Anchor text distribution

[znotes]

Hey SEO Mozosphere -

Working on a link buying strategy. I know it is wise to target not only anchor text links but also branded text links to keep your anchor text distribution looking natural. However, do you think it would be too risky to ask for branded text links only from low PR sites and focus the more valuable keyword anchor text links on high PR sites?

[FranktheTank-47497]

Hey Zack,

I am pretty sure, you meant "link building", right?

In this case I would assume, a mix of different keywords and/or brand terms are ideal, getting more targeted anchors from the more powerful sites should not be a problem.

Cheers,

Frank

[znotes]

Ahh yes, link building. Thank you for your input. Obviously i will not get a definitive answer on this, but it's great to hear people weigh in on the assessed risks.

Thank You!

[Thos003]

I would opt for the opposite strategy. I would prefer  powerful sites using branded keywords, and lower PR using targeted keywords. The Wall Street Journal is more likely going to link to Nike using the term Nike over "running shoes". Looks more natural. However, if you can score both a branded link and a "running shoes" deep link then go for it.

[FranktheTank-47497]

Hey Thomas,

I get the idea, my train of thought was the following: As you say, the WSJ or NYT or whatever high quality site usually rather links to your site with the URL or brandname, rarely with an optimized anchor. Hence, if you have the ability to influence the anchor at a high quality site, this probably won't hurt, as your more powerful links generally have more branded keywords anyhow.

So the overall ratio of URL / brand / optimized anchor for high quality sites, shouldn't be bad, if your link building efforts are reasonable.

[znotes]

Yes I understand it would be much harder to get the target keywords from high PR sites, but assuming that I could, i guess my question is if anyone believes that Google penalizes for unnatural Pagerank-Anchor Text distributions. In a purely organic link environment, some keyword text would most likely be found on both high PR and low PR sites, not only one or the other.

[FranktheTank-47497]

Exactly! And as most of the high PR links you have right now are probably brand name or URL, influencing the ones you can will probably still result in a natural ratio of both types.

I just quickly checked the URL in your profile with opensiteexplorer: The Top 30 URLs are pretty much all domain or brand, so even if you could add 5 powerful optimized links, the ratio still would be ok, in my personal opinion.

[Thos003]

I agree. In general, I would say that your branded links should always be greater than any single keyword. Sounds like you are doing it right.