Semrush Unoptimized Anchors vs Audra: Internal Link Review

Semrush Site Audit lists terms such as “click here,” “read more,” “page,” and “article” as examples of unoptimized anchors. For an SEO reviewer, the payoff is a repeatable way to turn those generic-link warnings into clearer internal links without assuming that every warning is an empty link or an accessibility failure.

This is a comparison of Semrush’s specific unoptimized-anchor rule and Audra’s broader website-audit context. It is about internal links, not backlink anchor-text ratios, link-building risk, or a general SEO audit checklist.

The key distinction is simple: Semrush documents a rule for unspecified anchor wording. An empty <a> element, an image link, an SVG icon, and a link with an ARIA label are separate implementation cases. They may need attention, but the supplied Semrush documentation does not establish that they are all included in this one issue.

What are unoptimized anchors in Semrush Site Audit?

Semrush defines unoptimized anchors as hyperlinks with unspecified anchor text. Its Site Audit documentation gives concrete examples: “click here,” “click this,” “go here,” “more,” “learn more,” “read more,” “page,” and “article.” The rule is intended to identify labels that provide little information about the destination. (Semrush documentation)

For example, these two internal links point to the same page:

<p>Need a full list of checks? <a href="/seo-checklist">Click here</a>.</p>

<p>Use the <a href="/seo-checklist">technical SEO checklist</a>
before publishing major site changes.</p>

The second version gives a visitor a useful expectation before they follow the link. It also gives a crawler clearer textual context for the relationship between the source page and /seo-checklist.

Semrush’s documentation says the check recognises unspecified wording in English and several other languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Danish, Russian, and Norwegian. That is useful for multilingual internal-link reviews, although a phrase-based rule cannot determine whether every localised link is appropriate in its editorial context.

An unoptimized-anchor warning should therefore be treated as a review queue, not a command to replace every occurrence of “read more” with an exact-match keyword. The reviewer still needs to see the link on the source page, inspect the destination, and decide whether the wording is genuinely unclear.

Unoptimized anchors vs empty links vs exact-match anchor text

Three different link conditions are often grouped together under “anchor text issues.” Separating them avoids inaccurate tickets and unnecessary rewrites.

Generic or unspecified anchors

This is the category Semrush explicitly documents. A label such as “more” or “click here” is technically functional, but it does not name the destination. A blog card with six identical “Read more” links is a common example.

A generic link is not automatically useless. If a card has a visible heading immediately above it, a sighted visitor may infer the destination. Still, a destination-specific label is usually clearer, particularly when links appear repeatedly in a link list, navigation pattern, or exported crawl report.

Empty or unusable links

An empty anchor is a separate HTML condition:

<a href="/contact"></a>

This implementation has no text between the opening and closing tags. It may result from a damaged template, a JavaScript failure, a CSS-only icon, or an incomplete component. It warrants inspection because it provides no visible destination wording on its own.

However, this article does not claim that Semrush’s unoptimized-anchor issue necessarily reports every empty anchor. The public Semrush page supplied for this comparison focuses on unspecified and generic wording, rather than publishing a complete technical decision tree for empty elements.

Descriptive but repeated exact-match anchors

Exact-match anchor text is also different. A link labelled “technical SEO audit” that leads to a technical SEO audit page can be clear and appropriate. The problem is not a matching phrase by itself.

Review is justified when a commercial phrase is inserted mechanically across unrelated pages. For instance, repeating “best technical SEO audit agency” in ten sitewide links is less natural than using labels that match the actual destinations, such as “Technical SEO audits,” “Audit process,” and “Migration audits.” The editorial objective is accurate link purpose, not forced variation or keyword repetition.

Why internal anchor text matters for SEO and accessibility

Internal links connect pages and help establish how content is organised. Descriptive anchor text provides immediate context about the destination, while generic wording leaves more interpretation to surrounding copy. This can make internal outlinks with no useful anchor text harder to assess during an SEO audit.

It would be inaccurate to claim that one “read more” link causes a Google rankings decline. Neither the Semrush documentation nor the W3C guidance makes that claim. The practical concern is quality: a site with hundreds of vague links gives users and reviewers fewer signals about what its linked pages contain.

Accessibility has a related but distinct standard. W3C’s explanation of WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.4 says that link purpose should be identifiable from link text or programmatically determined link context. This supports people who use keyboards or screen readers when deciding which link to activate. (W3C: Link Purpose in Context)

The distinction matters in these three examples:

• A text link labelled “Read more” may be vague, even when nearby copy offers partial context.
• An image-only link can have a meaningful accessible name when its alt text describes the destination or function.
• An empty link with neither visible content nor an accessible name is likely a more serious usability and accessibility concern.

