What is Anchor Text? Types, Examples and SEO Best Practices

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. In the sentence "read our internal linking best practices", the words "internal linking best practices" are the anchor text. Search engines use anchor text, together with the words around it, to understand what the destination page is about.

For internal links, you control every anchor, which makes anchor text one of the most direct ways to tell search engines which page should rank for which topic.

Types of Anchor Text

• Exact match ("orphan page checker"): use occasionally, when it reads naturally.
• Partial match ("check your site for orphan pages"): use often, descriptive and natural.
• Branded ("LinkerFlow"): for links to your homepage or brand pages.
• Descriptive phrase ("how to find pages nobody links to"): use often, especially in long content.
• Generic ("click here", "read more"): avoid, it says nothing about the target.
• Naked URL ("linkerflow.io"): rarely, mostly for citations.

Why Anchor Text Matters for SEO

• Relevance signal: descriptive anchors tell search engines what the linked page covers.
• Accessibility: screen reader users often jump from link to link, so anchors must make sense on their own.
• Click-through: clear anchors tell readers what they will get, so the right readers click.

Anchor Text Best Practices

1. Describe the destination in a few words.
2. Vary your anchors naturally. Using the exact same keyword in every link looks artificial.
3. Keep one target per anchor. If the same anchor points to several pages, search engines cannot tell which page is the reference for that topic. This is called anchor text cannibalization.
4. Avoid generic anchors like "here" or "this article".
5. Match the surrounding sentence: the link should read naturally, without forcing keywords.

How to Check Your Anchor Text

Export your internal links with their anchors and look for:

• generic anchors to rewrite;
• the same anchor pointing to different pages;
• important pages that receive only vague anchors.

The free anchor text cannibalization checker finds anchors that point to several pages on any website.

Anchor Text on Webflow, WordPress and Wix

• Webflow: anchors are set in Rich Text fields and text elements. Buttons and link blocks use their inner text as the anchor, so avoid "Learn more" on every card.
• WordPress: anchors are set in the block editor. Plugins that add automatic links can repeat the same anchor many times, so check them.
• Wix: anchors are set in the editor and in blog posts. The same advice applies to buttons and galleries.

Common Mistakes

• Using "click here" or "read more" for most links.
• Repeating one exact-match keyword on dozens of links.
• Pointing the same anchor to different pages.

How LinkerFlow Helps

LinkerFlow assigns anchor keywords to each page from Google Search Console and AI analysis, then suggests links where those keywords already appear naturally in your content. It also detects anchor text cannibalization during its weekly crawl. See how it works on Webflow, WordPress and Wix.