# Anchor text: what you control, what you do not, and what to do about it

Anchor text is the visible words of a link. Inside your own site you write every one of them, and most sites fill them with here and read more. Outside your site you write none of them, and trying to is the pattern that got sites demoted in the Penguin era. Two different jobs, one page.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/anchor-text-strategy

## Why anchors matter at all

Search engines read the words of a link as a description of the page it points to. So does a person scanning a paragraph, and so does a screen reader announcing links out of context.

That gives an anchor three jobs: tell the reader where they are going, tell the engine what the target page is about, and be intelligible on its own. All three are satisfied by the same fix, which is to write what the page is.

> An image used as a link has its alt text as its anchor. A logo linking home with an empty alt is a link with no words at all.

## The part you control: internal anchors

Every link inside your site is yours to word. This is where the real gains are, and almost nobody does it deliberately.

| Instead of | Write | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| read more | how impressions are counted | Says the subject of the target page |
| click here | the status page checker | Names the thing, works out of context |
| this guide | writing a title that earns the click | Describes the page, not its format |
| our pricing page | what the report costs | Says what the reader will learn there |
| learn more about our platform | how the check reads a site | Concrete, and not marketing language |

- Write the anchor as the subject of the destination page, in the sentence's own grammar.
- Vary it naturally across pages. Ten links to one page do not need identical wording, and identical wording is not a target to hit.
- Keep it short enough to scan: a few words, not a clause.
- Never link a whole sentence. The underline becomes noise and the anchor says nothing specific.
- Do not link the same phrase to two different pages on the same site. That is a cannibalisation signal you created yourself.

Two anchors deserve their own rule. The logo linking to the home page should carry the site name as its alt text, because that image is a link and an empty alt makes it a link with no words. And navigation items should say the section, not a category label invented for the menu: guides, free tools and pricing, rather than resources, solutions and plans.

## The part you do not control: external anchors

When another site links to you, the writer chooses the words. That is correct, and you should not try to change it.

Google's link spam policy names large-scale article campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text. The pattern it describes is a site whose inbound anchors are dominated by the exact commercial phrase it wants to rank for, because someone wrote the anchor into every placement. A natural profile looks nothing like that: it is mostly your brand name, your domain, the title of the page, and phrases like this tool and their guide.

- Expect most inbound anchors to be your product name. That is what people call you.
- Expect naked URLs, page titles and vague phrases. All normal.
- Expect a few to be wrong or unflattering. Also normal, and not worth an email.

## How to ask for a link without dictating the words

When you write to someone about a link, name the page and let them write the sentence. Sending a preferred anchor reads as an attempt to use their page, and editors notice.

```text
Good: "The checker is at pingfox.com/tools/status-page-checker if it
fits that section."

Bad: "Please link with the anchor text: free status page monitoring
tool for developers."
```

The only case where naming words is fair is a correction: if a page calls your product by the wrong name, giving the right name is a fact, not an anchor request.

## The distribution question, answered honestly

Tools show a pie chart of your anchors by type and articles recommend target percentages for each. No such percentages exist in any Google documentation, and you cannot control the inputs anyway.

- There is no published ratio of branded to exact-match anchors to aim for.
- You cannot move the ratio without asking people to write specific words, which is the pattern to avoid.
- The chart is still useful as a symptom: if your inbound anchors are mostly a commercial phrase you never use yourself, someone has been buying links in your name.
- The fix in that case is to stop paying whoever is doing it, not to chase a ratio.

Spend the attention on internal anchors, where the percentages are entirely yours and the improvement is immediate.

## An audit you can run today

1. **Crawl your own site** Any crawler will export every internal link with its anchor text. So will an internal link checker.
2. **Sort by anchor** Count how many links use here, this, read more, learn more, click here. That number is your backlog.
3. **Fix the templates first** Most vague anchors come from a component: a card, a related-posts block, a call to action. Changing one template fixes hundreds of links.
4. **Then fix the body links** Work through the pages with the most traffic first. In each, make every link say what it points at.
5. **Check for collisions** Look for one phrase linking to two different pages. Decide which page owns the phrase, and repoint the rest.

This is an afternoon on a small site, it never needs redoing for pages you have already fixed, and it improves the site for readers and screen readers at the same time as for crawlers.

## Questions

### What is anchor text in SEO?

The visible, clickable words of a link. Search engines read them as a description of the page being linked to, readers use them to decide whether to click, and screen readers announce them out of context, which is why vague anchors like click here fail all three at once.

### What is the ideal anchor text distribution?

There is no published ratio in any Google documentation, and inbound anchors are written by other people, so the target is unreachable by design. Treat the distribution chart as a symptom: an unnatural one usually means someone has been buying links with a chosen phrase.

### Is exact-match anchor text dangerous?

A few exact-match anchors that people chose naturally are unremarkable. The pattern Google's policy names is large-scale article campaigns with keyword-rich anchors, which is a profile dominated by one commercial phrase because someone wrote it into every placement.

### Can I ask for specific anchor text?

You can, and it is a mistake. It reads as an attempt to use someone's page for ranking and often ends the conversation. Name the page and its subject, and let the writer choose the words. Correcting your product's name is different: that is a fact.

### How should I write internal anchor text?

As the subject of the destination page, in a few words that make sense out of context, inside the sentence's own grammar. Fix the templates first, because a single card or related-posts component is usually responsible for most of the vague anchors on a site.

## Read next

- [Internal linking for a small site: which pages link to which](https://porteur.ai/guides/internal-linking-for-seo): Decide which pages rank. Build hubs, write clear anchors, fix orphans, and crawl your site to map links you control.
- [Link exchanges: what Google says, and what people actually do](https://porteur.ai/guides/link-exchanges): Reciprocal links are not banned. Excessive exchanges are. Where the line sits, the patterns that get neutralised, and the safer version of the same idea.
- [Guest posting in 2026: when it is worth it and when it is link spam](https://porteur.ai/guides/guest-posting): What Google's policy says about article campaigns, how to tell a real publication from a placement, how to choose a site, and the rel attributes to use.
- [The outreach email that gets a reply](https://porteur.ai/guides/link-outreach-email): One paragraph, sent to the person who wrote the page, about their page. The template, the openings that get deleted, and the single follow-up.
- [Internal link checker](https://porteur.ai/tools/internal-link-checker): Paste your home page and get up to sixty pages fetched and their links read: the orphans, the pages sitting deepest, the least and most linked, links per page.
- [Anchor text](https://porteur.ai/glossary/anchor-text): Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. Use clear, specific anchors to help users and search engines understand your pages.
- [Internal link](https://porteur.ai/glossary/internal-link): An internal link is a link between two pages on the same site. Use them to show which pages matter, pass context with anchor text, and lift rankings.
- [Nofollow link](https://porteur.ai/glossary/nofollow-link): What a nofollow link is, what changed in 2019, how to check rel values, when to use nofollow, sponsored or ugc, and the traps to avoid.

Paste your URL and the free check reads your pages and the links between them in about thirty seconds, and names the three findings worth your next hour. Free check: https://porteur.ai/