W3C’s ACT rule on non-empty accessible names evaluates links exposed in the accessibility tree, mapping to WCAG criteria including Link Purpose (In Context). (W3C ACT Rule: Link has non-empty accessible name) That accessibility test should not be confused with Semrush’s generic-anchor wording rule. A site can pass one assessment and still merit review under the other.

What Semrush can detect—and what the rule does not establish

Semrush’s published rule gives SEO teams a practical starting point: crawl internal hyperlinks and surface labels matching unspecified wording patterns. For a content team, a list of links using “click here,” “article,” or “more” is actionable because those labels can be reviewed in batches.

The supplied documentation does not establish how Semrush classifies every technical link pattern. In particular, its unoptimized-anchor article does not provide a definitive answer for:

• Empty <a> elements with no visible text.
• Image links whose images have descriptive or missing alt attributes.
• Icon-only links that use aria-label.
• SVG links with <title> elements.
• CSS-generated labels or JavaScript-rendered implementations.
• Whether surrounding heading text changes the issue classification.

That uncertainty is not a reason to ignore the issue. It is a reason to validate it correctly. An SEO Site Audit warning identifies a candidate link; it does not replace inspection in a browser, source review, or accessibility testing.

A useful internal anchor text audit records at least five fields for each finding:

1. Source URL.
2. Destination URL.
3. Current visible anchor text.
4. Component or page location, such as navigation, article body, or card grid.
5. Reviewer decision: rewrite, developer fix, acceptable exception, or further accessibility test.

This evidence-based approach prevents a generic issue label from becoming an unsupported conclusion about indexation, screen-reader behaviour, or Google rankings.

Semrush Site Audit vs Audra for anchor-text review

Semrush and Audra are not documented as identical implementations of the same anchor-text rule. The useful comparison is therefore about audit workflow and the confidence a reviewer can attach to the result.

Semrush: a clearly defined generic-anchor issue

Semrush has the stronger documented claim for the narrow question, “How does a crawler identify unoptimized anchors?” Its knowledge-base article names the issue, defines it as unspecified anchor text, and supplies examples in multiple languages. That makes it suitable for teams that need to identify generic labels at scale and brief editors with a consistent definition.

For example, an SEO lead can group 40 occurrences of “Read more” by template and decide whether one component-level rewrite will improve all 40. The documented scope is the strength: it tells the reviewer what the rule is designed to find.

The limitation is equally clear. The issue alone cannot establish whether a particular link is accessible, whether it is rendered correctly, or whether an icon-only implementation has a valid accessible name. Those require additional checks.

Audra: broader audit context, not a claimed rule match

Audra is positioned as a local desktop website auditing app covering AI answer-engine visibility, technical SEO, performance, accessibility, best practices, and links. That broader scope can be useful when a reviewer is already assessing a page for multiple reasons rather than conducting a standalone generic-anchor cleanup.

For example, a reviewer might find a vague link in a service-page card and separately assess whether its target is reachable, whether the source page has performance or accessibility concerns, and whether the page is otherwise ready for remediation. That is workflow context, not proof that Audra uses Semrush’s phrase list or classifies the link in exactly the same way.

Before treating Audra as a replacement for Semrush’s unoptimized-anchor issue, a team should verify the current product output against its own site. A simple test set should include one “click here” link, one empty anchor, one image link with descriptive alt, and one icon link with aria-label. This is particularly important because the supplied Audra product information does not document a public, like-for-like rule specification for those cases.

For a related discussion of prioritising findings in a remediation workflow, see Semrush Site Audit Issues vs Audra: A Fix-First Review. Teams building repeatable processes may also find Custom Prompts vs AI Audit Agents for Repeatable SEO Audits useful.

How to validate and fix unoptimized anchors

A strong remediation process is more precise than replacing every vague phrase with a target keyword. The following six-step method works whether findings originate in Semrush, Audra, another crawler, or a manual content review.

1. Group findings by component

Start with a count and a pattern. If 24 links come from one article-card component, solve the template problem once rather than opening 24 unrelated copy tickets. If only one link is empty, inspect the specific markup and deployment history.

2. Review the link in rendered context

Open the source URL and identify what a user sees immediately before and after the link. A “Read more” label under a distinct article heading differs from a “Click here” link in the middle of a dense paragraph. Check desktop and mobile layouts where a component changes at a breakpoint.

