How to remove urls from html files

Does anybody know how to remove all urls from html files?

all urls are links with anchor texts in the form of

<a href="http://www.anydomain.com">ANCHOR</a>

they may start with www or not.

Goal is to delete all urls and keep the ANCHOR text and if possible to change tags around anchor to <strong> or <em>.

any help is greatly appreciated

sed 's/href=\"[^"]*\"//g' inputfile > outputfile

thank you very much for your help.

your script works great.

appreciate your time and efforts.