Excessively long anchor text — the fix
One or more links have extremely long anchor text (over 100 characters). Very long anchor text dilutes the keyword signal and may appear unnatural to search engines.
Where this fits: internal linking in SEO
Internal links are how authority and discoverability flow through your site. They tell crawlers which pages exist, tell ranking systems which pages you consider important, and give users paths deeper into your content. Orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them) are nearly invisible to search engines regardless of quality. A deliberate internal-linking structure is one of the highest-leverage, fully-in-your-control SEO instruments.
Why excessively long anchor text hurts your rankings
Search engines use anchor text to understand the topic of the linked page. Excessively long anchor text dilutes the keyword signal and may appear as an attempt to stuff keywords into links. Concise, focused anchor text is more effective at conveying relevance signals.
This is a low-severity issue: a polish item. Fix it in batches during scheduled maintenance; the win is cumulative quality, not a step change.
How to fix it
Shorten anchor text to be concise and descriptive, ideally under 60 characters. Focus on the primary keyword or a brief descriptive phrase that accurately represents the linked page's content.
Internal linking best practices
- Link every new page from at least two existing relevant pages the day it ships.
- Use descriptive anchor text — 'pricing for agencies', never 'click here'.
- Fix broken internal links weekly; every 404 wastes both crawl budget and user trust.
- Build hub pages for your main topics and spoke out to detail pages.
- Keep orphan-page count at zero — if nothing links to it, neither will Google.
The full library: SEO best practices, by category.
Frequently asked questions
What does "Excessively long anchor text" mean?
One or more links have extremely long anchor text (over 100 characters). Very long anchor text dilutes the keyword signal and may appear unnatural to search engines.
Why does excessively long anchor text matter for SEO?
Search engines use anchor text to understand the topic of the linked page. Excessively long anchor text dilutes the keyword signal and may appear as an attempt to stuff keywords into links. Concise, focused anchor text is more effective at conveying relevance signals.
How do I fix excessively long anchor text?
Shorten anchor text to be concise and descriptive, ideally under 60 characters. Focus on the primary keyword or a brief descriptive phrase that accurately represents the linked page's content.
How serious is this issue?
This is a low-severity issue: a polish item. Fix it in batches during scheduled maintenance; the win is cumulative quality, not a step change. It belongs to the internal linking family of checks.
How do I find every page affected by this on my site?
Run a free Dr Urls audit: it crawls your site, detects excessively long anchor text on every affected page, shows example URLs, and generates a ready-to-use fix task. Re-scan after fixing to verify the issue is gone.
Does your site have this issue?
A free Dr Urls audit crawls your site, finds every page affected by excessively long anchor text, and hands you a ready-made fix task.
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