Anchor Text and How to Write a Link

What anchor text tells an engine

When a page links to another with the words emergency drain clearing, that is a statement about the destination. Repeated across a site, those statements build a picture of what each page is for.

It works both within your site and from external sites, and the mechanism is the same: the linking page is describing the destination in a few words.

The practical difference is control. You cannot dictate how other sites describe you. You write every internal link on your own site, which makes them the version worth getting right.

What internal links actually do

Three things at once, which is why they are worth more attention than they get.

• They tell engines what the destination covers, through the anchor text.
• They indicate which pages matter, since a page linked from several others reads as more important than one linked from nowhere.
• They create the route by which a page is discovered in the first place.

A page linked from nothing is treated as unimportant regardless of how good it is, which is why publishing without linking is the most common reason a well-written page never appears.

Writing them

Describe the destination in the words a customer would use, inside a sentence that reads naturally.

The test is whether the anchor text alone tells you where the link goes. Our drain clearing service passes. Read more does not. Click here does not. The full address does not.

This is the same rule that makes links usable for people navigating by link list, which is why the accessible version and the effective version coincide, as covered in writing link text that makes sense alone.

Varying the wording

Different pages should link to the same destination using different phrasings, not the identical phrase every time.

Partly because identical repetition reads as mechanical, and partly because varied phrasing covers the range of ways customers describe the same thing. Drain clearing, blocked drains, and drain unblocking are the same service and different searches.

Varying naturally, because each linking page is written about a different subject, produces better coverage than deciding on one phrase and using it everywhere.

Where over-optimisation starts

Worth being clear about, since this area attracts overcautious advice.

Writing descriptive internal links is not over-optimisation. It is what the mechanism exists for.

What is a problem is forcing the exact target phrase into every link regardless of context, producing sentences written for a machine rather than a reader. That is visible as awkwardness before it is anything else, and the reliable test is whether the sentence reads naturally to a person.

Where anchor text genuinely matters as a risk is with external links you influence, such as directory listings and partner sites, where an unnatural pattern of identical commercial phrases pointing at one page is a different situation from your own internal writing.

Practical rules for a small site

• Link where it is genuinely useful, not to hit a number. A link nobody would follow adds nothing.
• Two to five internal links in a page of a thousand words is a reasonable density for a business site.
• Link from established pages to new ones, which is how a new page gets found quickly.
• Link deep rather than at the homepage. Everything already links to the homepage.
• Do not link the same phrase twice in one page to two different destinations, which is confusing to both readers and engines.

The links you already have

Most sites carry a set of poor anchors accumulated over years: read more buttons under summaries, learn more under service tiles, and view details on cards.

Those are template elements rather than written links, and changing them once in the template changes them everywhere. Read more becomes read about gutter cleaning, and every card on the site starts describing its destination.

That single template change is usually the largest available improvement to internal anchor text on a small business site, and it takes one edit rather than a hundred.

External links, briefly

Where you can influence how another site describes you, such as a directory listing or a supplier page, a description using your service and location is better than your business name alone.

Where you cannot, which is most of the time, it does not matter. Links from genuine sources arrive described however that source chose, and that variety is what natural link patterns look like.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.