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No i dont think it will, as long as the text is natural, then i can see you having that term in your blogs so many times that it will look un-natrual. I really would not worry. this is a good thing to do, of cause even better if you can get external links to point to you with the link text. Only the first link in a page will help, so if it is in twice only link the first instance.

That's would be an awesome feature. Unfortunately, the only way to get a report like that is if you don't have any competitors chosen in your campaign set up. If you do have competitors in your campaign, there's no way to remove their link data from this report. If you're interested, you can submit a PRO feature request. Other members vote them up and down and this is how the product team decides what to build. Regardless, thanks for the heads up and letting us know this is a functionality you'd like to see. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hey Jon, I forgot about a new backlink checker you might already know about.  It's now a part of SEOBook's SEO toolbar, but I discovered a few weeks before: http://ahrefs.com

Here is a easy way to do link profiling from Dr. Pete: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer If you are a pro member you can see all the link data. Once you identified where your site is lacking when it comes to links from similar DA as your competitors, once should start with the areas where your site needs most work.

Vary your anchor text - A LOT. Use as many synonyms as possible. This helps with Latent Semantic Indexing; once you start telling Google a page is about these synonyms, it will start to imply other synonyms as well.

Thanks Marek, I didn't realize that Bing was also now in control of the Directory. -Brandon

I can't help with finding an international alternative to Zemanta, because it's highly specialized and one-of-a-kind, but I can help with the second. Here's how you should think of international sites. If you have a blog about camping, and you get a link from a site about pets, it's considered irrelevant. Links from international sites are the same way. They'll pass value just like any link, but they won't pass relevancy, so they won't help as much with moving up in your country's SERPs (only from a relevancy standpoint; as I said, they'll still pass value which will help you move up). They'll help a little bit more if it's the same language, but not as much as links from sites in your own country. Don't worry, I've got proof. I did an experiment. I tried to get an exact keyword match site to rank in Google India getting links from only sites in the US. The result? I ranked great in the US SERPs, but not nearly as well in the Google India SERPs. I still ranked decent (#9 in India, #2 in US), because the links were of the same language (both India and US speak English), but it just didn't have the same effect.

For link management, I recommend with no restraint Raven Tool's Link Manager. The kind of raw data they provide on all of your prospects are outstanding. If there's ever a chance in anchor text or location of the link, you're immediately notified. I don't know much about Wordtracker's Link Builder, but I can tell you that the link builders I trust me use Raven Tools and absolutely love it.

That's a pretty broad question, but two tactics that would work best, although by no means unknown, are internal linking and guest posting. Internal linking is basic, yet so freakin effective. Everyone says you should, but few actually do it correctly. Hopefully you have a blog. When posting about anything, and I mean anything, tie in those pages to your conversation. Don't just randomly link to them, but make sure you steer the convo towards the topic of those pages so you can link naturally to them. (And yes, internal links work. One of my client's competitors is ranking #1 for a money term that ranks solely on internal links. Frustrating, yes, but more importantly, learn from it.) Guest blogging is great in this instance because you're going for 30 different pages, which means you need multiple links from a single opportunity. In most guest posts you usually get at least two links in the bio, which you can use for any of those 30 pages, but like when doing internal linking on your blog, make sure you tie some of those pages into what you're writing about in the bulk of your post. For example, if one of your pages has some great information on biking helmet X, and in your post you're talking about biking, make sure you start talking about the different options you have for helmets, and say that one of these options is helmet X (which you link to). The blogger won't have a problem with this because it's on topic & relevant. Hope this helps! By no means is this comprehensive. You can go a number of directions, but since you're building links to a bulk number of pages, these two tactics would be the most efficient.

Google says they want a "natural" looking anchor text pattern as they don't want anyone buying links. Thus, you are correct in that they are penalizing you for having the same anchor text in your links. You need to focus on words that people would actually be searching for to find your site and like what they find. If I was running www.houserestoration.com and drove people via the anchor text "kittens," people would not like my site as it wasn't relevant to their needs/interests as they are looking for information about "house restoration," not "kittens." Likewise, even words closer to your category might not be the best. People searching for "house" can be looking for a lot of things, but I' d say given a Google search for "house" that more people looking for House (the TV show), Government branches, or Real Estate which have nothing to very little to do with "house restoration." You know what your customers are looking for. Use those words.

Thanks guys

Thanks guys!

Great - thanks for the info guys!

Thanks Ross

Hi Chris, You've touch the exact problem I have. My website doesn't appear in Google Places at all. I am really confused about it, because I went through all Google Places guideline and make sure that everything filled in properly and account has no violetions. However my website do not want to appear in Google Places! When I did analysis of my competitors I've got a feeling that those people just appear there without doing anything!  Just because Google decided to put them. Our website has the hight DA, MT, PA among all our competitors. Please give some good tips about how to be listed in Google Places, what I should do for that and what is the best places to submit a link for GP? Cheers, Russel

Yeah this is really strange. We have now dropped out of site for all of our main keywords. Weirder still, is that for some of the keywords the contact page on our site is ranking above the target landing page. The thing I have noticed about the new hosting is that we no longer show for 'pages from the UK' and also the site speed on analytics seems quite a bit slower. Do you think this could have all been caused by adding that one link? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Our website is www.mysocialagency.com

Hello MFC, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. If I've correctly understood your query, you are saying that you are seeing competitors doing linkbuilding to their directory listings. Is this right? While I can't see a real problem with the idea, I'm also not sure it's a very good use of time/funding. Given that Local is so Google-centric, and that it is the strength of your website which is so big a factor in your rankings, building links to your own property (your website) is likely to be a much better idea than building them to 3rd party sites. Also, of perhaps relevant interest is this recent discussion regarding building links to one's Google Place Page. I had a discussion with Mike Blumenthal about this, which he subsequently turned into a blog post. I recommend that you read it, including the great discussion below the post: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/24/google-places-myth-linking-to-your-places-page/ Hope this helps! Miriam

Thanks for the feedback.