There’s more to anchor text than turning copy clickable. What’s the difference between the different types of anchor text? When is it okay to use exact-match anchors, and when is it not? If you want to optimize backlinks for search, how do you find the right mix of anchor text for your link portfolio to improve your ranking without incurring a Google penalty?
In this guide, I’ll take you through what it all means and show you how to optimize your anchor text backlink profile to qualify for the top spots in search. We build and audit backlink profiles for clients every day, so the guidance here reflects what really moves rankings, not just theory.
What Is Anchor Text?
Anchor text (or link text) is the visible, clickable phrase in a link that connects one web page to another. It often looks different from the copy surrounding it because it’s a different color or format.
For example, this is a link to our keyword research services page.
If you’ve read some of our other articles about backlinks, you’ve probably seen this graphic that offers an anchor text definition:
What is the anchor text of this link? In this example, “San Francisco SEO Company” is the anchor text and would appear with a different color or style than the rest of the text on the page, like this: San Francisco SEO Company.
Now that we’ve established what anchor text is, let’s get into the details of how it impacts SEO.
What Is Anchor Text SEO?
Anchor text plays a direct role in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines read the clickable text in a link to understand what the linked page is about. Google has always used anchor words to learn what web pages are about to rank them for the right keywords. The founders of Google even devoted an entire section to the meaning of anchor text in the 1998 Stanford paper that introduced their concept for a large-scale web search engine, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” Brin and Page described treating link text as a distinct signal, one they tied to both the page containing the link and the page it points to.
Since the earliest days of Google, the search engine has valued a destination page based on the content of the anchor text in a link. In other words, the anchor text in backlinks plays a significant role in search engine results pages (SERPs) rankings.
What Is an Anchor Text Profile?
An anchor text profile, also sometimes called an anchor text portfolio, summarizes all your backlinks and the anchor text associated with them. Review your anchor text profile regularly to make sure your backlink anchors aren’t over-optimized.
SEO Review Tools has a free backlink checker that finds all the backlinks to your site and displays their anchor text.
In the examples of anchor text below, you’ll see a partial view of Victorious’s backlink profile.
Keep this tool in mind as we dig into healthy anchor text ratios below.
Internal Anchor Text vs. Backlink Anchor Text
Most of this guide covers backlink anchors, the link text on other sites that points to yours. But the anchors you control most directly are internal ones: the links between pages on your own site. Internal anchor text tells readers and search engines how your pages relate to each other. Unlike backlinks, you decide exactly what it says.
A few practices make internal anchors work harder:
- Be descriptive and varied. The anchor should tell the reader what’s on the other side of the link, and it shouldn’t repeat the same phrase every time you link to the same destination.
- Point internal links at your priority pages. Send your strongest internal anchors to your anchor pages, the commercial pages at the center of a content cluster, so their relevance and authority build over time.
- Watch for keyword cannibalization. If several internal links use the same exact-match keyword to point at different pages, search engines can’t tell which page should rank for that term, and you end up competing against yourself.
Clear, descriptive internal anchors also feed answer engine optimization (AEO). When search and answer engines map how your content connects, consistent anchor language helps them recognize which page is the authoritative answer for a topic. That’s part of why we treat SEO and AEO as one integrated system rather than separate projects. The same descriptive anchors that guide readers also help AI-driven search understand your site.
8 Examples of Anchor Text
Anchor text comes in eight distinct types, each doing a different job in your backlink profile.
1. Branded Text Anchors
A branded text anchor includes your brand’s name or some variation of it. Branded text anchors are a great way to build brand recognition and are an important part of a balanced backlink portfolio, but they carry no weight for page rank.
Branded Anchor Examples:
- Nike running shoes
- Ikea living room furniture
- SEO Review Tools has a free backlink checker
Here are some examples of branded anchor text from the Victorious backlink portfolio.
