InSite Linking Best Practices

[MichaelWeisbaum]

When creating links within your website, is it bad to have a anchor text link pointing back to the same page?

Say the page the homepage is optimized for "credit cards".  If I have a "credit cards" anchor text link on the page the link points to, is that bad practice?

Secondly, if it's better to put that link on a different page, wouldn't I be placing a keyword that's optimized for a different page on the wrong page? (hopefully I'm making sense)

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

[DanSpeicher]

You don't want exact keyword anchor text pointing from one page to a page targeting that keyword. That might make the page with the link compete against the targeted keyword page.

It's best to target one keyword per page, unless the keywords are related.

Hope that helps.

[MichaelWeisbaum]

Thanks Daniel.  Question; Are you saying it's best to only optimize one keyword per page in general or only have one link pointing to, say the homepage from another page? (as opposed to a bunch of different keyword links on one page pointing to the homepage)

[DanSpeicher]

You can target multiple keywords, but the words need to fit the same purpose and be relevant. You don't want to throw in keywords just so you can rank for them.

Check out this post by Rand. It should clear some things up for you:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-targeting-how-to-employ-multiple-keywords-for-seo-conversions

Let me know if you still have questions.