The Value of Keywords in Links
SEO expert Leslie Rhode liked to claim that he can take a blank page to #1 in the rankings. A blank page, for goodness sake! The keywords that link to the blank page are what make the difference. While he admits this is no longer viable, ranking a blank page with keywords in links could be done in even the recent past because of the value of keywords in links. Google's PageRank™ algorithm works primarily because the fact that a link from one page to another page constitutes a "vote" to one degree or another, and that's all there is to PageRank.
Link reputation is an additional feature that is based on the text included in the link to your page, because the search engine assumes that the keyword text of the link is representative of what the page contains from the voter's point-of-view. The combination of link reputation and PageRank represented the earliest version of the successful Google formula.
Thus, it was possible to rank a blank page highly simply by providing keywords in links to the page using text in the links that includes the keyword for which you want the blank page to rank. Today, Google tells us that they consider over 200 questions when evaluating the content of a page for ranking purposes. On-page factors is making a comeback in a big way, particularly since the Panda update. However, off-page factors still count, and by far the most important off-page factor is what keywords are found in the links to the page you are examining.
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