I just can't believe how much difference anchor text makes

I got ranked number 1 for a competitive keyword on MSN with only about 20 backlinks with proper anchor text.

The sites below me have thousands of backlinks pointing, but they aren't using the keyphrase in anchor.

I'm ranked like 300+ on Yahoo and 500+ on google though

I guess there are a lot of webmasters out there who are clueless about SEO if I could rank with just 20 backlinks...

 

Its not just that, it must like other stuff about your site.

I have lots of sites with many links and proper anchor text that rank a few pages deep, not on the first page, so thats not the secret....plus you see some high ranking sites with just a couple of links, regardless of anchor text.

 

with msn its easy, google takes lot of time for the same keywords.
thats what i have noticed.

 

This is exactly what I asked people on another topic. I still cannot come up with a good reason.

I only have one theory, MSN has started to penalize masive link building.

 

My blogspot blog ranks in the first page on MSN for the keyword Portugal and has nearly no anchor text. MSN is strange in the way they rank sites so don’t be surprised if in a few days your site is nowhere to be seen.

Do a search for Portugal on MSN and look at the last listing…. I know, it’s nothing special…

 

Ranking on MSN with a blogspot blog is freeking cake. It's well known that spammers have used blogspot and wordpress blogs to rank high on MSN for a wide range of keywords. It's insane.

 

Exactly

 

Yes anchor text helps a lot! but you have to remember that the anchor text has to vary you can not use "free stuff" all the time or the SE's may think that you are spamming.

This is better:
"free stuff"
"free stuff from my site"
"free stuff for you"

etc anchor text + variation !

Atole Mexicano

 

Yup. You have to pay attention to dilution though. I don't add more than one word extra on top of my keyphrase.

 

anchor is huge for some engines and not so much w/ others... like google doesn't care as much because of how manipulated the text can be

 

Well how do they gauge relevancy, since they don't pay much attention to page content? What do they pay attention to figure out relevancy?

As far as I know anchor text is till the most important thing to rank well for a keyword or keyphrase.

 

msn loves the anchor text
i was number 1 for the keyword mp3 for a day on msn early this year and first page for mp3 download and some others for a while this was a clickbank affiliate landing page......

 

I'm ranked #1 on almost all 3 search engines for my popular keyboard (14+ million results), and yeah, anchor text really does the trick. make sure to vary it though, if you want more than one keyword. I switch it up depending on where or who is linking to me.

 

Is anchor text different than a text link? For example, is this defined as anchor text:

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

Code (markup):

 

textlink == anchor text, same difference.

 

my sites have been jumping up and down in msn search for a while now, i still haven't a clue about msn's ranking jumble.