Link Building And Anchor Text Placement

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Hi everyone,

I can't seem to find a concrete answer on how anchor text is going, so I'm hoping you all can shed some light on it. We were asked to do a few guest blog posts, and I wanted to figure out what's the most effective way to use the backlinks. Granted, I know user experience is most important, but since we have control over the topic, I can tailor it so that won't be a problem. Other than user experience, how should I approach it? Things I'm considering:

1. Should I use branded text or keyword text? Kemp & Ruge Law Group vs car accident attorney? I've seen some reports of exact match anchor text causing some penalties, but I'm thinking that's for like thousands of links. We barely have any.

2. Should we point the links to our homepage to help our domain authority or to the page with the keyword phrase we want to rank higher?

Thanks,

Ruben

[TakeshiYoung]

Penguin penalizes sites that have a large amount of over-optimized anchor text, so my advice would be to mix it up. Have some links lead to inner pages using keyword anchor text, and have other links lead to your homepage with your brand name. Include suboptimal anchor text like "click here" or the URL.

Just mix it up and don't overdo it. Make sure the blogs you are guest posting on are high quality, and make sure you're getting backlinks from sources other than guest posts. Don't be spammy.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

I know this is vague, but what's the criteria for "high quality?" We were looking at doing this for a few of my friends who practice in other areas of law than we do. They don't have any red flags in their back links, and we are all tied to the same industry (if that matters, I thought it did?) but they aren't extremely popular or anything. Does "high quality" mean they have to get a good amount of traffic and press or just not violate any guidelines?

I'm sure that's a tough question to nail down, but appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Always appreciative,

Ruben

[TakeshiYoung]

If these are your friends' websites, then it should be no problem. You just want to make sure you're getting guest posts on legitimate sites, and not shady spam sites with ulterior motives and questionable backlink profiles.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Great, thanks so much!