Anchor Text Guide

Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. Good anchor choices describe the destination naturally without turning every link into an exact-match keyword signal.

Key points

• Brand anchors
• URL anchors
• Descriptive anchors
• Partial-match anchors
• Generic anchors
• Image alt text when linked

Use several signals together

A strong evaluation combines relevance, editorial quality, visibility, placement context and the purpose of the link.

Inspect the real page

Third-party metrics summarize aspects of a site; they cannot replace looking at the page where the link will appear.

Apply the same checks when buying

Marketplace listings are starting points. The underlying publisher should still pass the same quality review.

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