Why it matters to a buyer
Vague anchor text like "read more" or a bare URL wastes a signal that could have told a search engine, and a reader scanning the page, exactly what to expect on the other end. For a buyer, anchor text is a cheap thing to get right internally and a hard thing to control externally: a site controls the words used in its own internal links, but it cannot force other sites linking to it to use natural phrasing, and links stuffed with exact-match keywords look manipulative to both readers and search engines.
How it is measured or applied
Internal links are written with descriptive, varied phrases that match what the destination page is actually about, avoiding the same exact phrase on every link to one page. For links coming from other sites, the guidance is to let anchor text vary naturally, since real writers describe a link differently each time, and a backlink profile where most links use one exact commercial phrase is treated as a spam signal. Anchor text is reviewed with a site crawl for internal links and a backlink tool's anchor text report for external ones, checking the mix looks organic rather than templated.
Sources
- Qualify your outbound links to Google, Google Search Central
