Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Search engines read it as a short description of the page the link points to. When a site links to a page with the words “MSSP SEO consultant,” Google takes those words as a signal of what the linked page covers.
Anchor text gets less attention than it did in the 2010s, but the 2024 leak of Google’s Content Warehouse API documentation showed Google still processes it in detail. In Mike King’s analysis of the leak at iPullRank, he lists an Anchor Mismatch demotion: when a link doesn’t match the site it points to, the link is demoted. The same documentation includes a set of phraseAnchorSpam signals that detect spikes of spammy anchor phrases, including how many days it took for 80% of them to appear. In plain terms, Google can measure how fast keyword-rich anchors arrive. King is clear that the leak shows which features exist, not how they’re weighted. Treat it as confirmation that anchors still count, not as a formula.
Types of anchor text
| Type | Example, for a page about MSSP SEO | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | “MSSP SEO” | Deliberate link building and internal links |
| Partial match | “SEO for managed security providers” | Editorial links and guest posts |
| Branded | “Anurag Pareek” | Most natural links, press coverage, directory listings |
| Naked URL | “anuragpareek.com” | Citations, forums and resource lists |
| Generic | “click here,” “read more” | Buttons and careless links; carries no topic signal |
What a natural backlink profile looks like
Real links mostly use brand names and URLs. That’s how people refer to a company they mention in passing. A profile where exact-match anchors dominate, or arrive in a burst, tells Google someone placed those links.
In my experience, exact-match anchors above roughly 8% on commercial keywords become a footprint, and sites that hold that ratio for 18 months are the exception. Google’s spam policies name links with optimised anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites as an example of link spam. Guest posting itself isn’t the problem. Keyword-rich anchors inside guest posts are what the policy targets.
The leak points the same way on relevance. King reads the Anchor Mismatch demotion as Google looking for relevance on both sides of a link, and a separate attribute rates anchors by the quality of the page they come from. A branded link from a cybersecurity publication is worth more to a security vendor than an exact-match link from a general business blog.
Internal anchor text, the lever B2B sites ignore
External anchors are mostly out of your hands. Internal ones are entirely yours, and most B2B sites waste them. Service cards end in “Learn more” buttons, menus say “Solutions,” and blog posts link with “this guide.” Each of those links passes authority with no description of where it goes.
Google’s link guidance asks for anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it links to. Its test is simple: read the anchor on its own, out of context. If you can’t tell what the destination covers, rewrite it. On a cybersecurity site, swapping “Learn more” for “managed detection and response for mid-market banks” passes that test.
Be specific without stuffing. The same guidance warns against cramming every related keyword into anchor text, and the leak includes a droppedLocalAnchorCount attribute, which suggests some internal links aren’t counted at all. Vary the wording across pages where it reads naturally. The same anchor repeated across 200 pages adds nothing after the first few.
Context around the link
Google says the words before and after a link matter, and it advises against placing links side by side, since each one loses its surrounding text. A link in a paragraph about penetration testing, pointing to a penetration testing page, carries a clear signal. The same link dropped into a paragraph about office culture carries a weak one, whatever the anchor says. Place internal links where the surrounding sentence already discusses the destination’s topic.
Common mistakes
- Building external links with exact-match anchors at scale or in bursts. Google can see both the wording and the timing.
- Using “click here,” “learn more” or “read this” on internal links, which wastes the one anchor signal you fully control.
- Pointing the same anchor at two different pages, which makes them compete for the same term.
- Stacking several links next to each other in one sentence.
- Chasing anchor wording on links from off-topic sites. Relevance of the linking page matters more than the words in the link.
Related terms
Backlink · Internal linking · B2B link building · On-page SEO · Content silo
