Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. Google reads it to understand what the linked page is about, so the words you choose for your links (especially your internal links) help both readers and search engines know what they’ll get before they click.
I’ll show you the 6 types of anchor text, what Google’s own documentation says about each, and what I found when I measured every internal link on this blog and every backlink anchor pointing at it. Some of it is a little embarrassing. All of it is useful.
What anchor text looks like in HTML
In code, the anchor text is whatever sits between the opening and closing link tags:
<a href="https://thenicheguru.com/blogging/search-intent/">search intent</a>Here the anchor text is “search intent”. If the link is an image instead of text, Google uses the image’s alt attribute as the anchor. If the link is empty, Google can fall back to the title attribute. All three rules come from Google’s guide on making links crawlable.
The 6 types of anchor text
| Type | Example | Linking to |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | keyword research | a guide on keyword research |
| Partial match | how I do keyword research for a new niche | the same guide |
| Branded | The Niche Guru | our home page |
| Naked URL | thenicheguru.com | our home page |
| Generic | click here, read more | anything |
| Image | the alt text of a linked image | anything |
None of these types is banned. What matters is the mix and whether the words describe the page honestly.
What Google says about anchor text
Google’s documentation is short and clear. Good anchor text is “descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on”. It gives a simple test: read only the anchor text, out of context, and ask yourself if it makes sense on its own. “Click here” fails that test.
The same page warns that keyword stuffing is a violation of Google’s spam policies, and adds that if you feel you’re forcing keywords into your anchors, it’s probably too much.
The spam policies go further for links on other sites. Among the examples of link spam, Google lists “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites”. That’s the anchor strategy a lot of link sellers still push. If you buy links, read our guide on link building marketplaces before you choose an anchor.
What I found in our internal links
On October 20, 2026, I measured every internal link in the 247 published posts on this blog. There are 3,220 of them. Here’s how the anchors break down:
| Anchor length | Links | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 words | 1,200 | 37.3% |
| 3-6 words | 972 | 30.2% |
| 7 or more words | 895 | 27.8% |
| Empty (image without alt text) | 148 | 4.6% |
| Generic (“here”, “Read More”) | 5 | 0.2% |
Generic anchors are almost gone, which is good. The problems are elsewhere.
First, vague one-word anchors. 56 links to our Instagram niches guide use the single word “instagram”. Read it out of context: does “instagram” tell you the page is a list of niches? It doesn’t. Google might think the link points to something about Instagram in general.
Second, old post titles used as anchors. Many 7+ word anchors are full titles pasted in years ago, like “SE Ranking Review 2022: Pros, Cons, Pricing, and Alternatives.” The year is stale, and a whole title is usually longer than it needs to be.
Third, 148 links on images with no alt text. Those links pass no anchor text at all.
And the exact-match side? Our niche keyword research guide gets 83 internal links, and 41 of them use exactly “niche keyword research”. One site describing its own page the same way is normal, so I don’t count that as a problem. But with 24 different anchors already in use for that guide, there’s no need to add more of the same.
What I found in our backlink anchors
Here’s the part you can’t control. I pulled the backlink anchors for thenicheguru.com from DataForSEO on October 20, 2026. There are 443 different anchors, and when you sort them by referring domains, the top of the list is junk:
| Anchor (shortened) | Referring domains |
|---|---|
| “Improve Website Authority with Professional thenicheguru.com Link Building” | 1,904 |
| “bahiscasino” | 247 |
| “thenicheguru.com” | 176 |
| Telegram link-selling spam, version 1 | 103 |
| Telegram link-selling spam, version 2 | 95 |
| “Backlinks for thenicheguru.com” | 81 |
| “The Niche Guru” | 24 |
| “Niche Research” | 16 |
Nobody here wrote those spam anchors. They come from auto-generated pages that link to thousands of sites at once. Any domain that’s been around since 2020 collects them.
Should you panic about anchors like these? Google’s answer is no. Its help page on disavowing links says “Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance” and that “most sites will not need to use this tool”. The tool is meant for sites with a lot of artificial links that caused a manual action, or likely will. Search Console showed no manual action for this site when I checked it in September 2026, so I haven’t disavowed anything.
The real lesson is that most anchors pointing at you are out of your hands. Your internal links are the anchors you fully control, so that’s where the effort pays off.
How to choose anchor text for internal links
These are the rules I use for new posts on this blog and for fixing the old ones:
- Describe the page you’re linking to, not the action. “Our guide to search intent” beats “this guide”.
- Use the words a reader would expect to find on that page. If the post is about keyword cannibalization, say so.
- Keep it short. Two to six words covers most cases. Never paste a full title with a year in it.
- Vary naturally. A guide that gets 40 links will pick up different wording on its own. Don’t force variety, and don’t force the keyword either.
- Give every linked image a real alt text, since that’s its anchor.
- Link from pages on the same topic. Anchor text on a related page means more than the same words on an unrelated one. Our post on topical authority explains why.
One more check: two different pages should not share the same main anchor. If “keyword research” points to three posts, you’re telling Google three pages answer the same question.
How to handle anchor text in backlinks you ask for
When you get a link from a guest post, a partner or a sponsored article, the safest choices are your brand name, the plain URL or a short description of the page. A natural phrase in the middle of a sentence is fine. An exact-match commercial keyword placed in a guest post is the pattern Google calls out by name in its spam policies.
And if a link is paid, it should carry rel=”sponsored” (or nofollow), as Google asks in its guide to qualifying outbound links.
Where I’d start
If you’re cleaning up your own site, start with the posts that already get impressions, fix their internal anchors and image links first, and leave the spam backlinks alone unless Search Console shows a manual action. Our SEO for bloggers checklist covers the other on-page basics, and the niche blogging hub has the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Does anchor text still matter for SEO in 2026?
Yes. Google’s current documentation still asks for descriptive anchor text and still uses it to understand linked pages. What changed is the tolerance for manipulation: keyword-stuffed anchors in links you place on other sites count as link spam.
What is a good anchor text ratio?
There’s no official ratio, and Google doesn’t publish one. For internal links, aim for descriptive anchors that fit the sentence. For backlinks, a profile dominated by brand names and URLs is normal. A profile dominated by one commercial keyword is the warning sign.
Is “click here” bad for SEO?
Google uses “Click here” as its own example of anchor text that’s too generic. It tells neither readers nor search engines what’s on the other side, so replace it with a few words that describe the page.
Can anchor text hurt my site?
Anchors you place yourself can, if they’re stuffed with keywords in links built to manipulate rankings. Spam anchors that other sites point at you are a different case: Google says it can usually work out which links to ignore.
