The most important off page factor to gain high google rankings is

appropriate anchor text pointing to the specific page of your website

that has been optimised for a particular keyword phrase. This is achieved through a "backlink."

What Exactly is Anchor Text?

First off let's define anchor text. Anchor text is that portion of a

hyperlink that is viewed by a user on a webpage (the clickable text).

Here is an example: in html code, the link is www.domain.com and the

anchor text will be bolded as " anchor text "

Here is a typical html link:

<a href=" http://www.domain.com "> Anchor Text </a>

Or a real life example - my link is http://www.seotrainingclub.com/ and

my anchor text is "seo training", so I would write my text

links like this:

<a href=" http://www.seotrainingclub.com/">seo training<*/a>

Again as you can see my anchor text is contained between the >

</a> after the domain and quotation mark portion of the link.

How anchor text works

Now I've explained what anchor text is, let's look at the logic as to

why anchor text has such a dramatic effect in the search engine

rankings for your keyword phrases and what exactly "appropriate" anchor

text is.

Google decided to base a large portion of their algorithm on inbound

links (links from other web pages) because of its initial breakthrough

technology "PageRank™".

Google (and most other search engines) count each link as a vote for

the linked "to" web page by the linked "from" web page. Analyzing all

constituents of a link "from" a webpage to determine the specifics of

the link allows for much more specific information to be gathered about

the vote being cast.

There are really only the two above mentioned common elements: the web

page that you link to (this does not have any alternatives), and the

anchor text (which can be anything that you like) based on the choice

of the webmaster giving the link. It is because of this choice that the

anchor text becomes important. If there were no such thing as link

popularity in the algorithm, the anchor text people would choose to

link to a website with would be truly representative of that website's

content.

Basically Google uses anchor text (and assumes you aren't biased by

link exchange) to answer the question "OK, you're voting for a site

(and that's great!), but what exactly are you voting for?" Anchor text

is your explanation of what you're voting for. In essence you're saying

"I am voting for this site because it is a great site that represents

(Whatever you put in your Anchor Text)".

So when someone clicks on a link to my homepage with the anchor text

"seo training" Google then understands that my site is all about seo

training.

* I've had to add a * so that you can see this link!