2. Exact Match Text Anchors
Exact-match anchor text includes the primary keyword of the destination page. For example, if I scored a backlink for this article and the link text was “anchor text,” that exact-match link would more closely tie this content to the keyword I want it to rank for. Exact-match anchors create the strongest keyword association of any anchor type. However, they also carry the highest over-optimization risk, so they should make up the smallest slice of a healthy profile.
Notice that the copy in the exact match examples below is the same as the branded anchor examples above. What’s changed is the position of the link and, therefore, the anchor text itself.
Exact-Match Anchor Examples:
- Nike running shoes
- Ikea living room furniture
- SEO Review Tools has a free backlink checker
The following example shows exact match anchors for our keyword research services page.
3. Partial Match Text Anchors
Partial match anchor text — you guessed it — includes your keyword and other words that you aren’t aiming to rank for.
Partial Match Anchor Examples:
- Buy Nike running shoes here
- Ikea’s fall designs for living room furniture
- SEO Review Tools has an easy-to-use, free backlink checker
Partial match anchors hold SEO value, even if they don’t precisely match your targeted keyword. Because they contain your keyword, they still create an association between your keyword and your page.
Here are some examples of partial keyword match anchors from our portfolio:
4. Related Anchor Text
Related text anchors are similar to exact-match anchors, with the notable exception that they don’t contain the targeted keyword phrase at all. Instead, they contain words that are semantically related to your keywords. In plain English, related anchor text is conceptually similar to your keyword phrase.
Related Anchor Examples:
- Nike athletic footwear
- Comfy couches from Ikea
- SEO Review Tools has a free backlink tool
Related anchors have SEO value because they help Google’s crawlers better understand what your links are about. Plus, they contribute to the diversity of your link profile.
In the example below, “SEO keyword strategy” is related to the targeted keyword for the page, which is “keyword research.”
5. Naked Anchor Text
Naked anchors literally “strip away” any extra words and offer only the URL itself as the clickable link on the page. You most often see naked links in data citations or other attributions for reference materials.
Naked Anchor Examples:
Naked links don’t create an association between a keyword and a target page, but they still provide link equity from the referring page, and they have the added benefit of diversifying your anchor text portfolio.
See an example of naked anchor text from our portfolio below.
6. Brand & Keyword Anchor Text
Brand and keyword anchor text might combine a brand name with exact or partial-match keywords. While nobody (but Google) knows exactly how much weight each kind of text anchor carries, we know that keywords matter. We also know that over-optimizing for keywords in anchor text is a bad thing. (More on over-optimization below.)
It’s reasonable to assume that pairing your brand name with a keyword in an anchor text creates a strong association between the two while passing equity from the referring domain and adding diversity to your link portfolio.
Brand & Keyword Anchor Examples:
See an example from our portfolio below.
7. Image Anchors
Image anchors are when an external website adds a backlink to your page from an image.
You might have heard that adding alt text to your images is an important part of on-page SEO best practices. But did you know that alt text plays a role in off-page SEO too? If another website features one of your images (for instance, a chart or infographic) and links that image back to your site, Google will read the image’s alt text for context and treat it like anchor text.
Image anchors also help diversify your backlink portfolio. Remember, the primary function of image alt tags is to provide descriptive information to visually impaired users. Honor that function even when optimizing alt tags for SEO.
For an image link, the alt text is what Google reads as the anchor, and a descriptive, relevant file name reinforces it. Generic alt text or a file name like IMG_1234.jpg gives search engines little to work with, and leaves screen reader users without context too. This is also why descriptive anchors matter for accessibility as much as for SEO.
8. Generic Text Anchors
Generic anchor text doesn’t directly improve your rankings, but it still earns link equity by making your backlink profile look natural to Google. Generic anchor text uses words like “website,” “info,” “link,” or phrases like “click here,” “read more,” and “visit this page” to link to another website.
It’s virtually impossible to know what you can expect to find on the destination page by simply looking at the anchor text itself.
