Should Anchor Text Show Up In Serps?

I have noticed for some of my searches I am being directed to pages where my search term is anchor text pointing to another page. Would it not make more sense for SE’s to display the result of the pages which links actually point to?

 

I have noticed the same thing with my search terms. Pages with links to my page are showing higher rankings than my page itself. It does seem like it would make more sense for the engines to display the page that the link points to rather than the link.

It may be though, that the link pages are being given more credit because they are "more resourceful" than the individual pages that they link to. Put it this way, if you have a page with fifty links to travel sites, then your page is more resourceful than the one travel site that has fifty links pointing at it.

As a surfer, I know I've always preferred categorized links pages to search engine results. They truly do offer the most relevant results. Although it seems extremely odd, this could be a little search engine algorithm change going on, which is thought to better serve the searchers.

This shoots down the entire purpose of placing your anchored text link on someone else's page, though, since it seems like it actually causes your own to go down in keyword ranking. When you place your keyword rich text link on someone else's page, you are in fact giving your keyword away to them. You are putting content on their pages, that makes their pages your competition. Think about it: If your keyword wasn't there, would they still be ahead of you in the keyword rankings? Probably not.

On the flipside, if you didn't have the backlink, or "vote" would you be where you are?

At one time, I was at # 36 out of 60,000 results for a keyphrase that didn't appear anywhere in my site, or in my anchor text backlinks. Explain that one. My thought on the entire thing is that if pages containing a link to mine show up first, then it's better than not being seen at all.

 

I know what you are saying. Many forum posts out rank my site which the links point to. I think that has a lot to do with a big site such as a forum being considered an authority site.

 

I see the same problem with G for some of my sites too.

Very strange. What would be the point of ranking the forum thread with my link in it higher than the actual page? Makes no sense at all.

 

IMO it makes perfect sense, The page showing higher in the SERPS with the anchor text link on it is a better match to Googles algo for that term than your page the page linked to.

 

It might indeed be a sign you got a link from a relevant or themed page. Get more of those and I'm sure you will beat them.

 

Yes, this has become very common, and generally it is because the site with the link on it has some sort of authority status, or is high PR. As an example, I placed a link on one of my old established sites that has consistently gotten top 5 rankings for most all important keywords. The link was to a new site. Almost immediately, the old site popped into the top 5 for the anchor text of the link, but the new site didn't seem to receive any real benefit from the link (as far as I can tell). It is an issue that probably won't go away any time soon, unless Google changes its algo to no longer favoring authority sites (which probably won't happen).