Naked URL as Anchor Text

Links that use the raw URL as anchor text (https://example.com) are hard to read and give Google no keyword signal for the target.

Why it matters

Links that use the raw URL as anchor text (https://example.com) are hard to read and give Google no keyword signal for the target.

Address when convenient — notices usually mark a polish opportunity rather than a defect. Estimated SEO impact: low — small marginal improvement, but cheap to fix.

How to fix

• Use descriptive anchor text instead of the URL itself
• Reserve naked URLs for footnotes or print stylesheets

Common causes

If the rule is firing across many pages, the root cause is almost always one of these:

• Old anchor text ("click here", "read more") survives template refactors.
• Migration changes URLs but leaves internal links pointing at the old paths.
• Footer or sidebar widgets reference removed pages that haven't been re-pruned.
• Generated category/tag pages create orphaned link clusters.

Anti-patterns to avoid

Even with the best intentions, these "fixes" make the issue worse — recognise them so you don't ship them:

• Anchor text "click here" / "read more" / "this link".
• Linking the same anchor to multiple destinations within one page.
• Hiding important internal links behind onclick handlers without an href.

How atlookup detects this

Our crawler renders each page with a real headless browser, then normalises every internal href, follows redirects, and grades anchor descriptiveness. Pages where the rule fires for naked url as anchor text are flagged on the report.

If you'd like to see this rule fire on your own site, run a free 60-second audit — every page is reported with the exact lines that triggered it.

Tools to verify the fix

Once you've applied the fix, double-check with these external validators:

• Screaming Frog — Site-wide link audit.
• Google Search Console — Sees Google's view of internal linking.

Frequently asked questions

Related issues