We already know that using the same keyword over and over again when trying to rank your website high in the search engines is not a great practice in link building. It could bring some un-wanted penalties for over-optimising it or simply a keyword rank filter.

Varying the anchor text is one of the best practices for avoiding this issue, but how to do it properly and where to get perfect variations you will find out from the points below.

1. Brand name

Company name (or even website name, if it is something brand-able) should be found in your anchors as often as possible. Not only because it helps you create a good link profile but it also puts some weight/authority on your brand when it comes to search engines. If you have a website with an exact match domain just use keywords capitalisation (like SeoAgencyLondon.com).

2. Long tail keywords

By including your main keywords in a long tail one you are not only getting more variations of your anchor text but you also end-up ranking for those laser-targeted 3, 4 or even more words long-tail keywords. Trying to rank for “Seo”? Why not try using it in your anchor texts with terms like “UK affordable seo”, “Certified seo company”, “London seo agency” and so on. As many variation as possible can only mean good things in terms of link building.

3. Related phrases

Similar to long tail keywords, these related phrases can really make a difference. From “Get your seo experts” to let’s say “Seo your website”, these can be added in your link building strategy as well.

4. Synonyms

Synonyms are another great method to vary your anchor text. Not only that, but you can also find some other goldmine keywords to try and rank for.

5. Natural anchors

Natural anchors come from link baiting, guest posts and so on. When someone links to you most of the times they will not use an anchor text with your desired keyword but he will use terms like “See here”, “Here”, “Click here”, “More info”, “Details here” etc. Use these variations as well for a natural looking links profile.

One of the most popular theories related to how Google ranks a website for a certain keyword is the that you must integrate lots of backlinks with the desired anchor text. Probably the best example ever is the “click here” results where Adobe gets first place due to a large number of backlinks with the anchor “click here”.

However, Adobe ranks for the term “here” on top 3 as well. If we take a quick look on opensiteexplorer – anchor text distribution we can see why:

-          47,000 inbound links anchored “here”

-          39,000 inbound links anchored “click here”

The examples could go on and on, but one thing is sure: backlinks with proper anchor text can skyrocket your rankings in search engine results. However, what about anchor text distribution, can one have too many links with the same anchor thus over-optimising that very keyword?

Let’s take a certain example: “web design”. To stay on the safe side of link building, instead of building dozens of backlinks with anchor text “web design” one can easily use variations like “professional web design”, “web design London”, “web design firm”, “affordable web design company” and so on. Not only that you are strengthening the juice on “web design” but you can also receive benefits from other long-tail keywords, as shown in the above example.

There is no certain ration for anchored vs. not anchored links or how to stay under radar when building links for a certain keywords, but if you do a simple search on opensiteexplorer.org and notice your main keyword is over-optimised (like let’s say 90% of your links pointing to your site with the very same text), it might be a clever move to lower those numbers and start building links with more text variation.

Today we will talk a little about Anchor Text and it’s importance in terms of SEO, mostly about how it can help a website gaining better position in SERPs. We all know what an anchor text is but do we know how to properly use it?

The anchor text of external links ranks among the top three most important factors that influence the position in search engine results, according to SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors. Therefore using the anchor text as it should be could bring impressive results in SERPs, of course, along with other on-page “tweaks” like titles, headers, Alt Text and so on.

But why is a link’s anchor text considered so important? Links are seen as votes in favor of a site and anchors explain to search engines what the website pointing to is about. Search engines will attribute that page/website to the anchor text thus giving better position in SERPs.

How many words should an anchor text contain? According to many SEO folks, about 8-10 words should be enough. Anchor texts should be helpful for users thus making them click-through not of curiosity but because it serves their interests. An anchor with an irrelevant text will not help us gaining higher positions but in the same time they are helpful for “anchor text diversity”. A quality anchor text can definitely double a link’s value.

Here are some tools for checking the links and anchors to a certain website:

-          Backlink Watch – shows anchor text, PR and number of outbound links, of course, limited by the search engines

-          SEO Spyglass – although it tries to show more than 1,000 links it is as well limited by search engines however it can show from anchor text to ip diversity and so on

-          Majestic SEO – paid tool, it has a fantastic internal database that can show up to millions of links (if available), with many interesting details any SEO should know

Every website targeting a specific keyword to rank for has one main objective: to get as many backlinks anchored with the main keyword. Is this the best practice or not ?

The best way to describe this would be by using an example : let’s take the keyword web design for example. Most SEO folks claim that anchor text should be not only web design but also best web design, web design London, top web design company and so on, so vary the anchor but still use the main keyword in its body. However this could be a big mistake due to one major problem : backlinks appear un-natural to search engines, thus raising a red flag.

What we are trying to say is that by analysing the top websites in a certain niche, you will probably notice a lot of them ranking quite high for some keywords but with many backlinks pointing to them with other anchors or without any anchor at all. And they are well deserving rankings (according to search engines) due to the fact that it does not look like an obvious link building campaign but like the links are gained from different channels by merit.

That is exactly what most automated SEO tools these days do, whether we are talking about Internet directories submission or even social bookmarking tools, offer the possibility of spinning the title, so that you won’t get many links pointing to your website with the same anchor text, thus creating a « link-spike ».

One of the best methods of avoiding this problem would be to verify how your backlinks profile appears for the search engines by checking the anchors pointing to your website. There are many SEO tools for this, some free, some paid, however the best one available nowadays is definitely the one offered by Majestic SEO. Do you have too many backlinks with the same anchor pointing to your site ? Easy task, just concentrate on lowering those numbers by building non-anchored backlinks that leverage the possibility of leaving a footprint for search engines. It is always best practice to get a more natural backlinks profile as this gains higher rankings, even though you might think the only thing that can bring you the desired rankings is « many links with same anchor text ».