What Is Anchor Text? A Guide to a Natural Link Profile

Introduction: The Overlooked Key to Your Link Building Success

You are working hard to get links to your website, but are you paying attention to the most important part—the clickable words themselves? The wrong anchor text strategy can do more harm to your SEO than good. For many business owners and marketers in the UK, anchor text is a source of confusion and anxiety, a technical detail fraught with the risk of incurring a damaging Google penalty. This fear is often rooted in outdated advice that, if followed today, could undermine your entire digital marketing effort.

This guide will simply explain what anchor text is, the different types you should use, and how to create a natural link profile that Google actually trusts. The core principle to embrace is this: Anchor text—the visible, clickable text of a link—is a powerful SEO signal that tells users and Google what a page is about. While using descriptive keywords is important, the key to a safe and successful strategy in October 2025 is to maintain a natural and diverse anchor text profile, actively avoiding the dangerous practice of over-optimizing with exact-match keywords.

Ultimately, the collection of anchor texts pointing to your site tells a story to Google. This narrative can be one of two things: a story of natural, organic endorsement from a variety of sources, or one of artificial, manipulative engineering designed to game the system. The goal of this guide is to empower you to curate a trustworthy story, shifting your mindset from short-term tactics to a sustainable, long-term strategy that aligns with both Google’s guidelines and your core business goals.

The Fundamentals: What Exactly Is Anchor Text? (The ‘Signpost’ for Your Link)

At its most basic, anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. When you read an article online and see a phrase that is a different colour (usually blue) and often underlined, that is anchor text. It acts as a signpost, giving both human users and search engine crawlers a clue about the content of the destination page they will land on if they click the link.  

In the underlying HTML code of a webpage, a link is structured like this:

$<a href="https://www.example.co.uk/target-page">This is the Anchor Text</a>$

• The <a> tag (the ‘a’ stands for anchor) initiates the link.
• The href attribute specifies the destination URL.
• The text between the opening <a> tag and the closing </a> tag is what becomes the visible, clickable anchor text on the page.  

Visual Example: Imagine reading a sentence on a website:

“To build a successful online presence, it is crucial to understand the fundamentals of search engine optimisation.”

In this example, the phrase “search engine optimisation” is the anchor text. It is visually distinct, and clicking it will take the user to the URL specified in the href attribute.

While its role in SEO is profound, the primary function of anchor text is rooted in user experience (UX) and web accessibility. For a user, a descriptive anchor like “our guide to sourdough baking” is infinitely more helpful than a generic one like “click here” because it sets a clear expectation. This principle is even more critical for users who rely on assistive technologies. Screen readers, for instance, can read out the links on a page, and descriptive anchor text allows visually impaired users to navigate the web effectively. Vague anchors create a significant barrier to accessibility.  

Google’s increasing emphasis on user experience means that its algorithms are designed to reward practices that help users. Therefore, the search engine’s reliance on anchor text for contextual understanding is not an arbitrary rule for SEOs to follow; it is an algorithmic reflection of a fundamental human-centric design principle. By creating anchor text that is, first and foremost, helpful and clear to a person, you are naturally aligning with the best practices that search engines want to reward.

The SEO Signal: Why Google Scrutinises Your Anchor Text

To understand why anchor text is so critical for SEO, it is necessary to go back to the foundational principles of Google’s algorithm. The original PageRank algorithm was built on the idea that links act as “votes” or endorsements from one website to another. A link from Site A to Site B is a signal that Site A finds the content on Site B valuable.

In this analogy, the anchor text of that link is the topic on the ballot paper. It tells Google not just that a page is being endorsed, but what it is being endorsed for. If dozens of websites link to a page on your site using anchor text like “artisan coffee in Manchester,” Google receives a powerful, third-party consensus that your page is highly relevant to that specific topic. This is why anchor text has historically been, and remains, a significant ranking factor. The original paper that laid the groundwork for Google’s algorithm explicitly named anchor text as a key technique for improving search quality.  

