Sure, but what about non-keyword rich anchor text links?

[ExploreConsulting]

Could spammy non-keyword rich anchor text liks help your website rank?

Of course, there's been a lot of discussion around Google's update of its link scheme.  Specifically, they target press releases with do-follow links on keyword-rich anchor text and "Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links".  Well, that leaves the question unanswered, what if you're doing these spammy linking techniques, but on non-keyword rich anchor text, such as "click here", "find information", and "click here".  Will you still get smacked down by Google then?

Given that links on non-keyword anchor text can still help increase domain authority, it seems like Google left a door open here for large scale publication of a certain class of spammy links that can still assist rank, no?  Also, in answering, please distinguish between best practice, and effective.  For instance, purchasing links isn't a good practice, but it can still be an effective technique.  While spammy links on non-keyword rich anchor text is certainly not a good practice, is it nonetheless effective?

[redfishking]

From what I've seen, it is a fairly effective tactic. One of our blogs was hacked and redirected to a Chinese xanax selling site, and the hacker link built a ton of xanax related anchor text links to our blog. A year later, we have only improved in the rankings, and our domain authority is higher than ever, despite the artificial links accounting for 90% of our link profile.

This isn't entirely what you asked, though, because the anchor text is still somewhat keyword rich. However, one of our competitors has done something similar to the situation you described. Their unrelated diverse anchor text accounts for about 95% of their inbound links, with many being written in a non-English language (beats me what they say). They are currently ranked third for the main keyword for our niche, although they do have an exact match domain name, so that is also helping them some.

I don't really have a definite answer, but I hope these examples were at least of interest to you! If you manage to test this out in a more unbiased way, let us know what you find.

[Doc_Sheldon]

While we can never really quantify how much benefit a given link affects rank, we do know that a link can convey equity both for the link itself and for the anchor text. Google has indicated that a "safe" method of protecting ourselves against an impression of over-optimization is to use anchor text like "read more", "more info" or "click here", as well as using the target page's title for anchor text or a simple raw URL (as I recall, it was John Mueller that told us that in a Hangout some time ago).

Personally, I see the question of link quality as dealing with the quality of the source page and the relevance between the source and destination, and I evaluate links first by those criteria. I see anchor text as a separate issue, considering relevance and diversity. We have successfully cleaned up trashy profiles where the same anchor text had been overused, by mixing up KW anchors with generic anchors, page titles and raw URLs, and have gotten penalties lifted.

That said, your last point: "While spammy links on non-keyword rich anchor text is certainly not a good practice, is it nonetheless effective?" makes me wonder exactly what you mean by "spammy links". That, to me, sounds as though the source page is either low quality or not sufficiently relevant to the destination, in which case, I'd say it's an ill-advised practice.