Generic Anchor Examples:
These anchors have no keyword or topical relevance and offer no direct benefit to how your page ranks in SERPs. So, why would an SEO strategist recommend using generic anchor text?
Because it occurs so frequently all over the internet, Google associates generic anchor text with organic, editorial placement and passes link equity from the referring site without hesitation. Generic anchor text is a valuable element in a well-balanced anchor text portfolio.
You’ll see generic anchor text examples in this screenshot from the Victorious backlink portfolio.
Looking for More Generic Anchor Text Ideas?
Download my comprehensive list of generic anchor text examples.
Up to this point, I’ve mentioned the importance of diversifying your anchor text portfolio, but I haven’t detailed why it’s important to take a balanced approach to link text.
What Is Anchor Text Over-Optimization?
Anchor text over-optimization is when too many of your inbound links closely match your preferred keywords. As SEO strategists have come to understand the ranking power of backlinks with keyword-match anchor text, bad actors have abused that power. A backlinking strategy that manipulates anchor text to improve SERP rankings without any regard to user experience is in violation of Google Search Essentials.
Having a balanced backlink portfolio helps you avoid even the appearance of link manipulation. Search engines now lean on AI and semantic understanding to judge whether a link profile looks natural, so patterns that might have slipped through a few years ago are easier to spot today.
How To Fix an Over-Optimized Anchor Profile
If your profile is already skewed toward exact-match and keyword-rich anchors, you can correct course without starting over:
- Audit your current profile. Run your backlinks through a checker and tabulate the anchor types, the same way you would for a competitor. You can’t fix a ratio you haven’t measured.
- Diversify going forward. You can’t control the anchor text other sites have already used, so focus new link building on branded, partial-match, naked, and generic anchors until your ratios even out.
- Disavow only as a last resort. Google recommends disavowing links only if you have a manual action or you’re confident a large number of spammy, artificial links point to your site. Check the Manual Actions report in Google Search Console first, and don’t disavow healthy links just because a profile looks aggressive.
How To Run a Competitive Anchor Text Analysis
What does a balanced anchor text profile actually look like? It depends largely on your industry and who you’re competing against.
We’ve found the best way to determine what your anchor text mix should look like is to run an anchor text analysis of your competition.
But how do you do that?
After performing keyword research, we’ve decided to target the query “translate,” with tens of millions of monthly searches in the US. We want to be among the top 3 results for this keyword.
If all of the other 200+ ranking signals didn’t matter and we were only looking at the volume of backlinks, we would want to look at our top three ranking competitors and learn the following pieces of information:
- How many backlinks do they have? (volume)
- Which anchor texts are they using? (distribution)
Evaluating this information will help us determine what it’s going to take to qualify for the top search spots for this keyword.
Competitive Backlink Analysis, Step-by-Step
- Run each competitor’s URL through a free backlink checker.
- Create a spreadsheet and collect the backlink results for each competitor in a separate tab.
- Add your own anchor profile to a fourth tab on your spreadsheet.
- Go through the results and designate each anchor text with a type:
- Branded
- Naked
- Exact-match
- Partial-match
- Generic
- Tabulate the percentages of each type of anchor.
- Compile a set of averages.
- Compare these averages to values from your target page to find the gaps.
Once we analyze the backlinks that the top-ranking pages use, we can determine the ratio of each type of anchor text to optimize your target page.
The link volumes and percentages below are illustrative point-in-time figures meant to show the method, not live benchmarks. Run the analysis yourself for current numbers on your own competitors.
