Digital Lexicon Hub

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, which tells users and search engines what the linked page is about.

Descriptive anchors improve navigation and accessibility and help search engines connect pages with their topics, while manipulated anchors in paid or exchanged links are a common trigger for link spam actions.

During a content audit, an SEO team replaces 140 "read more" internal links with descriptive anchors such as "B2B lead scoring guide" and checks that every priority page receives at least 3 contextual internal links.

Exact-match keyword anchors on external links look unnatural in volume and can be treated as link spam. Anchor text is one signal among many, and changing it alone rarely moves rankings.

Anchor text sits inside a crawlable element; for image links, Google uses the image's alt attribute instead. Common types are exact match, partial match, branded, naked URL, generic and image anchors. Google recommends concise, descriptive text that makes sense out of context and warns that keyword stuffing breaches its spam policies. It matters both for Internal Linking and for each Backlink earned through Link Building.