What is the Anchor Text? Why we use it?

Anchor Text : The text that appears highlighted in a hypertext link and that can be clicked to open the target web page

Why we use it? :

If many links point to a page with the right keywords in their anchor text, that page has a very good chance of ranking well. Real examples of this include the search engine result pages for the queries, "click here" and "leave." Many of the Google results for these queries rank solely due to the anchor text of inbound links.

• People have a tendency to link to content using the anchor text of either the domain name or the title of the page. This is an advantage to SEOs who include keywords they want to rank for in these two elements.

Too many inbound links to a page with the exact same keyword-rich anchor text may cause Google to scrutinize that site’s link profile more closely; using manipulative methods to acquire keyword–rich anchor text is not recommended