Keyword in Anchor Text can hurt you....

[playa4thee]

Most of us try to obtain ONE Way links to our site to help it grow and rank better by commenting and link building. However, I was doing some research and I read that using keyword in your anchor text when leaving comments can actually end up hurting you and dropping your site's overall ranking. Google is constantly changing as a way to stay on top of the many out there who try to muscle & scam their way to the top of the pages. I do NOT buy links, never have and have been building my site solely on work alone. The people who use backdoor tactics hurt those of us who genuinely work legitimately to increase our site's status and rank.
Any thoughts on this Fellow Warriors?

[nick1980]

Where did you read about it?

[academysigma]

I don't think comments are as valuable as they were before. Any post that allows comments with keyword backlinks seem to be instantly bombarded by link builders.

[outwest]

anchor text should be varied
if 99 percent of your anchor text is
blue widgets
that looks unnatural

mix up
blue widgets
mydomain.com
click here
Check out this website
etc

[mazdak]

Originally Posted by outwest

anchor text should be varied
if 99 percent of your anchor text is
blue widgets
that looks unnatural

mix up
blue widgets
mydomain.com
click here
Check out this website
etc

What you mean it should be varied?

[yukon]

LMAO!

I hope OP is kidding.

Anchor-text is one of the things that Google will use to rank a page (yes still in 2011).

For you guys that think you need to vary anchor-text, you might want to look at some tough keywords not in your niche, you'll see top ranking sites that could care less about varying anchor-text. Keep in mind that you rank pages in the SERPs, each page isn't always the same keyword.

[playa4thee]

Originally Posted by yukon

LMAO!

I hope OP is kidding.

.

Actually I am not.. I had read about it and ran it here to hear what you guys had to say...

Originally Posted by nick1980

Where did you read about it?

Here is the original post...

Keywords in Anchor Text Links Down The Drain


If you dedicate a daily effort to obtain one way links to your website with keyword based anchor text links, DON’T! You are hurting your SERP. Google filters will measure your links and if they have keywords in the anchor text they will be devaluated. This might be part of the latest updates in Google. It might be possible for you to insert a few links with variations in your keywords but the effect remains to be seen.


This is once again another effort by Google in order to have websites building natural links. The other night I spent 35 minutes posting comments in “doFollow” blogs and posting a couple of articles here and there using the keywords “Miami Web Design”. The next day, our position in Google dropped down about 7 spaces. This has happened to us 3 times already. However, then we took the next step and worked ourselves a few comments using for anchor text just the name of our company (brand) in “doFollow” blogs as well as “noFollow” blogs and to our surprise our listing came back to its original position.
Here is our analysis

Everything nowadays with Google revolves around the word “Natural”. If you pay for links, this is considered a shortcut and a very harmful action if I may say; it is actually one of the worse ideas. If you comment on blogs leaving keyword based links (inside the anchor text), once again you are buying yourself prosperity without really proving that your website is genuine and provides good content. If you publish articles well, that is a different story since it is an honest action and it demonstrates your efforts to provide a helpful resource for your customers. So what is the ideal candidate to give good PageRank? The ideal candidate is the one who unconditionally comments on blogs and by unconditionally I mean that you are contributing to a conversation in a blog and since you do not expect anything from it you are not leaving your keyword based link.
Regardless of how grandiose Google is, it is still a piece of software; you can look at it the way you want to. Of course Google was, and is raised by a number of very talented and intelligent people but it is still a software and there are always corners to go around every software. Mix it up! Every time you work on your backlinks use your brand name instead of a keyword and for every “doFollow” link you accomplish sacrifice yourself and obtain two “noFollow” links. Keep Google on the doubt instead of confirming that all you want is the PageRank by just adding keyword based anchor links in “doFollow” scenarios.

[MikeFriedman]

That article is absolutely stupid.

They spent 35 minutes doing blog comments and their site dropped 7 spots, therefore anchor text must be bad. Morons.

First of all, you would only get a few comments done in 35 minutes if you are actually reading the posts. Let's say on the high end 15 though. How many of those are going to get through the moderator or even be looked at by the moderator in the next 5-7 days? Half? Maybe 10 if you are lucky.

But they say their site dropped the next day. So maybe 3-4 links were actually live within 24 hours. Yeah, 3 links with anchor text caused their site to drop 7 spots.

Of course, that is assuming that Google even found those links within 24 hours, which probably wouldn't happen either.

Brilliant case study though. They really did a bang up job.

They should be embarrassed to have even published that article.

That being said, yeah you should be mixing up anchor text. For one, it could look suspicious if your site ever came under a manual review if 100% of your links have the same anchor text.

Varying anchor text might also bring you traffic for terms you never uncovered.

[BarryOnline]

Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text To Next Generation Link Signals - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

[MikeFriedman]

More people should watch that Whiteboard Friday. That was one of the better ones they have done in the last few months, in my opinion.

[BarryOnline]

Personally, I like to vary my anchor text, for a few reasons.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to try & think like a Google engineer who has the job of trying to make it harder for you to manipulate your rankings.

Let’s say you have 1,000 links coming to your site from 1,000 different websites, & let’s say that these 1,000 links all have the same anchor text.

Do you really think it would be natural for 1,000 webmasters to all uses identical anchor text when linking to your site?

Don’t you think that at least a few of these websites may use "click here" or "see this site" or use just a clickable URL to link to your site?

