I've always had different variences of my anchor text - thinking if I don't do that, I may run into trouble other wise.

I read today about a backlinking company that said that they do not vary their anchor text and their advice is not to do it - or it may hurt you.

So which is true? Do I switch up a little on my anchor texts or keep it the same?

It's BS put out by people who couldn't work out if their own backside is on fire without a diagram!
It goes back a few years does this one, the "link builders" would have hundreds of thousands of links on various junk directories and networks, and of course they would get a early boost then disappear once Google engineers had figured out what and where to hit.

But of course it wasn't the links that were junk it was because the anchor text was all the same.

On one hand, having lots of links with the same anchor text being "bad" and on the other hand, forum sig links being "good" doesn't really hold water when you look at the two side by side!

As I've said before (and probably will again) use logic and common sense NOT fairy dust and black magic.


When you are targeting different keywords or phrases vary your text if you are only concerned with one word or phrase keep it all the same.

Maybe some variants would be good, you must focus on the main target keyword at least at 60% rate.

Mike I am not too sure about the 60% that you have mentioned. I believe you have something in mind to mention that particular percentage. I believe that it should vary depending upon the competitiveness of the keyword and of course common sense.

Personally I always recommend trying something. SEO is empirical, you learn by experience.

From my experience, it doesn't seem to matter too much at all. Last year I was working for an architectural firm and the majority of the links I got just had the anchor text "architects". We certainly weren't penalised for this. If your inbound links are on different pages, different IPs and so forth, it's unlikely that Google's going to think you're spamming. They're pretty good at distinguishing these days. I do however vary mine. Suppose you have 3 keyphrases you're targeting on a page, you could make several phrases that crossover a little like so:

Quality Rattan Furniture Online
The Best Rattan Patio Furniture
We supply Rattan Furniture
Rattan Garden Furniture
Rattan Furniture Suppliers

My main reasoning behind varying things a little is that Google loves natural looking links. So do you think links would look natural if they all have the same anchor text?

I would agree with Ed Gary.

So do you think links would look natural if they all have the same anchor text?

Different variations are better, to target other keywords. So that if you fail to rank on one keywords other keywords has still possibility to rank.

It is good idea to have a variance in anchor text while building links to your site.

Originally Posted by arnabme

Mike I am not too sure about the 60% that you have mentioned. I believe you have something in mind to mention that particular percentage. I believe that it should vary depending upon the competitiveness of the keyword and of course common sense.

Arnab, in this case is when you are trying to reach top rankings on certain keywords.
But, I do agree...keyword variations are good.

Variations on keywords can be very useful as one of your keywords can be on top of the list.

There are a lot of different opinions out there about varying your anchor text. But I know several people who always use the same 1 anchor text keyword phrase, and they rank number 1 on Google.

There is no harm if you target different keywords; the only disadvantage of that is that your link building is not focus so much that you may find yourself finding it hard to rank all that keywords.

Arnab, in this case is when you are trying to reach top rankings on certain keywords.

Mike, I was wondering about the particular 60% that you have mentioned. I think you are having particular reasoning for the same.

There is no magic # like 60%... That's about as reliable as saying your keyword density should be 4.763%... No such rule exists.

As with almost everything in SEO, the correct answer, "it depends"...

It depends on how many inbound links you are planning to build... If you're only going to have 3 inbound links then having them all the same is likely NOT going to trigger any kind of filter at Google. But if you're going to spam thousands of links to your URL via directory submissions and other automated means, having every one of them use the same link text SCREAMS... "Look at me! I am spamming links to my page for the keyword phrase I want to rank for!" It looks unnatural and is quite simple for Google to detect even via an automated method.

It depends on whether you want to rank for only a single keyword phrase or also rank for slight variations of those phrases. Using variations in your link text will not only make the links look more natural, but will also help you rank for many slight variations of the targeted keyword phrase.

To have a bit variations is good but not too many of them in my opinion. =)

You need to know your priority keyword that your going to use in Anchor text. Google will detect this anchor texts and it will help your website.

It depends on whether you want to rank for only a single keyword phrase or also rank for slight variations of those phrases.

Yes, sometimes Long Tail Optimization helps gather more traffic than main stream keywords as the competition is too high at the other end.

i just select two or three of my keywords that i really want to rank as as anchor text... Having to many requires more hard work...

Concentrate on your preferred keywords..

Focus on variation of your keyword is a good idea. Of course most of your backlink should be your exact targeted keyword.