what is anchor text in seo

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It is usually styled differently than other text, often appearing in a different color and underlined. Anchor text should indicate to users what kind of page they’ll be taken to if they click the link. Anchor text is important for SEO because it can help search engines understand what a webpage is about. Good anchor text tells the reader what to expect if they click on the link. There are different types of anchor text, including exact match, partial match, branded, and generic. SEO best practices dictate that anchor text be relevant to the page youre linking to, rather than generic text. Using anchor text as a ranking signal is included in several Google patents. To optimize anchor text for SEO, it should be succinct and relevant to the target page. It is also important to avoid using an excess of exact match anchor text, which can be viewed as a red flag by Google.