First things first. Link anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink that you click to visit another Website or page. In HTML terms, link anchor text is the text placed between the anchor tags ( and ), hence the name. Here goes an HTML code snippet of an anchor text:

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Anchor Text</a>

And on your page this code will look like this:

Anchor Text

Since the Google “Florida” update (rolled out November 2003) link anchor texts have become hugely important from the SEO perspective. Here’s why.

The Hilltop Algorithm (patented Google’s algo effective since the “Florida” update) states that Google will associate your Website with the anchor text of incoming links. What this means is that if you use “blue widget accessories” in the anchor text of your incomings links, Google will assign a higher relevancy score to your site for “blue widgets” as well as “blue widget accessories”, and rank it accordingly in its search results.

Currently, this is one of the fundamental aspects behind the way Google works and ranks its search results.