The anchor text is the clickable part of a hyperlink otherwise know as a text link. For example this is an example of a hyperlink: iMPACT Web Design. Within the above example the anchor text of the hyperlink is iMPACT Web Design.

These are two types of anchor texts:
1. Internal anchor text - This is a link from within your website that redirects to another internal page within the website.
2. External anchor text – This is a link from another website pointing to your website.

In both circumstances the anchor text used is based on relevancy. The anchor text should be a description, phrase or group of keywords used that suggests to the visitors what they will see on the target or landing page they will be redirected to by clicking on the hyperlink.

By optimising the anchor text, it will not only help with SEO but also with the usability of a website. If a visitor is able to automatically identify the content of the page they will be redirected to, it will significantly reduce the amount of clicks required for a user to find the content they are seeking.

Search engine algorithms give weight to these anchor texts. A website that optimises the keywords used within anchor texts can expect to receive a higher ranking within the search engines. As you can expect, the anchor texts used is an important tool in the success of the SEO strategy that is implemented. The external anchor text links to your site can product a high search engine ranking with no other SEO techniques implemented. This is the major reason when a request is received for a link to be included on a website from another webmaster, not only is the URL included of the site but also the anchor text that they want it to be linked with.

On an alternative note, the equivalent of the anchor text within a hyperlink is the alt text within an image tag. This is texts that can be viewed while hovering over an image or the text that is displayed is a users has images disabled within browsers (like is possible with the Firefox browser). The alt text of an image is not given as much importance of the anchor text however it gives web developers the opportunity to include additional keywords within a webpage.

In essence, the best practice when looking at the text used within a hyperlink would be to make it keyword rich. In addition the text, it should show relevancy to the page to which it is linking to. For example, a poor use of anchor text for a hyperlink would be click here for SEO Blogs, instead it should be something like SEO Blog or Search Engine Optimisation Blog. There is some evidence that Google do take into consideration the text that is located around the anchor texts, therefore you can be clever by including may keywords within a sentence (within the anchor text and around) are long as the sentence is still readable.