the text that is contained within a link, also known as link text. This is a key factor used by the search engines when ranking web pages. Anchor text is used in hyperlinks and consists of words displayed by the link on the web page. 

As an example, "marketing glossary" is the anchor text in the following link:  Welcome to Enquiro's online marketing glossary.  When requesting links from other sites or directories, if possible it is of benefit for you to provide the anchor text that will be used to link to your site page.