However, not all votes are created equal. The weight that Google gives to an anchor text signal is directly proportional to the authority and relevance of the page it comes from. This creates a clear hierarchy of influence. A link from a highly authoritative and topically relevant source, such as a major news publication’s article about your industry, is a “loud shout” in the eyes of Google. The anchor text from that link carries immense weight. Conversely, a link from an obscure, low-quality blog is a “faint whisper” that may carry little to no weight, or could even be perceived as a negative signal if it appears spammy.

This crucial connection means that an effective anchor text strategy cannot be developed in a vacuum. It is intrinsically linked to your link acquisition strategy. The focus should not just be on the words used in your links, but also on the quality and relevance of the websites those links are coming from. A single, well-placed link with descriptive anchor text from an industry-leading authority site is exponentially more valuable than hundreds of low-quality links with the same anchor text.

The Anchor Text Toolkit: The 5 Main Types You Must Know

To build a natural and effective link profile, it is essential to understand the different types of anchor text and the role each plays. A healthy profile is diverse, incorporating a mix of these categories to signal to Google that your links are being earned organically rather than being artificially manufactured.  

1. Branded Anchor Text

This is when your brand name is used as the anchor text. For a business with an established name, this should be the most common type of anchor in your backlink profile. It is the most natural way for other websites to reference your company.  

• UK-Based Example: A link to a plumbing company’s website using the anchor “ABC Plumbing”.
• Role & Risk: Branded anchors are extremely low-risk and high-value. They build brand recognition, signal trust, and are the cornerstone of a safe, natural-looking link profile.  

2. Exact-Match Anchor Text

This anchor text is the precise keyword or phrase you are trying to rank for. In the early days of SEO, this was an incredibly powerful tactic, but it is now the riskiest type of anchor text if overused.  

• UK-Based Example: A link to a page about plumbing services with the anchor “plumbers in birmingham”.
• Role & Risk: Exact-match anchors are very high-power signals, but they carry an extremely high risk of being flagged as manipulative if they make up anything more than a tiny fraction of your profile. Use them with extreme caution.  

3. Partial-Match Anchor Text

This is a variation of your target keyword, often included within a longer, more natural-sounding phrase. It allows you to send a keyword relevance signal without the high risk associated with exact-match anchors.  

• UK-Based Example: A link to the same plumbing page with the anchor “plumbing services in the birmingham area”.
• Role & Risk: Partial-match anchors offer a good balance of medium power and medium risk. They are a much safer way to build topical relevance while maintaining a natural tone.

4. Naked URL Anchor Text

This is when the raw URL of the destination page is used as the anchor text itself. This type of anchor is very common in citations, forum signatures, and source lists.  

• UK-Based Example: A link that appears as “www.abcplumbing.co.uk”.
• Role & Risk: Naked URLs are low-risk and provide moderate value. They look very natural and are an essential part of a diverse link profile.

5. Generic Anchor Text

This type of anchor uses a non-descriptive, often action-oriented phrase. It provides no direct keyword context to search engines but is a natural part of how people link on the web.  

• UK-Based Example: A link using phrases like “click here,” “read more,” or “visit their website”.
• Role & Risk: Generic anchors are low-risk but also have very low direct SEO value, as they offer no topical clues. However, their presence is vital for making a link profile appear authentic.

To help you quickly reference these categories, the following table summarises their definitions, examples, and strategic value.

Anchor Text Type	Definition	UK-Based Example	Power & Risk Level
Branded	Uses your brand or company name.	“ABC Plumbing”	Low Risk / High Value: Builds brand authority and is the cornerstone of a natural profile.
Exact-Match	The precise keyword you want to rank for.	“plumbers in birmingham”	High Risk / High Power: Very strong signal to Google, but extremely easy to over-optimize. Use sparingly (
Partial-Match	A variation of your keyword, often in a phrase.	“plumbing services in the birmingham area”	Medium Risk / Medium Power: A safer way to send keyword signals while maintaining natural language.
Naked URL	The raw URL is used as the link.	“www.abcplumbing.co.uk”	Low Risk / Medium Value: Looks very natural, common in citations and forum posts.
Generic	A non-descriptive, often action-oriented phrase.	“click here” or “read more on their website”	Low Risk / Low SEO Value: Provides no keyword context but is a natural part of any link profile.

