I am looking to rank for long tail keywords in multiple cities across the USA. Example: "Sales Jobs Orlando" or "Nursing Jobs Miami, FL" this would allow me to compete at least locally vs. trying to compete for these highly competitively keywords nationwide.
Yes it will mostly come down to link anchor text. Google has been fighting back against this kind of strategy though. Unless you have substantial content to match each location, it will be viewed as doorway pages. You will want to build up links to each of those pages and also build up the overall authority & trust of your domain. In that niche, it may take quite some time to develop a presence.