Inbound links are one of the primary indicators of content, at least they are to Google.
The text of links (Anchor Text) is treated in a special way in our search engine (Google). Most search engines associate the text of a link with the page that the link is on. In addition, we associate it with the page the link points to. Anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves.
From: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page (Founders of Google)
If you really want to understand how to achieve the best rankings in Google, follow the link above and take some notes. It’s really about inbound links and anchor text. Still is.