Glossary
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. It tells both a reader and a search engine what the destination is about, which makes it a description rather than a decoration.
They cost nothing in ranking terms directly, but they waste the clearest opportunity a page has to say what it is linking to, and they are worse for screen reader users, who often navigate by link list.
Every internal link using the identical exact-match phrase reads as manipulation rather than description, and on external links it is one of the clearer patterns associated with manual action.
No. Natural, varied, descriptive phrasing performs better and reads better. Identical exact-match anchors repeated across a site are a recognised manipulation pattern.
Yes, considerably. Screen reader users frequently navigate by listing links, and a page of 'read more' entries is unusable in that mode.
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. It tells both a reader and a search engine what the destination is about, which makes it a description rather than a decoration.
