Varying Anchor Text?

[lutherlars]

For SEO purposes what is the importants of altering anchor text? For example, is it more beneficial to throw lots of the same anchor text out there or is it more beneficial to modify your anchor text, using phrases that closely replicate what you are actually trying to rank for?
For my own example, dog obedience training is a keyword phrase I am pushing to rank for, so should I be only using this anchor text or should I be also using keyword phrases like dog obedience, obedience training, etc? Cheers.

[nicktyler]

I think you should be going for the latter of your choices and varying you anchor text around closley related terms to your main term, also including your main term. that way you are promoting diversity in your link profile and making it appear more 'natural'.

Also if you vary your anchor text a bit you are sending positive signals that you are the best place not for just dog obedience traning but everything about dog obedience traning which can't be a bad thing.

[YourProfessional]

Definitely vary your anchor text. This is how I do it (variation of Matt Carters advice):

40% main keyword
40% LSI Keywords
20% unrelated keywords [Link Here, Click Here, Get It Now]

[bitriot]

I can't find the link anymore (but I wish I could) - I think it was a SEOmoz whiteboard friday clip - Anyhow, the speaker was saying how in his research, he had found that links that indicated something about the site were better than exact match links.

That is to say a link like "best dog training course!" would be slightly more effective than "dog training course".

I think link variety is probably a prudent strategy so when I hire out my blog network links, generally, I will include the following sorts of anchor text supposing dog training is the keyword:

http : //dogtraining.com - plain URL
dog training - exact match anchor
the best dog training ever! - exact match with surrounding positive text
a great course to train your dog - non exact match but still positive
check out this course! - CTA type link (click here, check this out, etc)

Generally at this point I put about 50% of my URLs as exact match, 25 as exact match with surrounding text, 5% as regular domain, and then 20% among the non exact match and CTA types.

Remember, there is no best strategy but this is my strategy :]

[Webkingseo]

As we know its easy to target a long tail keyword(depends on competition)... if you first start with some long tails ones which contain your main keyword then it will be more helpful for you...... varying the keyword is always a good but always put your main keywords in your meta description and in your keywords(in on page).

[DebbieD]

I think this is the link bitriot (see 2 posts above) is referring to. Anyways, this is a great YouTube clip from SeoMoz (I think) that talks about varying anchor text.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Hope it helps! It has helped me tons.

[bitriot]

Yep, that is the video! Thanks :]

[Gary Gomez]

Before I panda I stuck to one anchore text only, post Panda its simliar to what YourProfessional says.....mixing it up and even going so far as totally random stuff now and again

[WiFi]

Using the exact keyword is not natural if it's every single time. I always explain it like this: Imagine you have a phrase, let's say "red bikes with white tires" and you tell that phrase to 100 people and ask them to write it on a piece of paper in an hour.

Most will say "red bikes with white tires," some will say "white tires on a red bike," some will be misspelled, some will be blank (because a lot of people couldn't post a link in WYSIWYG if you paid them to); they're just going to vary.

Easy solution:

<a href="site.com/" title="{keyword|keywords|key word}>{keyword|keywords|{keywrd|key word|keyword|kyword|keyword's}|click here|site.com}</a>

Everything about your campaign should be unique. Including everything about your back links.

[ukcarl]

You should definatly vary it, all the same text just wont look natural to Google mix it up for sure

[outwest]

I \once saw a site with 6000 backlinks

it was ranked like number 8
the sites above it had WAY WAY WAY less backlinks and PR

I checked the backlinks of the 6000 backlinks site
100 percent of the backlinks were the same anchor text

coincidence?
I think not

[yukon]

Originally Posted by outwest

I once saw a site with 6000 backlinks

it was ranked like number 8
the sites above it had WAY WAY WAY less backlinks and PR

I checked the backlinks of the 6000 backlinks site
100 percent of the backlinks were the same anchor text

coincidence?
I think not

Was most of the 6k backlinks on one or two blog rolls (site-wide links)?

[JerrickYeoh]

If you rank the keywords far away mean maybe over 50 SERP. Than you need to do on main keywords until you get rank on likely within 20 SERP. Then is time for more competitive. Then you have to focus on vary keywords in order to rank well in your main keyword.

[John Moore]

To make your link profile look as natural as possible to Google you need lot's of different anchor text variations, don't have 90% of your incoming links using just 1 keyword as an extreme example, for example if your main target keyword is "dog training", you should also build links with the anchor text "best dog training" "dog training guide" "dog training information" "click here" find out more" dog training info", etc......this looks natural to google, and doesn't appear overly manipulated, we do this for our clients with our contextual backlinking service and it works well to sustain high rankings for the long term, not just a quick pop. This issue will become more important going into 2012 I believe...

[StoneWilson]

I think use different anchor texts would be better, I don't have exact rate for them, but for your main keywords, build more backlinks with that anchor text will be beneficial for your keyword rank.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by yukon

Was most of the 6k backlinks on one or two blog rolls (site-wide links)?

not sure to be honest and I did not cannot remember the kw so impossible to find again,

[river99]

do you think seo is all just about anchor text?

please check your seo guide again!

[outwest]

I also think it would look way more natural to have LSI words in the anchor text

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by outwest

not sure to be honest and I did not cannot remember the kw so impossible to find again,

well that's just like a huge piece of the puzzle you are leaving out lol. if it's a sitewide link from the same domain, it's pretty much considered 1 link.