Anchor Text: Types, Ratios and What Directories Link With

What is anchor text? Meaning and definition

Define anchor text in one line and it is the part of a link you can read. Link anchor text, hyperlink anchor text and link text are the same thing under three names. Google's link best practices page (last updated 10 December 2025) gives the definition and the reason it matters: “Anchor text (also known as link text) is the visible text of a link. This text tells people and Google something about the page you're linking to.”

Two things follow from that sentence. The words describe the destination, not the page the link sits on: anchor text pointing at you is someone else's summary of your page. And they are read by people first, which is why a link that says where it goes gets clicked by the readers who want that page.

Anchor text HTML: the code behind a link

In HTML a link is an <a> element. MDN, Mozilla's reference for web developers, describes it as the element that, with its href attribute, “creates a hyperlink to web pages, files, email addresses, locations in the same page, or anything else a URL can address”. The anchor text code is the content between the opening and the closing tag:

The same element carries every kind of anchor. When there are no words inside it, as on a logo, Google uses the image instead: “For images as links, Google uses the alt attribute of the img element as anchor text”. A link can also carry a rel attribute that tells search engines how to treat it; the values and the HTML for each are in our dofollow vs nofollow guide.

An example of anchor text in a link

Take the sentence “Acme Notes publishes its pricing on one page” with a link on the words “its pricing”. Read alone, those two words already say where the click leads, which is the test Google suggests: “Try reading only the anchor text (out of context) and check if it's specific enough to make sense by itself.” Put the link on “publishes” instead and the anchor text example fails it, though the link and the address are the same.

Anchor text in SEO: what Google says

Google's page opens with why links matter at all: “Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl.” Anchor text is part of how it reads a link, and its test for a good one is short: “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it's on and to the page it links to.” Under the label “Bad (too generic)” it lists links written into running text on the words “Click here”, “Read more” and “website”.

It also says the anchor is not read alone: “the words before and after links matter, so pay attention to the sentence as a whole”. That matters for links you do not write. A link from someone else's page carries their words and their sentence, and it is one of the off-page signals covered in our guide to off-page SEO. The page gives no weight and no ratio for anchor text. The numbers that circulate come from SEO practitioners and studies, and Ahrefs' study is set out under the ratio heading below.

Types of anchor text, with an example of each

SEO guides sort anchor text types by who chose the words and how much of a keyword they carry. Seven names are in common use.

Exact match and partial match anchor text

Exact match anchor text is the target keyword and nothing else; partial match anchor text puts it inside a longer phrase or uses a variant of it. Both say the most about the page, and both need someone to pick a keyword for the link: the directory listings in the census below carry a name, an address or a button instead. Google's link best practices page warns against cramming keywords into anchors (more under over-optimized anchor text below).

Branded anchor text, naked URLs and generic anchors

Branded anchor text, the naked URL and generic anchor text are what a link gets when nobody picked a keyword for it. Moz's guide to anchor text opens its list of types with the brand: “Anchor text is usually a brand name.” Of that pattern it adds: “This is a natural and expected landscape of a backlink profile.” On directory listings the order changes, and the census below shows by how much.

Anchor text for backlinks: what 48 directories link with

A directory listing is a backlink whose anchor you do not write. To see what it says instead, we took every fourth of the 189 directories and launch platforms on our submission list, from DR 91 at the top of the list to its last rows, opened two listings on each and noted every link from the listing to the product it lists: 204 links on 96 listings.

The button wins: 33 of the 48 directories link a listing with a generic label, and on 15 of them it is the one kind of link the listing carries. The URL (17 directories) and the name (15) come next; 8 link a logo or screenshot and 3 an icon with no words. A listing linked the product a median of 2 times and at most 7; one of the 96 carried no link to it at all.

The reason is the template. A directory builds the link from the fields it stores, the name and the address, plus a button label chosen once for every listing, so 40 of the 48 put the same kinds of anchor on both listings we opened. The exception is Hacker News, where the title the poster types becomes the link text. Counting every link whose words or alt text carry the product, its name, its address or a logo named for it, 90 of the 204 (44%) do.

Where the anchor points is a second question. Two of the 48 send a listing's button through a path on their own domain first, so the words sit on a link to the directory and a redirect carries the reader on. AppRater, an app archive we submit to, does the same on a free listing with a /visit/ path, and its promotion, $35 every 3 months, adds a direct link “with no redirect in between”. The rel and what else a directory link must pass besides its words are in the four tests for directory backlinks.