3. Inspect the destination

The link wording should truthfully describe the page it opens. A label reading “Download the migration checklist” should not point to a sales page or a redirect chain. Confirm that the destination returns the intended content and is appropriate for the source-page topic.

4. Check accessible naming separately

For image links, W3C’s H30 technique explains that the image text alternative should identify the link purpose. It also shows that text beside an image can make the image decorative when the text already names the destination. (W3C H30: Providing link text that describes purpose)

For an icon-only link, an aria-label may provide an accessible name, but the implementation should be tested rather than presumed valid. W3C’s ARIA8 technique describes using aria-label to clarify link purpose in cases where visible text alone is insufficient. (W3C ARIA8)

5. Write concise, destination-led copy

Useful replacements tend to use a short noun phrase or action that matches the destination:

• “View the technical SEO checklist”
• “Read the Shopify migration case study”
• “Compare website audit plans”
• “See the accessibility testing process”

Avoid converting every link into a long exact-match phrase. “Read the website migration checklist” is generally clearer than “click here,” but clarity is more valuable than repetition.

6. Re-crawl and retain exceptions

After deployment, run the relevant audit again and compare the list of affected URLs. Keep documented exceptions for links that are intentionally concise but unambiguous, such as “Download PDF,” or image links whose accessible names have been tested. A before-and-after sample of three changed links is often more useful in a handoff than an unexplained issue total.

Which should you choose?

Choose Semrush Site Audit when the primary requirement is its documented unoptimized-anchor issue: finding hyperlinks with generic or unspecified wording such as “click here” and “read more.” Its public documentation provides the clearest basis for defining the review queue and explaining why a link was flagged.

Choose Audra when the team wants a desktop audit product whose stated scope combines AI visibility with technical SEO, performance, accessibility, best practices, and link-focused checks. It can be a sensible option when an anchor-text review needs to sit within a broader site-health assessment. The team should verify the current audit output if it needs Semrush-equivalent detection for generic labels, empty links, or accessible-name edge cases.

Use both where appropriate. Semrush can supply its specific generic-anchor signal, while a broader audit workflow can help organise the page-level remediation work. Neither tool removes the need for a human reviewer to confirm source context, destination relevance, and implementation details.

Verdict

Semrush’s unoptimized-anchor warning is best understood as a narrow, documented check for generic or unspecified hyperlink text. It is useful for surfacing patterns such as “more,” “page,” and “read more” across internal links.

Audra is relevant when the same reviewer needs broader technical, performance, accessibility, link, and AI-visibility context. But it should not be presented as a documented like-for-like implementation of Semrush’s rule unless current product results confirm that behaviour.

The practical fix remains the same: give users a concise, truthful indication of where an internal link goes, test non-text links separately for accessible naming, and recheck the implementation after release.

FAQ

What are unoptimized anchors in an SEO audit?

Unoptimized anchors are hyperlinks with unspecified or generic wording that does not clearly describe the target. Semrush Site Audit gives examples including “click here,” “more,” “read more,” “page,” and “article.” The term should not automatically be extended to every empty, image-only, or ARIA-labelled link because those cases require separate implementation review.

Why are links with no anchor text a problem for SEO?

A link with no usable visible text gives users and crawlers little immediate context about its destination. It can also be an accessibility concern when it has no non-empty accessible name. The correct fix depends on the element: add descriptive visible text where possible, or test the accessible name and function for legitimate image-only or icon-only links.

How does Semrush Site Audit identify unoptimized anchors?

Semrush says Site Audit checks hyperlinks for unspecified anchor wording and lists examples such as “click here,” “go here,” “more,” “page,” and “article.” Its public article supports that generic-wording scope. It does not, on that page, publish a complete explanation of how it classifies empty anchors, image links, SVG links, or ARIA-labelled links.

Are image links or empty links included in Semrush’s unoptimized-anchor issue?

The supplied Semrush documentation does not give a definitive classification for every image-only, empty-link, SVG, or ARIA implementation. An image link may have a valid accessible name through descriptive alternative text, while an empty anchor may be a markup defect. Review the rendered element and accessible name instead of assuming the issue label covers all technical cases.

How should an SEO team fix repeated “read more” internal links?

First identify whether the links come from one reusable card or template. Then replace the generic label with concise destination-specific wording, such as “Read the technical SEO checklist.” Check that the target matches the label, test accessibility context where relevant, deploy the component change, and re-crawl to confirm that the repeated pattern has been resolved.