Have you thought about what is the difference between opting for a more “pro anchor text” strategy or one that is focused on “link relevancy”?

Using the same keywords repeatedly may lead you into the Google penalty box so try to steer away from that. Instead, use a larger variety of keywords and brand building strategy (hey, even Social media too!) with your company’s name as the anchor text may work well too.

So if you quit obsessing on anchor text with the keywords you want to rank for, how will you be able to rank for those terms?

Find Relevant Links. The question is where, and how?

Don’t focus on where you can get keyword anchor text. Instead, focus on where you can get links on pages with strong relevance to the keywords for which you want to rank, or links that use other ways to correlate to the keyword aside from anchor text.

For example, if your website’s main keyword is “web design“, you could get a variety of links on pages that are relevant to web design using your business name as anchor text on sites such as:

• Directories: These offer specific category relevance. Look for categories on the directory that are specific to web design, make sure all of the sites listed in that category are web design related, and get your site listed there. Some directories include Yellow Pages, Green Book and your industry focused directory.
• Blogs: Guest posting is a great way to get links that will bring traffic back to your website. Submit posts to blogs that are devoted to web design with your best web design content. However, many blogs actually uses the “nofollow” tag so no link juice will be pass over. The thing about doing this is that we want the user and the general public who are interested in your products & services to see and know about you. It helps to build your brand to your target audience. Long term strategy, its a no-brainer.
• Social Mentions: Google and Bing use social updates from Twitter and Facebook in their calculation of what’s popular. Be sure to use relevant keywords within your tweets and Facebook updates, as these can be related to the link in the update. In fact, if you can build a viral piece of information, that can tremendously boost your SERP both directly and indirectly.
• Image Links: For good keyword relevant image links, you’re looking at doing the same thing you would do to optimize the image for search. The image that your website is linking to should use your keywords in the file name and the alt tag.
• Link Requests: If you’re asking other webmasters, make sure the site and page you are requesting your link upon is relevant to your site’s main keywords.

Can This Actually Work?

I’ve done some research on some of my clients and their competitors, looking at information such as where they build their links to (mostly to the home page or a mix to their home page and internal pages), what anchor text they use (keyword rich or a mix of keywords and brand/business/domain), the types of links they build, and how they rank for their primary keywords.

Surprisingly, the websites that are building links (or gaining them organically) with primarily brand name anchor text are ranking well for their main keywords while only using them as anchor text maybe 20 percent of the time.

So essentially, what you’re looking to do is gain links on high authority pages to increase your own authority.

Don’t sweat the fact that maybe the high authority sites aren’t letting you use your preferred anchor text. For that matter, if you don’t specify and just ask to have the company added as a resource, you’re more likely to get the link.

You’ll build the site’s authority, build a solid brand reputation, and avoid Google penalties for your keywords. A win-win situation!

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