Anchor Text and Anchor Text Lists Explained
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. To a search engine it is a short, third-party description of the page being linked to, so anchors affect both how the topic is understood and how risky your link profile looks. A separate and often underrated type is naked and generic anchors: links that contain no keywords at all. Below: the types of anchor text, the role of keyword-free anchors in a natural profile, and a step-by-step guide to building an anchor text list.
Types of anchor text
| Type | Example | Role in the profile |
|---|---|---|
| Branded | Company name or domain | The backbone of a natural profile |
| Naked / generic | "here", "website", "learn more", the bare URL | Dilution, natural look |
| Topical (broad) | "link building service" | A topical signal without over-optimization |
| Partial match | "how tiered backlinks work" | The keyword inside a natural phrase |
| Exact match (commercial) | "buy tiered backlinks cheap" | Direct impact and the main source of risk |
| Image | Text in the alt attribute | Works like the anchor of a text link |
What are naked and generic anchors?
A keyword-free link (a naked URL or generic anchor) is a link whose text does not describe the page's topic and contains no target keywords. A search engine learns only that the page is being linked to, not what it is about. This is how real people mostly link: on a forum, in a comment, in an article where the author pasted the source URL.
Examples of naked and generic anchors
- Naked URL:
https://example.com/catalog/or justexample.com. - Filler words: "here", "this", "at this link", "learn more", "read more", "source".
- Generic nouns: "website", "on their site", "this service", "their blog", "article".
- An image without alt text. An image link with an empty alt attribute carries no text for the search engine either.
The line between a naked and a branded anchor is blurry: example.com is both an address and a brand. In practice it can go into either group; what matters is that it contains no commercial keyword.
Why keyword-free links belong in your profile
- Natural look. People do not create profiles where every link contains a keyword — only artificial link building looks like that. Naked and generic anchors make the picture look normal.
- Lower risk. The larger the share of neutral anchors, the smaller the share of exact-match commercial ones — and those are what trigger penalties for link manipulation (see Google penalties for links).
- Link equity still flows. A keyword-free link passes authority just like any other, and the search engine learns the page's topic from its own content and the text around the link.
The one downside: such an anchor does not boost the page's relevance for a specific query. So a profile made only of bare URLs is also skewed — just less dangerously.
How to make a generic anchor more useful
Google's link guidelines say outright that the words before and after a link matter too — that is, the sentence as a whole. So a generic link inside a topical sentence ("a detailed breakdown of renovation prices is here") is more useful than the same "here" in a list of random URLs. When you place a link with a neutral anchor, make sure the page's topic is clear from the surrounding text.
What share of anchors should be keyword-free?
Google publishes no official ratios, and any "perfect percentages" you find online are observations by individual SEOs, not rules. A practical approach: branded anchors and bare URLs together form the largest group; generic words like "here" and "website" are a noticeable share; exact-match commercial anchors make up no more than 20–30% of all links to the page, and even less for a young domain. The best benchmark is the link profiles of the sites ranking at the top of your niche: look at how people link to them.
Anchor text list: how to build one
An anchor text list (anchor list) is a set of link text variations that rotate across placements. It solves two problems: it keeps the profile from becoming monotonous, and it spreads link equity across different phrasings of the query.
- Define the page's target queries. Take 3–5 queries from Search Console that the page already gets impressions for — they are the basis for the topical and commercial variations.
- Review the current profile. If the page already has links, find out which anchors dominate so you do not deepen the imbalance. Search Console has a "Links" report with the top linking text of external links for this; a backlink checker will find some external links and their anchors as well.
- Write variations by type. Brand and domain, 2–3 generic, 2–3 broad topical, several partial-match and 1–2 exact-match commercial.
- Check how each variation reads in a sentence. The anchor should fit the text naturally: "buy sofa chicago cheap" in the middle of an article instantly gives away a paid link.
- Don't repeat the same phrasing. Ten variations that differ by one word will be read by the search engine as one and the same keyword.
- Review the list between waves. After each batch of placements, compare the actual distribution with the planned one and shift the emphasis.
Sample anchor text list for 10 placements
The page is the sofa catalog of a furniture store called "Cozy Nest". The example illustrates the logic, not the "right" ratio:
| Type | Variation |
|---|---|
| Branded | "Cozy Nest", "Cozy Nest furniture store" |
| URL | cozynest.com/sofas/ |
| Generic | "here", "on the store's website" |
| Broad topical | "upholstered furniture catalog" |
| Partial match | "choosing a sofa for your living room", "sectional sofas with delivery" |
| Exact match (commercial) | "buy a sofa in Chicago" |
Common anchor text mistakes
- The same commercial anchor in every placement. The most visible footprint of artificial link building — even if the sites themselves are good.
- Dropping keywords entirely. A profile of nothing but "here" and bare URLs is safe, but gives the page no topical signal. You still need a share of topical and partial-match anchors.
- The anchor doesn't match the page. A "renovation prices" link leads to a homepage with no prices on it. The anchor should describe the exact page it points to.
- Ignoring existing links. If exact-match keywords already dominate the profile, new placements should lean mostly on branded and generic variations.
- One list for every page. Each promoted page has its own queries, so it needs its own anchor text list.
How to check your anchor text distribution
Sort the links you know about into the types from the table above and calculate the shares. If exact-match commercial anchors are well above the guideline, build the next placements on brand, URL and generic phrasing — that evens out the imbalance without removing old links. Check the distribution page by page: the domain's profile as a whole may look fine while a specific page is saturated with a single keyword.
Anchor text lists in PromoPilot
In the platform, the anchor list is set in the link settings: enter variations separated by commas, semicolons or line breaks, and the system rotates them across publications. That means you cannot use a comma inside an anchor — it would split it into two variations. What this looks like in the interface and how to add content wishes for the articles is covered in "Anchors and wishes", and a detailed plan by type is in the article on the anchor plan.
Internal anchors
The same rule applies inside your site: a "read more" link tells search engines nothing, while a link with the topic name does. Here the situation is the opposite of your external profile: generic internal links are a missed opportunity, while descriptive wording in menus and internal links carries almost no risk. The link analyzer shows the split of internal and external anchors on any page.
What a natural anchor profile looks like
For a site nobody has deliberately promoted, anchors look messy: the company name, a bare URL, "here", a fragment of an article headline, sometimes a word that has nothing to do with the topic. That messiness is the norm. A perfectly polished list of ten commercial phrases looks more suspicious than a set with some "noise" in it — and that is exactly the kind of set worth reproducing.