Anchor Text

The clickable, visible text of a hyperlink — used by search engines to understand what the linked page is about.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text that appears in a hyperlink. When another site links to yours using the anchor text 'B2B SEO agency', that sends Google a signal that your page is relevant to the topic 'B2B SEO agency'.

There are several types of anchor text: Exact-match (uses the target keyword verbatim), Partial-match (includes the keyword with additional words), Branded (uses the company or product name), Generic ('click here', 'learn more'), and Naked URLs (the raw URL as the link text).

A natural backlink profile contains a mix of all anchor text types. An unnaturally high proportion of exact-match anchor text — especially for commercial keywords — is a sign of manipulative link building that Google's Penguin algorithm is designed to penalise.

Anchor text is one of the ways Google uses link data as relevance signals, not just authority signals. Links with topically relevant anchor text contribute both trust and relevance to a page.