Anchor Text variation... Myth or Fact?

[mooble]

I've read before that you should "vary" your anchor text as you backlink to make it look more "natural." Is this true or false? Does google really care? I mean if that was the case you could spam links to a competitor's website with the same anchor text, couldn't you? What's the truth?

[BacklinkExcellence]

I can just speak for my personal and subjective (or maybe not so subjective) truth: Myth. Without trying to shove a shameless plug in but for some clients I build millions of links with the same anchor text and it doesn't affect them in a negative way whatsoever.

Others might disagree but this has been my experience so far in countless occasions which leads to the conclusion that "you have to vary your anchors or you'll be penalized" is a myth.

[mooble]

Originally Posted by BacklinkExcellence

I can just speak for my personal and subjective (or maybe not so subjective) truth: Myth. Without trying to shove a shameless plug in but for some clients I build millions of links with the same anchor text and it doesn't affect them in a negative way whatsoever.

Others might disagree but this has been my experience so far in countless occasions which leads to the conclusion that "you have to vary your anchors or you'll be penalized" is a myth.

Thanks for responding. I was hoping someone would say this, becuase i'm planning a massive backlinking outsource and i planned to use the same anchor text.

I've been thinking about this issue for a while and the more i think about it the more it just doesn't make any sense at all. Not only this, but a lot of other "myths" out there by which IF TRUE you could DESTROY your competition by "spamming" whatever it is in relation to backlinking that gets these so called penalties. Anyways, thanks.

[Ian Varnava]

In theory, it makes sense, however in my experience, I haven't noticed a difference.

I've got a website in a VERY competitive niche, where I've been working for over a year to get to the top, and I've recently moved up to #8 from the 2nd page. The competition for this keyword is fierce (similar to "make money online" type of keywords).

What's the only thing I've ever done for backlinking this site? Set up a campaign with The Link Juicer to build 50 links a day, all with the SAME EXACT anchor text, which is the keyword I'm talking about. And I've consistently moved up from being #90 something a year ago to being #8 today, for an extremely fiercely competitive keyword.

I've got other sites where I vary the anchor text and I don't see as good results.

So, I don't know, to each his own, only Google can tell us the real facts on this. In my personal opinion, it doesn't really make a difference, but I do it with most of the sites I'm building these days anyway, to be on the safe side.

[BacklinkExcellence]

Originally Posted by Ian Varnava

I've got other sites where I vary the anchor text and I don't see as good results.

Keep in mind that anchor text gives Google information about the target site like "This site is about blue widgets". So if you vary this too much, you'll rather rank a little bit for everything than very well for something, if that makes sense

[MikeFriedman]

I haven't noticed much of a difference when I concentrate on varying anchor text as compared to when I do not.

However, if you have 10,000 backlinks to a website and ALL of them are the exact same anchor text with no other links, I would imagine that is something that could get flagged by Google for someone to inspect the site manually.

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by mooble

I've read before that you should "vary" your anchor text as you backlink to make it look more "natural." Is this true or false? Does google really care? I mean if that was the case you could spam links to a competitor's website with the same anchor text, couldn't you? What's the truth?

I can't believe the responses here. Varied anchor text has had a huge affect on my link building and I ALWAYS vary it now, no matter what.

So yes, Google does pay attention to varied anchor text as it is more likely to vary when created by many different people rather than just yourself.

This is not to say you can spam competitors websites with the same anchor text and they will suffer.. they will probably rise for that keyword. But if you varied the anchor text and spammed them I would bet they would rise even higher and faster!

Even just varying the capital letters helps massively for me.

Cheers,
Dave

[scott g]

I wonder why Google Webmaster Tools keeps tabs on "Links to your site" and lists out the Anchor text in numerical order of popularity...?!

The weirdest thing is that the top Anchor texts Google Webmaster Tools shows are the terms that I rank the highest for!?!?

My 2cents!

CHEERS!