Anchor Text: Definition & Example

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the visible text—usually highlighted in color—that you click to follow a link. It’s essentially the sign on the door. Even before someone clicks on the link, the anchor text tells them what lies beyond it.

Anchor text provides guidance by suggesting a direction to visitors. However, meaningful anchor text can also be easily skimmed and understood at a glance, without having to read the surrounding text.

Furthermore, anchor text helps search engines determine what the linked page is about.

Where does anchor text come from?

Anchor text is as old as the hyperlink itself. The name is derived from the anchor HTML element used for links. It gained importance for SEO when search engines began evaluating these links.

It wasn’t long before the first scammers followed suit, creating massive numbers of links with keyword-stuffed anchor text—until Google began cracking down more aggressively on link spam and unnatural linking patterns with updates starting in 2012.

Why is anchor text important?

Anchor text serves as both a guide and a way to manage expectations. On a website, it shows visitors where to go; externally, it informs search engines about what the linked page is about.

Anchor text plays a particularly important role in a page’s accessibility. For people using screen readers, a text like “here” is meaningless without context.

Advantages

Anchor text is easy to improve—no technical expertise or budget required, page by page.
It provides better navigation for visitors.
It sends clearer signals to search engines.
It makes content more accessible to people using screen readers.

Challenges

The habit of using “Click here” as anchor text is hard to break. Furthermore, if link text appears overly uniform and keyword-heavy, it can seem unnatural and, in the case of strategically placed links, be interpreted as an attempt at manipulation.

Furthermore, when used excessively, anchor text loses its purpose as a guide; with countless poorly placed links, no one ultimately knows where to click.

Example

The services page of a maintenance technology company reads: “Find more information here.” Only visitors who have read the entire text or know where they are can make sense of this. Search engines and people with visual impairments, on the other hand, cannot.

The company revises the anchor text to “To the overview of our maintenance contracts.” The link is now better understood by everyone before it is clicked. Visitors can more easily gauge where it leads, and search engines receive a clearer indication that the landing page deals with maintenance contracts.