Q: Does the anchor text on internal links actually matter, or just the link itself?

Q: Does the anchor text on internal links actually matter, or just the link itself?

Short answer: it matters, and over-optimizing it hurts. A SaaS site had 90 internal links to its "project management software" page, almost all using that exact phrase as anchor.

They diversified: kept some exact-match, added partial-match and natural-phrase anchors describing the linked content. Same number of links, just varied wording.

Result in 7 weeks: the page gained 4 positions and, more interestingly, started ranking for the partial-match variants used in the new anchors.

In practice: descriptive, varied internal anchors tell search engines what a page is about across a range of phrasings. A wall of identical exact-match anchors reads as manipulation.

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