Fixing Vague Anchor Text on Internal Links

What anchor text does for an internal link

A link has three parts that carry meaning: the address it points to, the words you click, and the sentence around it. The address tells a crawler where to go but very little about why. The words and their surroundings tell both people and search engines what to expect when they arrive.

Google's own guidance on links asks for anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to the page being linked to. It also says the text around a link helps, and that for a linked image the alt text is treated as the anchor. None of this is special to backlinks: the links between your own pages are read in the same way, and they are the ones you can change today without asking anybody.

For internal links the benefit is practical rather than magical:

• Visitors choose better. "Boiler servicing prices" tells a reader whether the click is worth it; "find out more" does not.
• Search engines get a label for the destination. If twenty of your pages link to your emergency plumbing page and each describes it in its own words, that is a consistent, readable description of what the page is about.
• Links become scannable. People skim for underlined words. A page full of "here" and "more" gives the eye nothing to catch.
• Assistive technology users get sensible link lists. The accessibility side is covered in the link text accessibility guide; this guide stays with how your internal linking reads to search engines and visitors.

Where vague anchors actually come from

When the Internal Link Analysis rates a site's anchor text poorly, the first instinct is to blame the writers. In practice, a few repeated sources produce most of the problem, and they fall into two groups.

Template anchors: written once, repeated everywhere

• Excerpt "Read more" links on blog listings, category archives, search results and "latest posts" widgets. One listing page with twelve cards produces twelve identical anchors to twelve different pages.
• Card buttons such as "View", "Details", "Learn more" or "Shop now" on service grids, product tiles and location cards.
• Promo banners and hero blocks where the whole message is an image and the only text link says "Discover".
• Icon-only links such as an arrow, a chevron or a magnifying glass with no text or alt attribute at all.
• Pagination using "Next", "Previous" and bare numbers. These are expected and usually fine; they are listed here so you do not waste time on them.

Content anchors: written by a person, one at a time

• "Click here" and "here" in paragraphs, often a leftover from copy written for email.
• Bare URLs pasted into the text, such as https://example.co.uk/services/boiler-repair/, which describe the address rather than the page.
• Overlong anchors where a whole sentence has been linked, so the actual subject of the destination is buried among fifteen other words.
• Mislabelled anchors where the wording describes one thing and the link goes somewhere else, often after a page was renamed or merged.

The split matters because the fixes are completely different. A template anchor is fixed once in code and disappears from every page. A content anchor is fixed one sentence at a time, so you prioritise by the value of the page it points to.

Finding and grouping the weak anchors

The Internal Link Analysis rates how descriptive the anchor text is and shows, for each page, the words used in the links pointing at it. Start from the destination, not the source: for each of your most important pages, read the list of anchors it receives. That list tells you how your own site describes the page.

A healthy list for a boiler repair page might read: "boiler repair", "emergency boiler repairs", "repair a combi boiler", "our boiler engineers", "Boiler repair" (from the menu). An unhealthy one reads: "read more", "here", "Learn more", "click here", "Boiler repair" (from the menu). The second page is only described properly by its menu link.

Check a single page in the browser

To see every internal anchor on the page you are viewing, open developer tools, go to the Console and paste this. It lists each internal link with its text, or its image alt text if the link is an image:

[...document.querySelectorAll('a[href]')]
  .filter(a => a.hostname === location.hostname)
  .map(a => ({
    text: (a.innerText || a.querySelector('img')?.alt || a.getAttribute('aria-label') || '(empty)').trim(),
    href: a.pathname
  }))
  .forEach(x => console.log(x.text.padEnd(40), x.href));

Run it on a listing page and a typical article and you will quickly see whether the vague anchors are coming from repeated components or from the writing.

Group by pattern in a spreadsheet

If you export the anchor data, add a column that classifies each anchor: descriptive, generic (read more, learn more, here, click here, view), URL, empty or navigation (menu, breadcrumb and pagination links). Then count generic anchors by the source page type. If almost all of them come from archive and listing pages, one template fix will clear most of the report.

Fixing card and excerpt templates

The most effective single change is to make the card's heading the link, then either remove the separate "Read more" link or make it clearly secondary. The heading already names the destination, so it is the natural anchor.

