Anchor text

Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a hyperlink — the part underlined or coloured differently from surrounding text — as distinct from the web address it actually points to, which sits in the link’s underlying code rather than on the page.

The common types of anchor text

Type	Example	Where it fits
Exact match	“website copywriting” linking to a page about exactly that	Precise, but a match anchor repeated on every link to the same page reads as templated
Partial match	“how website copywriting is priced”	Still descriptive without repeating the exact target phrase every time
Branded	“7Arx” or the business’s own name	Common for a homepage link, less useful for an internal page describing a specific topic
Naked link	https://example.com/page shown as the anchor itself	Transparent about the destination but not a readable link text on the page
Generic	“click here”, “read more”, “this page”	Fails the accessibility requirement below regardless of how often it repeats

A good anchor describes the linked page’s content in a few words a reader could act on without following the link at all — which rules out both an over-optimised exact match on every single instance and a generic, meaningless one.

Why anchor text matters beyond the visible click

Anchor text tells a visitor, and a screen reader user in particular, where a link leads before they follow it. WCAG’s Link Purpose requirement expects a link’s text to make its destination or outcome determinable from the text itself — “read the full pricing guide” passes this test; “click here” or “read more” does not, because both fail a visitor navigating a page by its list of links alone, out of surrounding context.

Search engines also use anchor text as one signal describing what a linked page is about, which is one reason internal links throughout a site are worth writing deliberately rather than defaulting to a generic phrase repeated everywhere.

What tends to go wrong with anchor text

The same exact-match anchor text repeated across many links pointing at the same page, worded identically every time, reads as templated rather than editorial — and a small number of exact-match repeats site-wide is a normal, checkable limit rather than an arbitrary style preference. The opposite failure, generic non-descriptive anchors (“click here”, “this page”, “learn more”) used throughout a site, fails the accessibility requirement above regardless of how many times it repeats.

What to do next with your site’s anchor text

Reviewing a site’s own internal links for generic anchor text is a quick, practical check — search the published pages for “click here” and “read more” specifically, since both are common enough to be worth a direct search rather than a manual page-by-page review. For how this fits into writing a site’s actual content, website copywriting covers where link text is scoped as part of a copywriting service.