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.