Anchor text is the visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. In the sentence "read our guide to backlinks," the words "guide to backlinks" are the anchor text. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it carries meaning beyond the link itself. It is one of the oldest relevance signals on the web and still one of the most direct.

What are the types of anchor text?

Five categories cover almost everything. Branded uses your company name. Exact match is the precise keyword you want to rank for. Partial match is a longer phrase containing that keyword. Generic is filler like click here or read more. Naked is the raw URL itself. A healthy profile contains all five, weighted heavily toward branded and naked.

What is exact match anchor text?

Exact match anchor text is a link whose clickable words are precisely the keyword you are targeting, such as a link reading "competitor backlink checker" pointing at a page about competitor backlink checkers. It is the most powerful type and the most dangerous, because real people rarely link that way naturally. A profile heavy in exact match is the clearest signal that links were built rather than earned.

What is a good anchor text ratio?

There is no published ratio and anyone quoting exact percentages is guessing. What is observable is the shape of profiles that look natural, which are dominated by branded and naked anchors, contain a good share of generic and partial ones, and include exact match only occasionally. Rather than chasing a number, compare your distribution to two or three competitors who rank well and are not being penalised.

Can anchor text hurt your rankings?

It can, though the mechanism is narrower than most people fear. The problem is not any single anchor but an unnatural pattern across the whole profile, specifically a high concentration of exact match commercial keywords. Google's Penguin work targeted exactly this. Ordinary sites earning links normally will never trip it, because nobody writing about you naturally picks your target keyword every time.

How do I check the anchor text of my backlinks?

Three ways. Google Search Console shows top linking text under Links for a property you own. Any backlink tool that reports per-link data lists the anchor beside each link. For a single page, viewing the source and finding the link shows the exact wording. For competitors you need a tool with per-link data, since Search Console only ever covers sites you have verified.

Backlinks 101

Anchor text, explained (and how to get the mix right)

Anchor text is the clickable words in a link, and it tells search engines what the page behind it is about. Here are the five types, what a natural mix actually looks like, why chasing a perfect ratio backfires, and how to check yours.

Brad Williams·Updated Jul 2026·5 min read

Anchor text is the clickable words in a link. In the sentence "read our guide to backlinks," the words guide to backlinks are the anchor text.

It matters because search engines read those words as a description of the page on the other end. A link is a vote, and the anchor text is the label on the vote. That makes it one of the oldest relevance signals on the web, and one of the few where the wording chosen by someone else tells Google what your page is about.

Why it carries so much weight

The logic is the same as the logic behind links generally. You write your own page titles, so those are cheap to optimise. You do not write the anchor text on someone else's site, so when a dozen unrelated people all describe your page with similar words, that agreement is evidence.

Which is exactly why it became a target for manipulation, and why it now cuts both ways. Anchor text remains a strong signal, and an obviously engineered anchor profile is one of the clearest patterns Google's spam systems look for.

The five types

Every anchor falls into roughly one of these. The categories below are the same ones our own reports use when breaking down a profile.

Type	Example (for a shoe shop)	What it signals
Branded	Sole Society	A real mention of a real company
Naked	solesociety.com	A citation, usually unedited
Generic	click here, read more	Nothing about the topic
Partial match	the best running shoes for flat feet	Topical relevance, naturally worded
Exact match	running shoes	Precisely the target keyword

Branded and naked dominate a normal profile, because that is how people actually write. They mention your name, or they paste your URL.

Generic anchors carry no topical signal, but they are completely normal and every real profile has plenty.

Partial match is the sweet spot: relevant, descriptive, and phrased the way a human would write it.

Exact match is the most powerful and the most dangerous. It works, which is why people abuse it, which is why a lot of it looks like abuse.

The tell that gives it away

Real people are inconsistent. Ten writers linking to the same page will produce ten different phrasings, most of them clumsy. Ten links that all say exactly "running shoes" did not happen by accident, and that uniformity is the pattern, not the individual anchor.

What a natural mix actually looks like

Here is the honest answer: Google has never published a ratio, and anyone quoting exact percentages made them up. The numbers you see in blog posts are reverse-engineered from small samples and repeated until they sound official.

What you can observe is the shape. Profiles that look natural tend to be:

Dominated by branded and naked anchors, together forming the clear majority.
Well supplied with generic anchors, because most links are casual.
Carrying a meaningful share of partial match, phrased variously.
Containing exact match only occasionally, and rarely repeated verbatim.

Stop trying to hit a ratio. Look at the shape of a profile that already ranks in your niche, and notice how much messier it is than the one you were about to build.

The practical method is comparative, not absolute. Pull the anchor distribution for two or three competitors who rank well and are clearly not being penalised. That is your benchmark, and it is specific to your niche in a way that a generic percentage never is.