I think it just makes more sense to vary anchor text a little. Maybe use something like 80% your main keyword & have a mix of partial match anchor text.

My anchor text is always varied anyway as I usually rank each page for at least 3 target keywords.

[36burrows]

Originally Posted by BarryOnline

Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text To Next Generation Link Signals - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

That's a very good link, thank you sir!

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by yukon

LMAO!

I hope OP is kidding.

Anchor-text is one of the things that Google will use to rank a page (yes still in 2011).

For you guys that think you need to vary anchor-text, you might want to look at some tough keywords not in your niche, you'll see top ranking sites that could care less about varying anchor-text. Keep in mind that you rank pages in the SERPs, each page isn't always the same keyword.

I totally agree. When it comes to varying your anchor text, it is not for the singular page, but for the site as a whole.

People with those thin mini sites that are trying to just target the highest volume keyword are the ones that usually only target one keyword for the entire site. Also they usually only target the home page.

When I am building links I focus on one keyword at a time; this is for a single page. Once that one is ranking high in the serps I then go after another keyword; new keyword means new page/post. This way my anchor text is technically varied when it comes to the site as a whole.

-- Jeff

[yukon]

Thing is, you can use exact match anchor-text keywords in 100% of your link building (per page), & you'll still end up with a percentage of links that you didn't create (no anchor-text). I've never built a site & 6 months later the only links pointing at my sites pages were the links I built.

As far as that video Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text To Next Generation Link Signals - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

I know exact match anchor-text still works for building backlinks, I use it (per page) & my competition does..

No doubts that in content links are good, in fact I'm working on a new WP theme that groups multiple pages as page titles for each page into a group of 100% related links.

Think wikipedia pages, only instead of jumping to on-page links, jumping to the next chapter of a book from inside the article/content.

Howstuffworks[dot]com has this system tweaked out on most of their pages.

This setup almost gurantees multiple SERP listings for the root keyword, as long as that root keyword is included in each page title in the group of pages.

So instead of sidebar links, my goal is to keep the same links that would have been in the sidebar, inside the article like a TOC for every single page in a chapter/group of pages.

I already have this setup up & running for about 2 weeks now & it does work straight out of the box (multiple SERP listings per keyword). I just need to finish this new theme & move it all to a real site instead of the testing domain/theme it's on now.

The reason I'm stuck on multiple SERP listings for each keyword is, most times the multiple SERP listings tend to gravitate to the first page of the SERPs, which takes some of the load off of external backlinking.

[App Developers]

well, if most of you buy into this........it will be easier for the rest of us!

[akasheg]

Originally Posted by outwest

anchor text should be varied
if 99 percent of your anchor text is
blue widgets
that looks unnatural

mix up
blue widgets
mydomain.com
click here
Check out this website
etc

Agree, most of the people get hurt because they target the same keyword over and over again which starts looking suspicious as every natural link profile will contains all kinds of links with all kinds of text ranging from different keywords to the domain name of the site or simply something random that describes the page.

[RevSEO]

Its all about making it appear natural, and in order to do so you need to vary your anchor text as mentioned throughout this thread.

For example, if your keywords "blue widgets" as mentioned above then this should be the breakdown of your keywords in anchor text usage.

blue widgets = 60% of anchor text
buy blue widgets = 10% of anchor text
blue widgets info = 10% of anchor text
bluewidgetsurl.com = 10% of anchor text
click here/here/more info/etc/random = 10 % of anchor text

Obviously you'll want the 3 other usable anchor texts to be something useful and related to your niche. With anything in SEO, make it appear natural.

[BeeJay]

This might not be totally pie in the sky if you accept seomoz's estimates that brand metrics will play a role in future rankings.

[paulgl]

I make more money selling links on my authority sites than anything else.
Yesterday, the total was almost $200 alone. People who buy links
do them the right way. How is google going to know a friggin paid
link? And who cares? Their whole empire is paid on PAID LINKS.

People who buy links want links in context, with their chosen anchor
text. It's a signal. One of many. They want the link on only one page,
not global. And of course these people do no want a big red flag around
the link saying it's paid. But that has to do with other things. Like
tricking the reader into thinking it's real info. The best of both worlds.
Targeted traffic and backlinks!

I mean come on. These same people are screaming in other threads
about how great it is to have a bunch of external links that point to
other authoritative sites. Oh, so it's okay to link to any site, just not
get paid for it? Get real people. Pay up or no link. If you are providing
external links for free, man get with it.

So many of you speak out of both sides of your mouths. You want to
blog comment, complete with a link, and say that enhances a site.
But paying for a link is somehow bad?!?!?!? Come on.

There is a difference between hurting and helping. If you put 10,000
links all with "make money online," the whole thing can look crazy.
But that just gets ignored. Nothing more, nothing less.

You cannot control who, what, or where you are linked from.

If you people are soooooooooooo worried about getting penalized
from links, then you had better put up large signs on your site
spelling out the conditions that people MUST follow if they link to
you! Or better still, just say, "Don't link to me because I cannot control
how you do it!"

EDIT: I just thought of something silly. How come nobody mentioned that
adobe ranks for "click here" solely based on anchor text?

Exactly. They sure got hurt......

Paul

[Kris79]

I would agree that having PHRASE match anchor text is great idea.
It looks more natural. What is the possibility to have 1000 backlinks all with exact KW match? Answer: none. And Google knows that.


@revseo - your percentage is ok, but I would even go further and create only about 40% backlinks with exact match