Anchor Text
The clickable words of a link — they describe the target page to Google.
What it means
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. It tells both users and search engines what the linked page is about.
How it affects your SEO
Descriptive, relevant anchor text (internal and external) helps Google understand and rank the target page for the right queries. Over-optimized, exact-match anchor at scale is a historical spam signal, so keep it natural.
Anchor Text — frequently asked questions
Is exact-match anchor text bad?
A little is fine. At scale, heavily optimized exact-match anchor is a historical spam signal. Keep anchor text descriptive and natural across your link profile.
Should internal anchor text use keywords?
Yes — descriptive, keyword-relevant internal anchor text helps Google understand the target page. Just keep it natural and varied rather than forced.
Related SEO terms
A link from another site to yours — still a top ranking signal.
Links between your own pages that spread authority and guide crawlers.
A third-party score predicting a site’s ranking strength — not a Google metric.
Tells Google which version of a page is the “real” one when duplicates exist.
Is this hurting your rankings?
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