The real risk, stated proportionally

Anchor text over-optimisation is real, and it is also the thing people worry about far out of proportion to how often it happens.

The mechanism is not a single bad anchor. It is a pattern across the profile: a high concentration of commercial exact match anchors, usually arriving quickly, usually from sites with no other reason to link to you. That combination is what Google's Penguin work was built to catch.

If you are earning links normally, you will never come close, because you do not control what other people write and they will not all pick your target keyword. The risk concentrates almost entirely in profiles where someone specified the anchor text, which in practice means bought links and large-scale guest posting. This is one of several reasons buying links tends to disappoint.

If you do get to choose

Occasionally someone will ask you what to link. Resist naming your keyword. Give them your brand name, or a natural phrase describing the page. The link is worth more when it looks like nobody negotiated it.

How to check your anchor text

Three routes, depending on whose links you are looking at:

Google Search Console, under Links, then Top linking text. Free, authoritative, and limited to properties you have verified. Excellent for your own site, useless for competitors.
A backlink tool with per-link data. Anchor text is a property of an individual link rather than of a referring domain, so a tool has to report link-level detail to show it. Ours does this in the full competitor analysis, which breaks a profile into the five categories above. The free checker works at the referring-domain level, so it shows authority and follow status but not anchors.
View the page source. For one specific link, find the <a> tag and read the text between the tags. Slow, but exact, and it also shows you whether the link is nofollow.

What to actually do about it

For most sites, the whole of anchor text strategy is three lines:

Do not specify anchors when you can avoid it. Natural variety is worth more than any keyword you would have picked.
Check the shape once or twice a year, and compare it to competitors rather than to a rule.
Investigate sudden change, particularly a cluster of exact match anchors you did not build. That is one of the few genuine negative SEO signals, and it is visible only if you look.

Anchor text is worth understanding and not worth obsessing over. Get the links from places that count, let people describe you in their own words, and the distribution mostly takes care of itself.

Frequently asked questions

What is anchor text?: Anchor text is the visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. In the sentence "read our guide to backlinks," the words "guide to backlinks" are the anchor text. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it carries meaning beyond the link itself. It is one of the oldest relevance signals on the web and still one of the most direct.
What are the types of anchor text?: Five categories cover almost everything. Branded uses your company name. Exact match is the precise keyword you want to rank for. Partial match is a longer phrase containing that keyword. Generic is filler like click here or read more. Naked is the raw URL itself. A healthy profile contains all five, weighted heavily toward branded and naked.
What is exact match anchor text?: Exact match anchor text is a link whose clickable words are precisely the keyword you are targeting, such as a link reading "competitor backlink checker" pointing at a page about competitor backlink checkers. It is the most powerful type and the most dangerous, because real people rarely link that way naturally. A profile heavy in exact match is the clearest signal that links were built rather than earned.
What is a good anchor text ratio?: There is no published ratio and anyone quoting exact percentages is guessing. What is observable is the shape of profiles that look natural, which are dominated by branded and naked anchors, contain a good share of generic and partial ones, and include exact match only occasionally. Rather than chasing a number, compare your distribution to two or three competitors who rank well and are not being penalised.
Can anchor text hurt your rankings?: It can, though the mechanism is narrower than most people fear. The problem is not any single anchor but an unnatural pattern across the whole profile, specifically a high concentration of exact match commercial keywords. Google's Penguin work targeted exactly this. Ordinary sites earning links normally will never trip it, because nobody writing about you naturally picks your target keyword every time.
How do I check the anchor text of my backlinks?: Three ways. Google Search Console shows top linking text under Links for a property you own. Any backlink tool that reports per-link data lists the anchor beside each link. For a single page, viewing the source and finding the link shows the exact wording. For competitors you need a tool with per-link data, since Search Console only ever covers sites you have verified.

Keep reading

What is a backlink?

The wider concept anchor text sits inside.

Types of backlinks, with examples

The link categories that tend to produce each anchor type.

Dofollow vs nofollow backlinks

The other attribute that decides what a link passes.

How to analyze a competitor's backlink profile

Read a rival's anchor mix as part of the wider picture.

← All guides

Anchor text, explained (and how to get the mix right)

Why it carries so much weight

The five types

What a natural mix actually looks like

The real risk, stated proportionally

How to check your anchor text

What to actually do about it

Frequently asked questions

What is anchor text?

What are the types of anchor text?

What is exact match anchor text?

What is a good anchor text ratio?

Can anchor text hurt your rankings?

How do I check the anchor text of my backlinks?

Keep reading

Why it carries so much weight

The five types

What a natural mix actually looks like

The real risk, stated proportionally

How to check your anchor text

What to actually do about it