The Art of Anchor Text: How to Guide Readers and Search Engines Without Overdoing It
Anchor text is the clickable words in a link, and it's one of the clearest signals you can give about what the linked page is actually about. On internal links you control both ends of that signal: the page doing the linking and the page being linked to. That control is useful, but it also makes it easy to overdo, and unnatural anchor text is one of the more common ways internal linking goes wrong.
Why anchor text matters
Anchor text does two jobs at once. For a reader, it sets an expectation, they should have a reasonable idea what they'll find before they click. For a search engine, it's a strong contextual clue about the topic of the destination page, arguably stronger than most other on-page signals, since it's effectively another page vouching for what the linked content covers.
Generic anchors waste the opportunity
"Click here," "read more," and "this article" are the most common offenders. They tell a reader almost nothing about what's on the other side, and they tell a search engine even less. They're also a genuine accessibility problem: screen reader users often navigate a page by jumping between links, and a list of links that all say "click here" is useless out of context. Swap it for text that describes the destination, even briefly, and you fix both problems in one move.
Exact-match, partial-match, and natural anchors
It helps to think of anchor text on a spectrum:
- Exact-match. The anchor text is identical to the target page's main keyword or title, word for word.
- Partial-match. The anchor includes the relevant keyword or phrase inside a longer, more natural snippet of surrounding text.
- Natural or descriptive. The anchor text describes the destination in whatever words fit the sentence you're writing, without necessarily matching any specific keyword at all.
All three have a place. The problem isn't exact-match anchor text itself, it's using the identical exact-match phrase every single time you link to a given page. That pattern, the same rigid phrase repeated link after link, is exactly what unnatural, manipulated linking looks like, and it's a large part of why exact-match anchor abuse on external links has historically drawn algorithmic penalties. Internal links carry less risk than external ones here, but the underlying pattern still reads as unnatural to anyone, human or algorithm, who sees it repeated.
Vary your anchor text naturally
If you link to the same post from ten different articles, ten slightly different, naturally worded anchors serve you better than the identical phrase copied ten times. This isn't about avoiding your target keyword, it's about writing the link the way you'd naturally phrase it in that specific sentence, which produces variation on its own. A page about orphan pages might reasonably be linked as "pages with no internal links pointing to them" in one post and "our guide to orphan pages" in another. Both are accurate, both read naturally, and neither looks copy-pasted.
Keep it concise and honest
A good anchor is usually a few words, not a full sentence. Long anchors dilute the specific signal you're trying to send and are harder to scan visually. Just as important: the anchor text should honestly describe what's on the other end. If the anchor promises a "complete pricing breakdown" and the link lands on a general features page, that mismatch costs you a reader's trust immediately, and no amount of SEO benefit makes up for that.
This is also why OrdoLink focuses on contextual sentence matching rather than forced keyword insertion, letting you pick anchors that fit the natural flow of your writing.
A quick checklist
- Does the anchor describe the destination, not just prompt a click?
- Would it still make sense read on its own, out of context?
- Have you used this exact phrase as an anchor to this page many times before? If so, vary it.
- Does it read as a natural part of the sentence around it?
- Does it accurately set expectations for what's on the other end?