I was looking for the best practice to use anchor tags...

[impressem]

Seomoz says NOT to use your anchor terms on other external pages as you will cannabilize your main page - this is news to me. Appreciate any input on this.

[irvingw]

Not sure exactly what you are asking, can you send a link to what they are saying?

[First]

I think the posting you are referring to is this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization

The posting does not say that the use your anchor terms on other external pages will cannibalize your main page. The problem comes when you link to multiple pages on your site with the same anchor terms.

The suggestion is to use the same anchored term on multiple relevant pages throughout your site to link back to the home page (or desired page). The idea is not to optimize various pages on your site for the same keywords.

googlebot-snowboards.gif

[impressem]

Was using the "term extractor" in seomoz, this is what I found (see last bullet)...

How Can I "Perfectly" Target a Term/Phrase?

Keyword density and repetition are poor systems for measuring the targeting ability of a page. The search engines are more likely to employ systems like term weight, which calculate keyword usage both locally (on your site and page) and globally (throughout the web). Since this metric is impossible to measure without access to the search engines' indices, the best thing to do is follow these basic rules - use your primary keyword term/phrase in:

• The title tag at least once (usually no more as this can appear spammy)
• The H1 header tag of the page
• At least once in a bold or strong tag
• Several times in the body text of the page (at least 2-3X and more when appropriate)
• NOT in the anchor text of outbound links - this indicates to the search engines that another page (the one you link to) is relevant to this keyword phrase and can cause issues of additional competition or keyword cannibalization

[impressem]

This is what I've understood as well...thanks.

[impressem]

Guys, after reading this again, I realize I misunderstood - NOT in the anchor text of outbound links --- OUTBOUND LINKS...this makes sense not to anchor tag your keyword terms to outbound websites...thanks!

[First]

Ah now I see. Outbound to other sites. Yes you definitely don't want to do that!