LINKS · SEO GLOSSARY

Anchor Text

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink — a relevance signal that tells search engines what the linked page is about.

Definition

Anchor text is the visible text that a user clicks to follow a hyperlink (e.g., the words "free SEO audit" in a link). Search engines read anchor text as a signal about the topic and relevance of the linked page — it is one of the ways a page accumulates topical authority for a keyword it might not rank for directly. Over-optimized anchor text (every backlink using the exact target keyword as anchor) is a spam signal; natural anchor text profiles mix branded, generic, URL, and partial-match variations.

Why it matters for SEO

For internal links, descriptive anchor text is a direct relevance signal — linking to your pricing page with the text "see pricing" is weaker than "compare Pro and Agency plans." For external links, a diverse and natural anchor text profile matters: a site that receives only exact-match keyword anchors from every linking domain looks unnatural and may attract a manual action. The audit surface helps you find generic internal anchors ("click here", "read more") that could be improved.

How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this

The audit analyzes anchor text on internal links across all crawled pages. It flags generic anchors ("here", "click", "read more", "link") as info-level issues — these are missed opportunities to add semantic signal to your link graph. It also flags empty anchors (image links with no alt text and no anchor text) as warnings since they contribute nothing to on-page relevance.