Sunday Morning SEO: What is Anchor Text and Why is It Important?

In a survey of 37 search experts, the 2nd highest SEO factor was the
anchor text of links from other sites. However, many webmasters who
want to rank better on the search engines don't know what anchor text
is. Fortunately, anchor text is an easy concept to understand. In
this post and next week's post, we'll look at what anchor text is and
how to use it well for your blog.

Simply put, anchor text is the text in a link. Here's an example.
The anchor text of the following link is the best blog in the world:

the best blog in the world

Anchor text is important because search engines use it in their
algorithms to determine their rankings. Here's how it works. Search
engines are constantly checking the anchor text of your site. Each
time you get a link from another site, the search engines will note
the anchor text of that link. With each instance a word or phrase
shows up in your anchor text, your chances improve for increasing your
ranking for that word or phrase.

For example, let's say you have a blog about movie reviews. If you
build a lot of links with the words movie and reviews in your anchor
text, you'll improve your chances of increasing your ranking for movie
reviews.