{"id":20066,"date":"2020-01-28T14:59:29","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T14:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/glosario-digital\/anchor-text"},"modified":"2026-09-15T13:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T13:08:07","slug":"anchor-text","status":"publish","type":"encyclopedia","link":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/anchor-text","title":{"rendered":"Anchor Text"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"boxpad alignright wp-image-13891 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/anchor_text.png\" alt=\"Anchor Text\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" style=\"margin-top:0;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/anchor_text.png 300w, https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/anchor_text-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><strong>Definition:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Anchor text<\/strong> is the visible and actionable text of a link. It describes or identifies the resource to which it leads and forms part of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/hyperlink\">hyperlink<\/a> together with its destination and other attributes.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in a link to an analytics guide, the words selected as anchor text indicate what a person can expect when activating it. <strong>Anchor text is not the destination URL or the <code>title<\/code> attribute<\/strong>, although a web address can also be displayed as linked text.<\/p>\n<p>Browsers usually distinguish links visually through color, underlining, or other styles. That presentation can change, but anchor text remains the content included within the link.<\/p>\n\n<h2>How anchor text is represented<\/h2>\n<p>In HTML, a crawlable link is usually created with an <code>a<\/code> element containing an <code>href<\/code> attribute. <strong>The content placed between the opening and closing elements acts as anchor text<\/strong>, while <code>href<\/code> contains the address to which it points.<\/p>\n<p>Anchor text can appear in several forms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Descriptive:<\/strong> summarizes the content or purpose of the linked page using words related to it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Brand or proper name:<\/strong> uses the name of a company, product, person, or publication when it clearly identifies the destination.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Web address:<\/strong> displays a complete or shortened URL as actionable content.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Generic:<\/strong> uses expressions such as <em>more information<\/em> or <em>read here<\/em>, whose meaning depends heavily on the nearby context.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Image link:<\/strong> contains no visible text; in this case, search engines and assistive technologies may use the image&#8217;s alternative attribute as the link description.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An empty link or one made only from an icon without an accessible name can be difficult to interpret. <strong>The text or alternative should make its purpose recognizable without relying only on color or visual appearance.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Relationship between anchor text, navigation, and SEO<\/h2>\n<p>Anchor text helps people decide whether a link is relevant before opening it. It also gives search engines information about the relationship between the source page and its destination.<\/p>\n<p>Google uses links to discover pages and as one of the signals for interpreting relevance. Its <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/crawling-indexing\/links-crawlable\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recommendations for links and anchor text<\/a> state that the text should be descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both the source document and the destination.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/internal-link\">internal link<\/a>, anchor text helps express the relationship between sections of the same website and guides navigation. In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/backlink\">backlink<\/a>, the text is normally chosen by the external page creating the link, so the destination website cannot always control it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anchor text is a contextual signal, not an instruction that determines rankings on its own.<\/strong> The content of both pages, the surrounding context, crawlability, site architecture, and other signals used by each search engine also matter.<\/p>\n<h2>How to write useful anchor text<\/h2>\n<p>There is no universal character limit that applies to every anchor text. An appropriate length depends on the language, context, and detail needed to distinguish the destination. <strong>These five guidelines help keep it understandable:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Describe the destination:<\/strong> use words that anticipate the content or action a person will find.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Preserve context:<\/strong> integrate the link into a sentence that explains its relationship to the current content.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Avoid unnecessary ambiguity:<\/strong> replace generic expressions when several nearby links would otherwise be indistinguishable.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be concise without removing meaning:<\/strong> avoid linking complete paragraphs or adding words that do not help identify the resource.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Check the experience:<\/strong> verify that the link is visible, actionable on different devices, and understandable through assistive technologies.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Two links with the same destination can use the same text when they serve the same function. If they lead to different resources, <strong>the wording should make them distinguishable<\/strong>, especially in menus, lists, and sequences of repeated links.<\/p>\n<h2>Variation, attributes, and manipulation risks<\/h2>\n<p>Anchor text may include the destination&#8217;s main term, a variation, a brand, or a broader description. This diversity often arises naturally because different pages and people describe a resource in different ways.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Repeating exact text is not automatically a problem<\/strong>, but creating or buying numerous links with keywords chosen to manipulate rankings can form part of a spam pattern. Assessment does not depend only on the linked phrase, but also on the source, editorial relationship, scale, and purpose of the links.<\/p>\n<p>Attributes such as <code>nofollow<\/code>, <code>sponsored<\/code>, or <code>ugc<\/code> provide information about the link relationship and do not replace its text. The entry on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/nofollow-link\">nofollow links<\/a> explains this difference in treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Anchor text analysis should be used to find ambiguous, inconsistent, or manipulated links, not to impose fixed exact-match percentages. <strong>A varied distribution does not prove naturalness, and an exact match does not prove manipulation on its own.<\/strong> Interpretation requires reviewing the complete link and the context in which it appears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What anchor text is, how it is represented, its relationship with navigation and SEO, how to write it, and manipulation risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":79669,"template":"","encyclopedia-tag":[1251],"class_list":["post-20066","encyclopedia","type-encyclopedia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","encyclopedia-tag-link-acquisition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia\/20066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/encyclopedia"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"encyclopedia-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia-tag?post=20066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}