Back to our example, let’s say the top three results for the keyword “translate” are using the following ratios of anchor text:
Competitor #1
| Total Number of Backlinks | Type | Overall Percentage |
| 11.6K | Branded | 75% |
| Naked URL | 5% | |
| Exact-match | 5% | |
| Partial-match | 10% | |
| Generic | 5% |
Competitor #2
| Total Number of Backlinks | Type | Overall Percentage |
| 9K | Branded | 30% |
| Naked URL | 7% | |
| Exact-match | 20% | |
| Partial-match | 36% | |
| Generic | 7% |
Competitor #3
| Total Number of Backlinks | Type | Overall Percentage |
| 7.4K | Branded | 25% |
| Naked URL | 10% | |
| Exact-match | 10% | |
| Partial-match | 54% | |
| Generic | 9% |
Average Anchor Text Ratio of Top Three Competitors
| Total Number of Backlinks | Type | Overall Percentage |
| 9.3K | Branded | 42.5% |
| Naked URL | 7% | |
| Exact-match | 11% | |
| Partial-match | 32.5% | |
| Generic | 7% |
Finding the Gaps
| Type | Competitor Average | Your Page | Difference |
| Number of backlinks | 9.3K | 8.9K | +400 |
| Branded | 42.5% | 48% | -5.5% |
| Naked URL | 7% | 4% | +3% |
| Exact-match | 11% | 13% | -2% |
| Partial-match | 32.5% | 18% | +14.5% |
| Generic | 7% | 17% | -10% |
Now we know roughly how many backlinks we need to qualify for one of the top three positions in SERPs for our chosen keyword. More importantly, we know how many of these links need branded, exact-match, partial-match, naked, and generic anchors.
If we divide the total backlinks we need (400) to build by 12, we know we need to acquire 33 backlinks per month to reach our goal of qualifying for a sweet spot in SERPs by the end of a year-long campaign.
Although it can be a lot of work, this kind of analysis helps you build a clear and actionable backlink road map. The power of this plan is in how specifically it addresses the position of one keyword. You can flesh out a more comprehensive strategy by running a similar analysis for your top five keywords.
Stay consistent, and you could see real gains in organic traffic and conversions by the end of the year.
Ready to tackle other on-page and technical SEO concerns? Check out these resources:
What Does a Healthy Anchor Text Ratio Look Like?
Most guides tell you to keep your anchor profile “balanced” and stop there. Based on the profiles we analyze, a healthy backlink anchor mix usually leans on branded and partial-match anchors, which together often make up around three-quarters of the profile. Exact-match tends to stay low, in the range of roughly 10 percent or less, because that’s the anchor type most likely to read as manipulation when it’s overused. Naked, related, and generic anchors round out the rest and keep the profile looking natural.
Treat that as a starting point. Your real target should come from the competitive analysis above, since the right balance depends on your industry and the specific pages you’re competing against.
Link Building Done Right
Building high-quality links that drive value in search results requires a high-level strategy focused on improving the user experience and making the internet a better place for all of us. Building a balanced anchor text portfolio is an important part of the process, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle.
There are no “quick tricks” to building great links. It just takes experience and time. If you find yourself short of any one of those three things, you might consider bringing in an SEO agency with authoritative link-building services to help get your site the attention it deserves. Contact us for a free consultation and learn about the benefits of an SEO strategy built to deliver results to your bottom line.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does generic anchor text help SEO?
Generic anchors like “click here” and “read more” pass no keyword relevance, so they don’t directly lift your rankings. They still help, though, because they signal a natural, editorial link profile, which is why Google passes link equity through them. Keep them as a small, steady share of your backlink mix.
Is exact-match anchor text bad?
No, but too much of it is. Exact-match anchors send the strongest keyword signal and the strongest over-optimization signal at the same time. Keep them to a small share of your profile, roughly 10 percent or less, and lean on branded and partial-match anchors instead.
What’s a healthy anchor text ratio?
It depends on your industry and competitors, but the profiles we see most often lean on branded and partial-match anchors, with exact-match kept low. Run a competitive anchor text analysis on your top-ranking rivals to set a target that fits your niche.
What is anchor text over-optimization?
It’s when too many of your inbound links use keyword-rich anchors that match your target terms. That pattern can read as an attempt to manipulate rankings and puts you at risk under Google Search Essentials, so a diversified anchor profile is the safer approach.
