Internet Business Daily

What is Anchor Text?
In my opinion one of the most important factors in SEO is anchor text. A link from another site to yours is like a vote of confidence from them to you. Google sees this and gives your site more respect based on that vote. There are two things associated with a link: the URL and the anchor text. The URL is the address to which the link points and the anchor text is what the link says. For example: make money online. The URL of this link is internetbusinessdaily.net and the anchor text is “make money online.” When Google looks at this they associate that keyword with the URL it is pointing to. There are many other factors that go into the Google calculation of links but this is generally how it works.

Why Anchor Text is Important
So when doing link exchanges or link baiting, you really want the other sites to use your most popular keywords. This will give you better SERPS and therefore more traffic. The surround content is also important. If the entire site and article you are being linked from is about cooking but the anchor text is about search engine optimization, it will not mean nearly as much. A great example of the power of anchor text is John Chow’s site. He had a link baiting contest where many bloggers linked to him with the keyword make money online. Within 4 days he was #3 SERPS for that keyword. So, get those keywords in the links!