If you have ever clicked on a link with the anchor text “click here” or “read more”, then you must have experienced one of the most common SEO mistakes, which are known as poor anchor text.
Some keywords may seem harmless, but in India’s highly competitive internet industry, they can significantly impact your rankings. It’s now becoming evident that irrespective of its size, every business entity is focusing on the digital platform, and this has increased the significance of even minor SEO aspects in search engine results.
Let’s first define what we’re working with: What Is Anchor Text? Anchor text refers to that clickable part of a hyperlink, which is underlined or styled differently from normal text and takes a person to another web page when clicked upon.
For example, one can say, “Check out our SEO services.” Although it appears negligible on a website or webpage layout level, nonetheless, to search engines, it bears much relevance.
This post will explain why inadequate anchor texts can harm your SEO efforts, discuss the importance of descriptive anchor texts, and share some lessons we picked up while working with various Indian brands on how best to optimise their websites for search engines.
Google and other search engines rely on anchor texts to understand what they can expect to find on linked pages. It’s a signal, just one of several, that helps the crawler determine the relevance of the destination page for certain keywords.
With appropriate execution, an optimised SEO anchor text enhances site ranking chances, while incorrect implementation results in increased trust problems followed by susceptibility risk towards being marked out as spam.
This becomes crucial in markets like India, where there is high online competition and people in different regions have unique preferences regarding content creation. Properly used SEO anchor texts enable search engines to bridge information faster and more accurately than ever before, an edge no company dares to throw away.
Some examples of non-descriptive anchor texts that we will consider are ‘click here’, ‘learn more’, ‘this link’, and ‘read this’, among others. These non-descriptive anchor texts contain phrases that do not communicate anything concerning the linked content.
Although such words could direct people on where to go, search engines find it difficult because they lack something tangible from that direction.
This is an issue for a number of reasons:
To put it simply, non-descriptive anchor text is a waste of potential. It would be like giving someone a book with no title or back cover and expecting them to know what is inside.
Conversely, descriptive anchor text not only augments SEO but also betters UX. It tells visitors and search engines alike about the relevance of your hyperlinks towards similar ranked contents which may appear within SERP for targeted queries or related topics.
For example, instead of writing, to learn more about our audit process, click here.
Say: Learn more about our in-depth SEO audit process.
Do you see how the second option fits in some important keywords? This typology enhances both context and visibility.
Also Read: How to Earn High-Quality Backlinks? Top Strategies You Should Follow
The internet is full of information that is understandable by search engines with respect to a human being. Be that as it may, they still need some clues. If the anchor text provides mixed signals to crawlers due to being too general, unclear or repetitive, then this could be a problem for your rankings.
There are several ways in which bad anchor text can affect your ranking, some of which are highlighted below:
In an environment where there are ten competitors fighting over each keyword, these mistakes could cause you to fall behind without even realising it.
It should be remembered that Indian content plans have to deal with many languages, cultures and user habits. All these increase the need for particular anchor texts.
A case in point is that an online store based in Mumbai might have to optimise both English and Marathi anchors for local SEO purposes. They can take the help of an SEO company in Mumbai to achieve the best results.
Over the years, we at RepIndia have worked with a wide array of Indian brands, ranging from D2C startups to legacy institutions, who came to us with strong content but underwhelming rankings. Often, one of the root causes was a poorly structured internal linking strategy.
We’ve found that refining anchor text alone can make a measurable difference in performance. At RepIndia, we don’t rely on shortcuts. Instead, we evaluate anchor structures through audits, run heatmaps to see user interactions and align anchor text with overall keyword maps.
While it is important to continuously monitor anchor text across a site for best practice optimisation, some places need particular consideration:
With content becoming increasingly competitive across Indian markets, there’s no room to leave SEO gains on the table, especially not because of something so easily overlooked. So, next time you’re updating a blog or adding a new product page, pay close attention to what you’re linking and how you’re framing it.
Anchor text is more than just a clickable phrase; it’s an SEO signal, a UX tool, and a subtle indicator of your brand’s attention to detail.
As always, if you’re revisiting your site’s internal structure or content-linking strategy, start by reviewing your anchors. Think contextually, act deliberately, and aim for clarity, not cleverness. And if you need support from a team that understands how these micro-decisions impact macro-results, we’re here to help.
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