Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?

[JoostvanVught]

As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice?

For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically?

Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to?

All views and experiences are welcome!

Kind regards,

Joost van Vught

[Netboost]

This is a question I have struggled with and although i cannot prove it I would say yes.

I was making blogs to funnel pr and traffic to my main site. I was using a pyramid link strategy and at the bottom tier (yes they were spammy profile links but hey) I used my target keywords as anchor text all the way up. The result was a continual increase in rankings over time - since I kept blasting links to the bottom layers.

I did SEO for another of my sites the same way and this time used generic text on the bottom layers. It was easier but the progress in ranking was a tenth of the other site - both sites were in the same niche and had good onsite seo etc.

This observation led me to believe that Google uses incoming Anchor text to determine relevancy - perhaps they take the most common incoming link anchor text and tag that webpage with it to help classify it for relevancy. Onsite factors would be more important but I believe Google may use incoming anchor text to tag pages for relevancy.

[ReneReinholdt]

A link passes link juice internally and externally. Since the link helps the Authority and Trust of the entire domain. If you have a link to a page and that page links to another page, then some of that link juice will flow from page one to page two.

[JoostvanVught]

Hi Rene, thanks for your contribution. I'm more than familiar the flow of link juice and authority throughout the website.... I'm wondering specifically if the external link 'anchor text' will flow to other pages on the site and thus load the entire site thematically...

[ReneReinholdt]

Ahh ok sry misunderstood the question (my bad):

If you have a page (the one linked to with an anchor text) and this page contains do-follow links then some of the "value" (for the search phrase in question) will flow to the other pages. But! (there's always a but since only a small percentage of the value will flow, the value of the other pages are most likely to little to show up in any search result, since other pages will probably out weigh it in the SERP's.

In other words: Yes anchor text flows just like link-juice