Anchor text ratio and distribution: what the numbers say

Google gives no anchor text ratio. The common figure is a practitioners' rule of thumb, which Ahrefs' guide to anchor text (updated 3 April 2020) reports: “Most SEOs now seem to recommend using exact-match anchor text sparingly”, “usually between ~1% and 5%”. The same guide then tested the idea on the anchors of backlinks to 384,614 pages, the top 20 results for 19,840 keywords. Its data scientist's reading: “The fact that the median across all positions is zero means there are lots of pages with no exact-match backlinks.” The result for exact-match anchors: “there’s a relatively weak correlation between the percentage of exact-match anchored links and rankings”.

Its conclusion is the useful part for anyone planning an anchor text distribution: “You have no control over the anchor text used with almost all legitimate white-hat link building strategies.” and “Don’t try to manipulate your anchor text ratios at all.” A ratio is what a profile looks like when nobody steers it, not a target to build towards.

Directory links arrive with their ratio already set. If every backlink you had came from the 48 directories above, the mix would be 48% generic buttons, 22% URLs, 16% product names and 8% images, the rest being icons and phrases such as a Hacker News title or a label on a pricing link. That is the shape of a listing profile, and it sits beside the links people write about you, which Moz expects to carry your brand.

Over-optimized anchor text: when keywords are forced

Over-optimized anchor text is a keyword pushed into links more often than anyone would write it unprompted. Google's link best practices page puts the limit in its advice to anyone writing a link, and ties it to its spam policies in the same breath: “Write as naturally as possible, and resist the urge to cram every keyword that's related to the page that you're linking to (remember, keyword stuffing is a violation of our spam policies).” The check it offers is a feeling you can test against your own draft: “If it feels like you're forcing keywords into the anchor text, then it's probably too much.”

In a backlink report it shows as one commercial phrase repeated word for word across many sites that share nothing else, where links people chose for themselves would mostly carry a name, an address or a button. Google's list of link spam examples is worked through in our white hat link building post, and its line about directory links is answered in our post on web directories. If the stuffed anchors sit on links somebody else built, the disavow guide covers when Google's tool is worth using.

Anchor text best practices and optimization

1. On your own pages, name the destination. Internal links are the anchor text you fully control: “pricing”, “the changelog”, the title of the post you point to.
2. Give every linked image an alt text. Google reads it as the anchor; an empty alt on a linked logo leaves the link with no words.
3. Ask for your name or your address. When someone offers a link, those are the anchors that read as theirs. A keyword phrase you dictate reads as yours.
4. On listings, work on the words around the link. The directory writes the anchor; you supply the name it prints and the description under it, the sentence Google says matters. Ours are drafted per directory, and our product description examples show the lengths they take.
5. Read the anchor before the rel. Then check the link: followed or not, pointing at your domain, on a page that can be indexed. A site's strength is a separate question, our free DR checker answers it in one lookup, and our guide to high quality backlinks puts the anchor among six other markers.

Anchor text optimization, done this way, is mostly editing your own site and choosing where you are listed. A link you did not write is optimized by being on the right page, under your own name.

Where Submitator fits: the words around the link

Submitator does the directory part of a link profile for you, and the census shows which part of a listing is yours to shape. The directory decides the anchor. What reaches each one from us is the listing around it: a description written for that directory alone, to its own length limits, and every form field filled in on our side, with any CAPTCHA on the way handled by us, so none reaches you.

You choose which directories get your product, with the Domain Rating of each beside its name in the dashboard, out of the 189 startup directories we submit to: 76 launch platforms and startup directories, 59 filed under SaaS and software and 54 under AI tools. A directory makes that list once one of our submissions there has run from the first step to the last. Badge directories share one component, placed on your site a single time, which shows the badge each of them asks for; from there we keep every badge live, and you never commit code per directory.

Each plan is paid once. Starter: 30 directories at $29. Growth: 60 at $49. Scale: 100 at $79. All Directories, $149, covers the catalog as it stands plus every directory added after. Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours and every directory within 21 days at most. A rejection, by default, hands you one more directory to pick in its place (All Directories excluded, as it already holds them all). A refund can be requested within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions in our terms.

We also push your listing pages through IndexMachine; Starter, Growth and Scale each include that free indexing, a $25 value, and you connect nothing for it. Whether a page gets indexed stays Google's call. 580+ startups have gone through Submitator so far, and how the submissions we filed between July and November ended up is counted in our submission statistics. No ads, no outreach: Submitator is the listing layer, paid once.