A commonly overlooked aspect of search engine rankings is the descriptive text. When another site links to you from an article, it will generally have surrounding text relevant and meaningful to your site describing its contents.
While its weight isn’t as great as the link text or anchor text, it still plays a role in defining what your site or website sub-page is about.
Consider this…
What information can you derive from these two types of links?
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Air Conditioning and Heating Contractor
Call the city’s oldest and most respected
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air conditioning and heating contractor
when you desire to get reliable and fast service that’s available when you need it the most.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the latter is more meaningful to you as a reader. Search engines are supposed to deliver the results you seek. The better quality, the more targeted, and the more relevant the results, the more likely the searcher will use that search engine again.
As search engines get more sophisticated, surrounding text could become almost as important as the link itself.