Google has always loved the anchor text included in links. Not only does this seem to be a factor for the page being linked to, I've always felt that anchor text played a big part of SEO for the page that the link was on...For example, if this page was indexed and not in a private forum and I make a link:
Las Vegas
And pointed it to a page, that anchor text "las vegas" would have a pretty big affect on both this page and the page that was being linked to.
This was especially true in Google's early days when all you really needed to do was create a page that used the keywords in anchor text a lot, and that page would rank very high.
It isn't as extreme any more, but I still feel that google loves anchor text for both pages.
Anchor Text vs. Anchor Links
Don't get these confused...Anchor text is the text that makes up the clickable part of the link. Anchor links are links that point to certain parts of a web page.
You may have noticed that some pages have an index of topics at the top of the page with links to each topic. A lot of times, anchor links say "Top" and take you to the top of a page...These anchor links take you to different parts of the SAME page.
Google seems to love these anchor links and anchor text (anchor links have anchor text, too) and is using them in their new SER feature "search snippets"...And Google is now including anchor links in their SERPs.
This means if a person does a search and clicks one of these anchor links, they will be taken directly to that section of the page that discusses that particular topic, as defined by the anchor text of the anchor links (and the other usual SEO factors).
I believe a strong on-page SEO strategy is to include anchor links whenever and as often as possible.
Learn to create anchor links and even use anchor links in your linking campaigns.
By this, I mean instead of bookmarking:
www.domain.com/page.html
Create an anchor on page.html and link to it:
www.domain.com/page.html#keyword
...Where "keyword" is the anchor, and bookmark (for example) the anchored link: www.domain.com/page.html#keyword
Anchor links take two steps, whereas with a regular link you just link to a page (one step).
With anchor links, first you have to "set" the anchor on the page, telling the browser exactly where it is supposed to go.
So the first thing you need to do is find some text on the page to act as the "anchor". Pick a keyword to do this. Then, add the following html to the keyword (phrase):
<A NAME="keyword ">keyword</A>
Now take the page you want to link to:
www.domain.com/page.html
And add the anchor after it the page:
#keyword
Now link to it like above:
www.domain.com/page.html#keyword
And now your browser will take you to that particular place on that particular page.
The "keyword" anchor will appear as normal text in the user's browser and you can't tell which text is the anchor unless you look at the code.
Anchor links are an excellent way to get anchor text on your pages without having to link out.
They also seem to be heavily influencing Google's new "search snippets".
Spend a few minutes googling "anchor links" and how to add them to your pages. Think about your basic SEO and keyword research to use in anchor text and anchor links and start adding anchor links to your general Google onpage SEO as well as your linking strategies.
LAST EDITED ON May-16-10 AT 01:12 PM (PST)
For those that don't know, I've been doing SEO for longer than Google's been around. And during this time, I've always felt the forgotten on-page SEO factor was anchor text. Many think of anchor text as "off page" optimization, where the anchor text POINTS to a page. But I've always felt that Google places a lot of importance on the anchor text that is ON a page.
In the early days of Google, I owned as many as 18 out of the top 20 spots for a very competitive keyword. Back then, all you had to do was use the keyword in a bunch of links (anchor text). Google loved links (and anchor text).
Even PageRank (and Hilltop) are based on links. And rankings are based on links.
And I believe Google still loves anchor text. Not as much as they did back then, but enough where I feel it's still a very important ranking factor.
The thing about anchor text is that we think it has to point to another page. However, using anchor LINKS, we can add keywords to our anchor text and "link" to the page we're on.
This is a very important concept:
With search snippets, a page now has multiple "entry points". We think of search engines sending people only to the very beginning/top of a web page.
But that's all changed. With search snippets using anchor links, searchers can now potentially "enter" your page anywhere you have an anchor.
This has two big opportunities:
1. You can optimize a page for multiple keywords using anchor links.
2. Realize that people may be entering your pages at places other than the top, or "above the fold". Because of this, we may want to adjust were we put our "most wanted response" info.
This is easy to check...If you have decent stats you should be able to see if people are reaching your site using an anchored link.
Here's an example...A normal URL will look like:
http://www.w3schools.com/html_tutorial.htm
But if they have an anchor, we can link to that anchor:
http://www.w3schools.com/html_tutorial.htm#tips
Notice the #tips at the end of the URL. That link not only takes you to the html_tutorial.htm page, it takes you to the specific spot on the page that has the anchor "tips".
If that was our page and we saw that the URL with the anchor #tips was getting steady traffic, we may want to test adding AdSense above and below that anchor, so that they are visible when people reach that page at the part of the page.
This also gives us another opportunity for linking. Instead of always using the "plain" URL for linking to a page, add a few anchors and use anchor links when you bookmark, etc.
I won't get into all the details of the html, you can google that, but when you set the anchor, use keywords as the anchor.
And also use keywords in the anchor text that points to the anchor. Most of the time, try to have these keywords match. Other times, "semi-match" and a few times be mismatched.
Anchor text....Anchor
Dog Training-->Dog Training (use 70%) match
Dog Training-->Obedience Training (use 20%) semi-match
Dog Training-->Pet food.....(use 10%) mismatched
Also, mix up your SEO "recipe" from page to page and site to site.
For example, try adding other HTML elements considered to have an effect on the SERPs.
Let's set an anchor around "dog training":
<a name="dog training">Dog Training</a>
Notice is used the keyword as the the name, and as the anchor.
Now let's add another HTML element, the head1 tag:
<h1><a name="dog training">Dog Training</a></h1>
Add an italic, strong or bold tag:
<h1><b><a name="dog training">Dog Training</a></b></h1>
This last one should ensure the phrase "dog training" is emphasized. 
These are three different options and each should be used. This gives us different formulas for different engines, more diversity and lets us test for any SEO advantages.
This stuff is new...Don't wait for others to tell you about search snippets. Instead, make some pages using anchor links, promote some links containing anchors and come up with the best strategies for using anchors and snippets.
