Does Google put more weight on the hyperlink or the text being hyperlinked for SEO?

[herbertfilby]

For SEO purposes, which is better:

"Contact us for more <barcode equipment> info!"

or

"<Contact us> for more barcode equipment info!"

Where <text> is the hyperlink, and goes to the Contact Us page regardless which words are hyperlinked. We're trying to optimize for Barcode Equipment, but my boss thinks that by linking "barcode equipment" in the Contact Us page will improve the page rank, where I argue that it's not simply because Google ranks the link, not the link text.

Does Google put more weight on hyperlinked text or does it only rely on the outbound link?

[govicseo]

I'd pass on the hyperlink text strategy since the most effective search [draw] is keywords contained within the <title> metatag which is the first priority metatag indexed by search robots/spiders followed by the <description>, <keywords> metatags and then hard HTML text. And the issue of whether Google.com puts weight on hyperlinked text or outbound link; is of very little value when compared to proper design and placement of relevant keywords within the metatags and hard text on the opening webpage as outlined above.

Good luck!

[J6 design]

Unless you want to rank for “contact us”, you need to use targeted anchor text wherever and whenever possible. And add urgency to encourage more clicks...

IE: Contact us today for more <link>barcode equipment<end link> info!