Anchor Text in SEO: Types, Safe Ratios and Real Examples

What Is Anchor Text in SEO? The Short Answer

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. In SEO it matters because Google reads those words as a short description of the page the link points to. Good anchor text is descriptive, short and natural. Lots of keyword-stuffed anchors pointing at one page is a classic sign of manipulated links.

Here is what it looks like in the code of a page. The words between the opening and closing tags are the anchor text:

<a href="https://seobysubham.com/foundation-links">guide to foundation links</a>

A reader sees “guide to foundation links” as a link. Google sees the same words and uses them to understand what the linked page covers.

I’m Subham Chowdhury. I’ve worked in SEO since 2014 and planned anchor text for client links since 2018. Most guides on this topic give you a ratio without saying where it came from. The ratios in this one come from the backlink profiles of pages that rank on Google right now, pulled on October 21, 2026.

Why Anchor Text Matters for SEO

Anchor text has been part of how Google ranks pages from the start. The 1998 paper that described Google’s first version noted that “anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves”. When hundreds of sites link to a page with similar words, those words say a lot about what the page is.

That is also why anchor text became easy to abuse. For years, a pile of links with the same keyword could push a page up. Google’s Penguin update in 2012 went after exactly that pattern, and since 2016 Penguin has been part of Google’s core algorithm, running in real time and discounting spammy links instead of demoting whole sites.

Today anchor text does three jobs:

• It describes the linked page to Google. Google’s own link best practices say “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on”. For image links, Google reads the image’s alt text as the anchor.
• It tells readers what they’ll get. People decide whether to click from the anchor alone. Accessibility guidelines say the same: WCAG 2.4.4 asks that the purpose of each link be clear from its text and context, because screen reader users often jump from link to link.
• It shows patterns. One link’s anchor says little. The mix across all the sites linking to a page shows whether those links happened naturally or were placed to rank a keyword.

7 Types of Anchor Text, With Examples

The anchor text examples below all point to the same page: a service page targeting “manual link building services” on seobysubham.com. The risk column is about backlinks from other sites. Internal links follow different rules, which I cover further down.

The seven types of anchor text are branded, naked URL, brand + keyword, partial match, exact match, generic and image anchors. Branded anchor text and naked URLs are the safest; generic anchor text is safe but wasted.

Two more show up in almost every profile. Page title anchors happen when someone pastes your article title as the link, which is natural and common. Long natural phrases happen when a writer links half a sentence, like “one of the strongest ways to grow traffic”. Both are signs of links nobody planned, and you’ll see them in the data below.

Some guides also list LSI anchors, meaning words related to the keyword, such as “outreach-based backlinks”. Google has said it doesn’t use LSI, so treat these as partial match when you count them.

How to Add Anchor Text to a Link

Every editor does the same thing underneath: it wraps your chosen words in a link tag. Pick the words first, then attach the address.

• In HTML: put the words between the tags, as in <a href="https://example.com/page">your anchor text</a>.
• In WordPress: select the words in the block editor, click the link icon or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac), paste the URL and press Enter.
• In Google Docs: select the words, choose Insert > Link or press Ctrl+K, paste the URL and click Apply.
• For a linked image: write alt text that describes where the link goes, because Google uses it as the anchor.

If you write guest posts, send the editor the exact sentence with the link already in place. It saves them time, and the anchor you planned is far more likely to survive editing.

Exact Match Anchor Text: When It Helps and When It Hurts

Exact match anchor text uses the precise keyword the linked page targets. If your page targets “guest post pricing”, then “guest post pricing” is an exact match anchor. Small variations such as plurals or a hyphen (“guest-post prices”) are close enough that you should count them the same way.

It is the strongest relevance signal an anchor can send, which is exactly why it gets abused. Whether it helps or hurts depends on who chose the words.

The example Google uses in its spam policies is a paid article linking with the anchor “buy flowers”. Google has no problem with the words “buy flowers”. It objects to that keyword sitting in a link someone paid for.

Anchor Text Ratios: What Ranking Pages Actually Have

Google has never published a safe anchor text ratio. Among nine pages ranking in Google’s US top 10 in October 2026, exact match anchors made up 4 to 16% of the linking sites on service pages with enough links to measure, and 34 to 63% on the big guides that define a term. For a new site’s service page, keep exact match to 5 to 10% and let brand names, URLs and natural phrases make up the rest.

The ratios you see online, such as “no more than 10% exact match and 30% partial match” or “keep exact match under 5 to 10%”, are rules of thumb from agencies. None of the pages I found showed data of their own behind them, so I collected some.

On October 21, 2026, I pulled the anchors of pages ranking in the US top 10 for “anchor text seo”, “link building services”, “manual link building services” and “link building packages”, using DataForSEO’s backlink index. Each anchor is counted once for every website that uses it, so one site with a sitewide link can’t inflate the numbers.

A Safe Starting Mix for Backlinks to a Service Page

For a new or small site, I start more carefully than the pages above. A site with 20 referring domains can swing its whole profile with three links, and the exact match share of an established brand isn’t a safe target for a site Google barely knows yet. This is a starting point I’d use, not a rule from Google:

For an informational guide, don’t force anything. If people link to your guide using the term it explains, that is the natural pattern the guides in the data show. To see how many links your page needs in the first place, use my method for working out how many backlinks you need.

How to measure your own mix: count your anchor text distribution by referring domain, per page. Total backlinks mislead, because one sitewide footer link can show up thousands of times. And a ratio across your whole site hides the page that has the problem.

