What Is an Excessive Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the clickable text of a link; this is typically underlined to set it apart from the other text so that visitors know that it's a link. Anchor text is most often the title or topic of a link. If you are linking to Google, you could use "Google" as the anchor text or you might, in the right context, use the anchor text "My Favorite Search Engine." However, there is such a thing as too much anchor text.
Other People Are Reading
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Ideal Anchor Text
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There isn't an official ideal length for anchor text. The general rule of thumb is to stick with what feels logical and flows with your content. However, in some testing done by Shaun Anderson of Hobo-Web, the ideal length of a link's anchor text is probably about 50 words, or not more than eight words. This gives search engines a handful of words to find. Generally, you want to use relevant anchor text. "Click here" isn't descriptive or helpful.
Excessive Anchor Text
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Excessive anchor text is generally anything more than a few words and definitely anything more than a sentence -- even a sentence is usually considered too much. Nevertheless, there's legitimate reasons that people use full sentences, such as attributing a quote to its original page. However, users are not more likely to click on a link with a large amount of anchor text. Large links very rarely work with the design of your page and text. In addition, large links may trip certain penalties with Google, which is frequently on the look-out for spam websites.
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Spam Signal From Anchor Text
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When someone uses a lot of text as a link anchor, Google might interpret this as spam; think about the kinds of links you see in mail in your email's Junk folder. Using anchor text that's stuffed with nonsense keywords is almost guaranteed to trip Google's spam warnings -- these kinds of links look like "books bookstore e-books" if you were linking to an indie online bookstore, instead of using the logical text "indie online bookstore." Another indicators of spam is if you have hundreds of links around the Web that have the same anchor text. Avoid these when creating legitimate links on the Web.
Concerns
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If Google decides that the links or content on your page are spam, your page won't appear in searches, making it harder for potential visitors to find. While using bad anchor text is unlikely to be the only thing that trips your site as spam, if your content is also stuffed with nonsense keywords, has so many ads that the content is hard to follow or has more links than actual valuable content, it may be considered spam by Google and visitors.
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