Anchor Text

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible, clickable words that form a hyperlink — the text a reader sees and clicks to follow a link — which carries both SEO value (signalling to search engines what the linked page is about) and conversion value (influencing whether a reader clicks the affiliate link).

Anchor Text In Practice

Anchor text affects affiliate income through two distinct mechanisms. The SEO mechanism: the words you use in internal links to your own pages and in external backlinks pointing to your content signal topic relevance to search engines. Exact-match anchor text (linking the words 'Moosend review' to your Moosend review article) is more effective at reinforcing topic relevance than generic anchors ('click here'). The conversion mechanism: the words readers see in your affiliate link affect whether they click. Descriptive, action-oriented anchor text ('see Moosend pricing') outperforms generic text ('learn more') because it tells the reader exactly what they will find after clicking. Manipulative over-optimization of external anchor text — building many backlinks using the same exact-match keyword phrase — is a Google ranking penalty risk. Natural anchor text diversity, with some exact-match, some branded, and some generic, is the appropriate pattern for affiliate site link building.

Example of Anchor Text