Anchor Text for Internal Links

Yes, internal links can use exact match anchor text. Google asks for descriptive anchors on your own pages, so a keyword that describes the destination is fine. Just don’t point the same anchor at two different pages.

Internal links are the anchors you control completely, and Google treats them as labels for your own pages rather than as votes from other sites. Its link documentation says that “paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help both people and Google make sense of your site more easily.”

• Be descriptive, even with keywords. Linking to your pricing page with “guest post pricing” is helpful, not spammy.
• Vary it naturally. On this site, guides link to my homepage with “manual link building services”, “monthly link building services” or “monthly link building plan”, depending on what the sentence is about.
• One anchor, one page. If “link building packages” points to two different URLs on your site, you’re telling Google both pages are about the same thing.
• Don’t chain links. Google’s advice is plain: “Don’t chain up links next to each other; it’s harder for your readers to distinguish between links.”
• Give every important page at least one in-text link from a related page, not only a menu link.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Anchor text optimization comes down to seven habits, whether you’re linking your own pages or asking for links from others.

1. Pass the out-of-context test. Google suggests reading only the anchor and checking whether it’s “specific enough to make sense by itself.” “Our 2026 guest post price list” passes. “Here” doesn’t.
2. Keep it short. Two to five words is typical. Google’s own bad example is a long half-sentence used as a link, which it calls “weirdly long”.
3. Promise only what the page delivers. If the anchor says “free anchor text checker”, the page had better be one.
4. Lead with your brand on a new site. It’s how people naturally link to a business they’ve just found, and it builds recognition for brand searches.
5. Let other people choose their words. When a site owner offers to link to you, suggest the page, not a keyword. You’ll get the variety a natural profile has.
6. Write a good sentence around the link. Google says “the words before and after links matter, so pay attention to the sentence as a whole.” A branded anchor inside a sentence about guest post prices still tells Google what the page covers.
7. Make links look like links. A color change plus an underline, so readers can find them without hovering.

Signs of Over-Optimized Anchor Text, and How to Fix It

Over-optimized anchor text means a page’s backlinks lean so hard on one keyword that the pattern looks placed rather than natural. Watch for:

• A commercial phrase leading the profile. If the most common anchor to your service page is a money keyword rather than your brand or URL, take a closer look.
• Exact match links from unrelated sites. A recipe blog linking to an accounting firm with “best small business accountant” reads as bought.
• The same anchor in footers or sidebars across many sites. Google lists “widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites” as link spam.
• A batch of identical anchors in a few weeks. Natural links arrive slowly and in different words.

If you find the problem, fix it in this order:

1. Stop adding that anchor. Point new links at the page with your brand, URL or natural phrases.
2. Change the anchors you control. Edit the links on profiles you own yourself. For placements you paid for, ask the site owner to switch the anchor to your brand or URL.
3. Check for a manual action in Search Console under Security & Manual Actions. If there isn’t one, you probably don’t need a disavow file. Google’s own disavow documentation says “most sites will not need to use this tool.”
4. Strengthen the page itself. A thin page with an aggressive anchor profile has two problems, and only one of them is links.

How to Check Your Anchor Text

You need a list of the anchors pointing at your site, ideally per page, with how many sites use each one.

• Google Search Console (free): open Links, then Top linking text under external links, and click More to see the full list or export it. It covers your whole site rather than one page, but it’s Google’s own view and costs nothing.
• Ahrefs: the free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools lists the sites linking to a site you’ve verified, which you can export and label yourself. Paid Ahrefs has an Anchors report that counts referring domains per anchor and can be set to a single URL.
• Semrush or other paid tools: Backlink Analytics > Anchors in Semrush does the same, and it’s how you check a competitor’s page.

This is what a real list looks like. Commercial phrases like “backlink packages” sit next to long natural ones like “how a provider structures their process” and plain words like “website” and “discover more”. Notice what the report doesn’t show: how many sites use each anchor, or which page it points to. That’s why you still need a backlink tool to get percentages for a single page.

Then turn the list into a decision:

1. Export the anchors for the page you care about.
2. Label each one with one of the seven types above. A spreadsheet column is enough.
3. Add up the referring domains for each type and work out the percentages.
4. Compare with the pages that outrank you for the same keyword, not with a ratio from a blog post.
5. Plan your next links to fill the gaps, usually with more branded and natural anchors.

How I Choose Anchors for Client Links

• The plan comes first. Every monthly client gets a link plan with the target pages and a natural anchor mix, made before any link is built.
• Brand on the base layer. Profiles and foundation links use the brand name or URL, written the same way every time.
• Advice on the links that carry the most weight. For guest posts and niche edits, you choose the anchor. If exact match would look unnatural on that site, I’ll suggest a branded or partial version and explain why.
• Nothing hidden. On monthly plans, every link and its anchor goes into a shared progress sheet during the month and a full report at the end, so you can check the mix yourself.

If you’d rather hand this over, my manual link building services include the link plan and the anchor mix from day one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to the questions people ask most about anchor text.

The Bottom Line

Anchor text tells Google and readers what a linked page is about. Use descriptive anchors on your own site, let other sites describe you in their own words, and keep keyword-rich anchors for the few editorial links where they fit naturally. The pages ranking today don’t follow one ratio, but none of them got there with a profile full of the same commercial phrase.

For the bigger picture, start with what link building is, then see how long backlinks take to work.