How to replace anchor tag text using C#?

You are capturing what is in the group.

What you might do is capture what's on the left and right in the group, and use these 2 capture groups $1and $2replace:

var link=@"<a href="">Sample text </a>";
var requiredText="$1new Text$2";
link = Regex.Replace(link,"(<a [^>]*>).*?(</a>)",requiredText);
Console.WriteLine(link);
// <a href=">new Text</a>

Check out the C# demo

The regular expression will match:

• (<a [^>]*>)capture group 1
• .*?Match any character 0+ times
• (</a>)capture group 2