Plain HTML card

Before, the only link says "Read more":

<article class="card">
  <h3>Winter boiler checklist</h3>
  <p>Six things to check before the cold weather arrives.</p>
  <a href="/advice/winter-boiler-checklist/">Read more</a>
</article>

After, the heading carries the link and the whole card can still be clickable with CSS if your design needs it:

<article class="card">
  <h3><a href="/advice/winter-boiler-checklist/">Winter boiler checklist</a></h3>
  <p>Six things to check before the cold weather arrives.</p>
</article>

WordPress excerpts

Many classic themes append a "Read more" link through the excerpt_more filter. You can change what it says in a child theme or a small plugin so the wording includes the post title:

add_filter( 'excerpt_more', function () {
    return ' <a class="more-link" href="' . esc_url( get_permalink() ) . '">'
        . sprintf( 'Continue reading: %s', esc_html( get_the_title() ) )
        . '</a>';
} );

Block themes build listings with the Query Loop block. There, check that the Post Title block inside the loop has "Make title a link" switched on, and either remove the separate Read More block or leave it as a secondary link after the title.

Shopify and other template languages

In a Shopify theme, article and product cards live in snippets such as a card partial. Look for a link whose text is a translation key like blogs.article.read_more and make sure the article or product title nearby is wrapped in the same link. The same idea applies to Twig, Blade, Nunjucks and React components: find the one partial, fix it, and every page that uses it improves at once.

The fix, step by step

Before and after: rewrites that work

The aim is not to squeeze a keyword into every link. It is to link the words that already describe the destination, which often means turning the sentence around slightly.

Notice that none of the "after" anchors is stuffed. Each is the phrase a reader would use to describe the page, and each fits the sentence it sits in.

Buttons and calls to action

Action buttons such as "Book now", "Add to basket" or "Get a quote" are fine. They describe an action and people understand them. The problem is only with links whose job is to take someone to another page of information. If a "Book now" button is the only link on a page to your booking page, that is not an anchor text problem; it simply means you might also link to the booking page from relevant sentences elsewhere.

Going too far the other way

Once people learn that anchor text matters, the next problem is often over-correction. Watch for these patterns while rewriting.

• The identical phrase on every link. If every one of forty links to a page reads exactly "cheap boiler repair Hartwell", it reads like a machine wrote it. Natural links vary with the sentence. There is no target mix or percentage to hit for internal anchors; write each one to fit its context.
• Keyword lists as anchors. Anchors such as "boiler repair, boiler service, boiler installation" crammed into one link help nobody.
• Linking every mention. If a phrase appears six times in an article, link it once, where the reader is most likely to want to go further.
• Automatic keyword-linking plugins. Tools that turn every occurrence of a word into a link across the whole site produce repetitive anchors in odd places and are hard to undo. If you use one, limit it to one link per page and review what it creates.
• Anchors that promise more than the page delivers. Linking "complete guide to heat pumps" to a three-paragraph news item disappoints the reader and misdescribes the page.

Menu and breadcrumb links are short by design, such as "Services" or "Boots". That is expected. They give structure, while links inside paragraphs give the descriptive detail, so there is no need to lengthen navigation labels to make them more descriptive.

Keeping new content clean

Anchor text drifts back to vague wording when new pages are written quickly or when a theme update restores a default "Read more" link. A few habits stop that.

1. Check component defaults after theme updates. Parent theme updates can overwrite template changes that were not made in a child theme. Keep your card and excerpt changes in a child theme, a custom snippet or your own component library.
2. Add the rule to your brief. Writers and freelancers should know that links must name their destination. Include one before-and-after example in the brief.
3. Review links when you review copy. A quick scan of underlined words during proofreading catches most "click here" links before they go live.
4. Use the CMS link picker. Link pickers that search your own pages by title encourage writers to link the words that match the title.
5. Re-run the analysis after big content pushes. After a batch of new articles, check the anchors received by your key pages again.

If you are also reorganising how importance flows between pages, the link equity guide covers where to add links; this guide only covers what those links should say.