The Penguin in the Room: Avoiding the Perils of Over-Optimization

To truly grasp modern anchor text best practices, it is vital to understand a pivotal moment in SEO history: the launch of the Google Penguin algorithm in 2012. Before Penguin, many SEO strategies revolved around acquiring as many links as possible with exact-match anchor text. The logic was simple: if you wanted to rank for “cheap holidays in Spain,” you would build hundreds of links with that exact anchor. For a time, this highly manipulative tactic worked.  

The Penguin update was Google’s direct response to this widespread manipulation. It was an algorithmic filter designed specifically to identify and penalise websites with unnatural backlink profiles, particularly those with a high percentage of over-optimized, exact-match anchor text. Overnight, websites that had been at the top of the search results vanished, and the SEO industry was forced to change its approach fundamentally. Today, Penguin is not a periodic filter but is part of Google’s core, real-time algorithm. This means its analysis of your link profile is constant and ongoing; there is no hiding from it.  

The single most important lesson from the Penguin era is that your anchor text profile must look natural. To make this concept intuitive, consider the “How People Would Recommend a Restaurant Analogy.”

Imagine your favourite independent cafe in Birmingham is called ‘The Daily Grind’. How would people in the real world recommend it to a friend?

• Most would say, ‘You should go to The Daily Grind.’ (This is a Branded Anchor).
• Some might text the website address: ‘www.dailygrindbirmingham.co.uk‘ (This is a Naked URL).
• A local food blogger might write, ‘…one of the best spots for coffee in the Jewellery Quarter…’ (This is a Partial-Match Anchor).
• A friend sending a quick message might say, ‘check out this place.’ (This is a Generic Anchor).
• Almost nobody would ever say, ‘You should visit this Birmingham city centre artisan coffee shop.’ (This is an Exact-Match Anchor).

A natural anchor text profile mirrors how real people talk, write, and make recommendations. An over-optimized profile, filled with robotic, keyword-stuffed phrases, looks deeply suspicious to Google’s sophisticated algorithms.

This is not just a best practice; it is a direct reflection of Google’s official guidelines. As Google’s own documentation warns, activities like “large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links” can be considered a manipulative link scheme and a violation of their policies. This explicit warning underscores the danger of pursuing an aggressive, unnatural anchor text strategy.  

The shift initiated by Penguin had a profound, secondary effect: it forced the SEO industry to evolve from a purely technical discipline to one that must incorporate principles of branding and public relations. Since the most natural and safest links are branded, the most effective long-term SEO strategy became building a brand that people genuinely want to talk about and link to by name. This aligns SEO with core business principles, empowering business owners to see that activities they are already engaged in—like providing excellent service and building a strong reputation—are also powerful SEO activities. A strong brand naturally generates the kind of trustworthy link profile that thrives in a post-Penguin world.

The Golden Rule: Building a Natural and Diverse Link Profile

The golden rule of modern anchor text strategy is to cultivate a profile that is natural and diverse. The goal is not to hit a magic formula but to create a distribution of anchor text types that reflects organic linking patterns. While every website’s “ideal” profile will vary based on its industry, age, and authority, a safe and healthy target distribution for a typical business website can be visualized as follows.

Visualisation: A pie chart titled “A Healthy Anchor Text Profile (Guideline)” would be presented here, with the following breakdown:

• Branded: ~50%
• Partial-Match & Naked URL: ~30%
• Generic: ~15%
• Exact-Match: ~5% or less

This distribution serves as a crucial guideline, not a rigid, unchangeable formula. The ultimate objective is to avoid any single anchor text type—especially exact-match—from dominating your profile. A heavy concentration of branded anchors is a strong sign of a healthy, authoritative brand. A balanced mix of partial-match, naked URL, and generic anchors mimics the varied ways in which people naturally share links online. The extremely small allocation for exact-match anchors reflects their high-risk, high-power nature; they should be treated as a rare and potent tool, not a standard practice.  

