Anchor Text Spamming
 

When I first heard about anchor text, I remember it was best to have all of the same anchor text on all of your links. Then I thought I remember reading or hearing that if you had external links using the same anchor text, the search engines would consider it spamming. Is this true? Should you vary your anchor text? What should be consistant in all of your anchor text links? How much of a variation can you get away with without losing your effectiveness?

I searched the archives and came up negative.

Hi,

it's still a controversial one actually!

There are two schools of thought, (a) go for the same anchor text every time and really focus your campaign - or (b) mix it up with variations on a theme to make your links appear more "natural" and avoid any possible penalty for SE "spamming".

I'm going for B, but looking at the backlinks and anchor text of many page 1 websites, A still seems to be effective at the moment.

Cheers,
Paz.

Knowing this will come in handy, seeing how one of my job tasks is link exchanges. I'd rather go for B though (although A is much simpler), as I can see the SE (especially G) eventually nailing 'unnatural' things like all the links having the same anchor text, as this would indicate people trying to manipulate the SEs...

Following plan (b), do you reverse the order of the main keywords you want to incorporate in your anchor text? How do you guys vary your text? I want to make sure I am using the keyterms most relevant to a site, but I want to make sure my efforts remain rewarding.

Hi,

well I guess the strategy depends on your market. I'm selling products in 5 important regions in a country.

So my variations include "...products in country.." ".... products in region1 country..." "....products in region2 & region3 - Country" and occassionally "products in region4" as a deep link to the relevant page and so on. Yes sometimes I reverse the order, but the anchor text has to look natural:- I get traffic from quite a few of the directories I submit to.

I rank very well in msn, and I rank well in Google for allinurl (but I have to admit that may not a great indicator).

Don't forget to keep a diary of your submissions and data such as anchor text (title) and description.

Cheers,
Paz.

Read Google's patent. All of the info related to this is there.

Mix and match I'd say is best coz eventually anchor text spam might become a big thing. In any case, even when dealing with anchor text, keep in mind natural optimization.

By that I mean make your site more relevant to your keywords, and think like googlebot!

I'm on boards with Plan B - to mix up the anchor text. If possible, even vary where the link are pointing to within your site.

For us, I change the 'ADD URL' page which displays the HTML we'd like the webmaster to put on their website. I change the anchor text about every month or so.

Try using phrases like:

"keyword" services
"keyword" deals
buy "keyword"
"keyword" in "city"
"keyword" in "region"
Best "keyword"

... and so on. It seems to be working well for us.

I think you need to study the diversity of searches. Let's say the main keyword represents a huge majority of the searches, and the other phrases are much rarer. In that case key word diversity may hurt you. I'm also of the opinion that if you get enough authority for the main keyword that you will be able to optimize for the sub phrases easier.

Singular and plural... with one adjetive changing... for example if I want to target 2 keyords, I write them in singular and plural and also with a third keyword changing