linking strategy for blogs shows how anchors fit into a wider linking plan, and the pillar pages and topic clusters guide shows how anchors connect cluster posts to the central guide they support.

How Rankenza handles it

Rankenza writes internal links with plain, descriptive anchors taken from the linked page's topic, and avoids repeating the exact same anchor for every link. Links are drawn from the customer's own sitemap, so anchors point to real pages on the customer's site and describe real destinations, rather than inventing pages that do not exist. Each article starts from research of the top ten search results for its keyword, filtered for search intent, so the topics being linked between reflect what readers searching for that subject actually want to read next.

A human reviews the draft before delivery, including the links and their wording, because an anchor that promises the wrong destination is a reader-trust problem, not just a technical one. The first article is free, then articles cost $3.60 each or $89 for 50, so a small business can see the linking style on one delivered article before ordering more. The guide on how to write blog posts that rank on Google covers anchor habits as part of the same drafting routine.

Frequently asked questions

How many words should anchor text be? Usually a short phrase: enough to name the destination clearly, rarely more than a handful of words. If the phrase runs to a full sentence, shorten it and let the surrounding text carry the rest of the meaning.

Should I use the exact keyword as anchor text every time? No. Vary the wording naturally while staying accurate to the destination. Repeating one phrase everywhere looks mechanical and wastes the chance to describe the page from different angles.

Is "read more" ever acceptable? On its own, no, because it says nothing about the destination. If a design requires a short link label, pair it with the topic, so the link reads as a description rather than a bare instruction.

Do I control the anchor text of links from other sites? Generally not. Other writers choose their own wording when they link to you, which is why earning links from relevant pages matters more than trying to dictate their exact phrasing.

What the research says

According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, link text, also known as anchor text, is the visible text part of a link, and it tells users and Google something about the page being linked to before anyone visits it. The guide's advice is to use appropriate anchor text so that users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain. It also makes a broader point that links are how most new pages are discovered: the vast majority of new pages Google finds each day are found through links. That is why anchor wording matters beyond politeness: it is part of the discovery system itself.

Google's Image SEO Best Practices documentation adds a related detail: alt text can serve as anchor text when an image is used as a link. So the two descriptions on this site, image descriptions and link wording, meet in one place. A linked image with a good description is doing anchor work too, which is one more reason to write both carefully. The chart below summarises the contrast qualitatively, with no figures, because the source guidance describes the difference in kind, not in amount.

Chart source note: qualitative comparison based on Google's SEO Starter Guide section on writing good link text (see Sources). No figures are shown because the source gives none for this contrast.

How this looks on Rankenza

A typical blog links with "click here" or repeats one identical phrase for every link to a key page, so readers guess and the site's structure stays unclear. Rankenza's own approach, visible on pages like the guide to internal linking strategy for blogs, is to write anchors as plain, descriptive phrases taken from the linked page's topic, varying the wording with context, and drawing links from the customer's own sitemap so every anchor points to a real page. Drafts start from research of the top ten search results for the keyword, filtered for search intent, and a human reviews the links and their wording before delivery. The first article is free, then $3.60 per article or $89 for 50. No traffic or ranking figures are claimed here: the comparison is method against method, and the delivered article shows the style directly.

Sources

• Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide: The Basics — the "Write good link text" section on anchor text, and links as a discovery route.
• Google Search Central, Image SEO Best Practices — alt text acting as anchor text when an image is a link.