anchor text versus surrounding text

what's the relative importance of each

[fom2001uk]

I know keywords within the anchor linking to your page is ideal, but what about the text surrounding a description of your link?

If anchor text rates say 10/10 , where would surrounding text rank - 5/10? or less than that?

Just curious, because it's not always easy to get your keywords into the anchor text, whereas the surrounding text is starightforward (i.e here is my page, here is my description of that page)

[vitaplease]

Interesting question.

You could do some testing yourself comparing non-existing words as anchortext and surrounding text whereby you put for example "blue widgets" in anchor text from an internal PR3 page and compare it with "blue widgets" click here from a PR4 page etc. to be refined with internal and external links in extenso..

then please sticky me the results ..;)

But to cut your question short I would guestimate:

10 for straight anchor text
3-4 for surrounding text if just next to the anchor text?

[Beachboy]

Yes, interesting. Which means a stand-alone link at the bottom of a page is of less value than a link embedded in a context-related paragraph. It would make for a worthy test.

[vitaplease]

And what weighting should be added for an "on context title" and and "on context anchortext" to the page with the right surounding text?

That will take more than a thousand yearly thoughts I suppose..;)

[jackofalltrades]

Taking it a further level:

Perhaps there is different ratings for "in context" content.

EG

Cars -

Ford (9/10)
Wheel (4/10)
Bobs auto parts (8/10)

Just random figures, but u get the point?

From here anchor text could get a plus 10 bonus and surrounding text could get a plus 5 bonus...

...he he i bet all the Phd geeks at Gplex are RPG nuts!

...URL = minus 1000 points for duplicate content....plus 200 for spam report submissions...etc

JOAT :)