Glossary
Anchor Text
The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, a strong signal about the linked page's topic for both search and AI engines.
By Teeming Chew, Founder Last updated
Anchor text tells crawlers what the destination page is about. "GEO methodology" linking to a GEO methodology page is a much stronger signal than "click here" linking to the same page.
What's the best anchor text strategy?
Use natural-language anchors that contain (or paraphrase) the target page's primary entity. Avoid exact-match keyword stuffing across many links. That pattern is penalized.
Does anchor text affect AI citations?
Yes, indirectly. AI engines learn associations between entities and pages from anchor text just as search engines do. Strong, entity-rich anchors reinforce which page is the canonical reference on a topic.
Part of the Cite Hustle GEO glossary: definitions for generative engine optimization and AI search. See how it fits the bigger picture in the GEO methodology.