Anchor Text: What Google Says and How to Check
Anchor text is the words a link is placed on. Google writes that good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant both to the page it is on and to the page it links to. The documentation has no target share of “branded” and “commercial” anchors and describes no penalty for “wrong proportions”. It describes something else: how to write anchors yourself and which anchor tricks are named link spam. Below, per Google’s help page: how to work with internal anchors, how to assess external ones and what to avoid.
What Google says about anchors
The links help page explains: good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to the page it is on and the page it links to; it provides context and sets the expectation for readers. The better the anchor text, the easier it is for people to navigate the site and for Google to understand what the linked page is about. The starter guide adds that link text tells users and Google something about the page you are linking to. Anchors can also be used when forming a title link: if Google detects an issue with a page’s title, it may generate an improved one from anchors, on-page text or other sources (title links).
| Problem (per the help page) | Example | Better |
|---|---|---|
| Too generic | “click here”, “read more”, “website”, “article” | “list of cheese types” |
| Too long | a whole sentence with every detail | a short phrase with the main idea |
| Stuffed with keywords | every related query in one anchor | a natural phrase: ask whether the reader needs these words |
| Links in a row | five links on separate words of one sentence | links spaced out, each with its own context |
A practical test from the help page: read only the anchor text, out of context. If you can’t tell what the page might be about, you need more descriptive text. The words before and after a link matter too, so think about the sentence as a whole. For image links the alt attribute serves as the anchor (image SEO).
Internal anchors: you write them yourself
Here you can be consistent: when linking to a page, name it by what it is about, and avoid generalities like “here”. The help page specifically advises paying attention to the anchors of internal links, because it helps people and Google make sense of the site and find its pages. The context and anchors of internal links to a particular page are visible in the internal link context tool; navigation in general is in the lesson on search-friendly navigation.
External anchors: what you control and what you don’t
Others write external anchors. The Search Console links report shows the “most common link text” to your site: duplicates are combined (exact match, case-insensitive), and links with no text, such as images, appear as “(empty)”. It is a sample, not a full list (profile metrics). It shows how people link to you, but you cannot tune the distribution “to a norm”: there is no norm.
A classification of anchors is useful for analysis, not as a target:
- Branded — the name of a company, site or author.
- Descriptive — the title of a piece or the topic of a page.
- Naked URL — the URL itself.
- Generic — “here”, “source”, “more”.
- Commercial — a query with commercial intent.
- Empty — images without
alt.
A natural profile looks varied because people write links differently, not because someone maintains proportions. If almost all your anchors are identical and match a commercial query, work out where they come from: the origin of the link matters, not the percentage.
What is named link spam
In the spam policies anchors are mentioned like this: links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites; optimized links and signatures in forum comments; keyword-rich or hidden links in widgets distributed across sites. The criterion is the purpose of manipulating rankings, not the share of particular anchors (see the lessons on spam policies and tactics).
A practical rule for working with outside sites follows: do not dictate the exact anchor. If an author decided to link on their own, they will choose words natural for their text. In digital PR it is enough to give the title of the piece and the source of the data, and in paid placements, to qualify the link (link types).
How to check your profile
- Open the “most common link text” in Search Console and compare it with how you write internal anchors yourself.
- Find anchors that repeat exactly and match a commercial query; check the sources of those links.
- For each suspicious group determine the origin: paid placements, guest material, directories, widgets.
- Decide what to fix: qualify with
sponsored, ask for removal or replacement, and, under the conditions in the lesson on toxic links, prepare a disavow. - For internal links, replace generic anchors with descriptive ones (backlink audit).
Checklist
- Internal anchors are descriptive, concise and natural.
- Links do not stand shoulder to shoulder; each has context.
- Image links have a meaningful
alt. - Outside sites are not told the exact anchor.
- Paid links are qualified; the sources of repeating optimized anchors are checked.
- Decisions do not rest on “target shares” of anchors.
Mistakes
- Following a table of anchor shares that is not in the documentation.
- Using “here” and “read more” for internal links.
- Stuffing an anchor with keywords.
- Ordering placements with an exact commercial anchor and no qualification.
- Assessing a profile only through Search Console: it is a sample.
What next
Next comes the local SEO module, where links and mentions work differently: start with the lesson on the basics of local SEO. If you need to re-check what counts as Google data and what as service estimates, return to profile metrics.