Furthermore, a sophisticated understanding of a natural profile acknowledges that the ideal distribution is contextual and evolves based on the type of page being linked to.

• Homepage Profile: The anchor text profile for your homepage should be overwhelmingly branded. People naturally link to a company’s main page using its name or URL. For a homepage, it would not be unusual for branded and naked URL anchors to account for 80% or more of its total links.  
• Blog Post/Resource Profile: An in-depth article or guide is typically linked to because of the specific information it contains. Therefore, it will naturally attract a higher percentage of descriptive, topic-related, and partial-match anchors. For example, a guide to “UK Corporation Tax” might attract anchors like “this guide to corporation tax,” “understanding business taxes in the UK,” or “how corporation tax is calculated.”
• Commercial/Service Page Profile: These “money pages” are often the most tempting to target with exact-match anchors. However, this is precisely where Google’s algorithms are most sensitive to manipulation. While some partial-match anchors are acceptable, these pages should still have a strong foundation of branded and URL anchors to appear trustworthy and avoid triggering spam filters.

By understanding this context, you can move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and make more nuanced, strategic decisions for different sections of your website. The key is to constantly ask: “How would someone link to this page naturally if they found it valuable?” The answer to that question is your best guide.

Your Action Plan: Anchor Text Best Practices for October 2025

With a solid understanding of the principles, here is a scannable checklist of actionable best practices to guide your anchor text strategy moving forward.

• DO keep your anchor text relevant and concise. The anchor should accurately describe the content of the linked page in as few words as possible. This is beneficial for both user experience and search engine comprehension.  
• DO prioritise Branded and Partial-Match anchors. For external links pointing to your site, these should form the backbone of your strategy. They offer the best balance of safety, brand building, and topical relevance.  
• DON’T use your main commercial “money” keyword as an exact-match anchor over and over. This is the single most dangerous mistake you can make. An overabundance of exact-match anchors is the clearest possible signal of a manipulative link building campaign and is likely to attract a penalty.  
• DO use more descriptive, keyword-rich anchors for your internal links. This is a critical distinction. For links that connect pages within your own website, you have full control and there is very little risk. Using descriptive, keyword-rich anchors for internal links is a powerful and safe way to help Google understand your site’s structure, the relationship between your pages, and the topical hierarchy of your content. For example, on a page about loft conversions, an internal link to a blog post using the anchor “planning permission for loft conversions” is an excellent practice.  
• DON’T acquire dozens of links with the exact same anchor text in a short period. This velocity of identical anchors is a highly unnatural pattern. Organic linking happens over time and with variation. A sudden spike in identical anchors is a major red flag for Google’s spam detection systems.  
• DO pay attention to the surrounding text (co-occurrence). Google’s algorithms have become incredibly sophisticated at understanding context. The words and phrases that appear around your anchor text also provide strong relevance signals. For instance, if a generic anchor like “this company” is surrounded by text discussing “emergency boiler repair in Leeds,” Google can associate your brand with that service and location. This is a powerful, safe, and advanced way to build topical relevance without resorting to risky, keyword-stuffed anchors.  

Conclusion and Your First Step

Anchor text is a powerful tool in your SEO arsenal, but it requires a delicate touch. The era of manipulating search rankings with repetitive, keyword-stuffed anchors is long over. Today, your goal is not to game the system, but to build a natural, diverse, and helpful link profile that signals trust to both users and Google. By prioritising branded links, embracing variation, and thinking like a user, you can create a sustainable strategy that supports long-term growth and protects your site from penalties.

The first step to a better strategy is simply being aware of your current profile.

Your Action: Use a free backlink checker tool to look at the links pointing to your homepage. Take a quick look at the top 10 anchor texts. What do you see? Is it a healthy mix of your brand name and other variations, or is it dominated by a single, aggressive keyword? This simple act of analysis is the first, most crucial step toward taking control of your anchor text narrative and building a safer, more effective link profile for the future. By focusing on creating a great brand that earns natural endorsements, you will find that the “correct” anchor text profile will largely take care of itself, aligning your SEO efforts directly with your primary mission: building a successful and reputable business.