A link composed of actual HTML text as opposed to an image. The format for a text link is:
<a href=”link-goes-here.html”>link text goes here</a>
In the above example “link text goes here” is the anchor text.
A text link is generally considered more valuable for SEO purposes than an image-based link, especially if the anchor text is optimized by including keywords for the page being linked to.
By using various CSS techniques (backgrounds, the hover pseudo state, etc.) it is possible to make a text link appear similar to an image link while retaining its SEO value.