Text next to links..

Does the text next to your link make any difference? for example a short description when submitting to a directory..

 

Yes search engines are now looking at the text before and after the actually text link and taking it into account.

 

thanks for the reply, does this make a big difference?

 

Yeah backlinks are really important nowadays so its deff worth it.
Make sure to vary the anchor text and words around it to look natural.

 

Matt Cutts mentioned that one of the ways Google does or will filter or devalue paid links is by looking at the text near it and looking for words like sponsors, partners, etc.... I am not really sure if they will be able to do this because eventhough a site has legitimate links they might still call the links partners or something of the sort. Matt Cutts mentioned that these links should have 'no follow' attribute attached to them.

 

Definitely yessss
Because they help the search engines get a description of your site and they rank you accordingly to relevance