Strong pages and subpages: Building exact anchor again and again, or mix up?

[Whipeout77]

Hi Seo Moz Team,

I'm looking for some tips to optimize my site. The site is from mid 2009 and I'm targeting a bunch of keywords around a specific topic. One mainkeyword is a two phrase, let's say "keyword one". Since the beginning I built a lot of keyword anchor links with exact "keyword one" to my homepage. The key was climbing week to week until I reached number two on google. This place I could hold for round about 4 month. Until then it was going down to number 18 to number 14. The keyword "keyword one" was used most of all and it is the far most used key in the bunch of the other keywords.

My first question is: I don't know what to do. I started building some brand links in order to mix the anchortext up. Should I built some new links to "keyword one" until I'm in the tops again although I have so much of them already? Could it be, that I have a keyword penalty one year now? In the meantime I worked with other keywords, deeplinks with total different keys and brand links. Smaller keys are ranking good and are very stable on positions 1-3. But especially this key is a little bid tricky. Other sites in the serps have roundabout 5-10 links regarding "keyword one" and they are ranking better than my site with 30-40 exakt anchor. My other idea was, that some links with anchor "keyword one" could be devalued. In this case it should be ok to build some new with exact anchor?

The second keyword, lets say "key word two" is a three word combination. I have 60 good and editorial links on this special page and mixed up since I was optimizing for this key. Url mentions, exact anchor, variations and so on. With this key I'm on number 3. Number two is a very week site with no exact anchor backlink but a three word "keyword Domain".

Regarding to this, my second question: There is no other site on my project, that is stronger than this three key combination page, but I can't reach to number 1-2 in google. The incoming links are very good regarding to all the other sites in the serps. Should I have patience? Building more and more links? I'm afraid that it is unnatural this way.

For your information: There is one site in the serps from 2004. Everything this site does is to build lnks with "keyword one" and two other keywords. No variations, no brand. I think 85% of the time. This guy is ranking on positions 2-3 with this combinations since 3 years now, but smaller keys are week and foundable in comparison.

Thanks in advance!

[OcularConcepts]

Rather than just focusing on keywords, why not strengthen the content with 3-4 good article or blog posts on your site and then build links to them using their topics (or variations) as anchor text? This will favorably balance link/content ratio and work in your favor.

[Whipeout77]

Yes thats done, the site has a lot of pages with several deeplinks on them with different anchors.

[RyanKent]

There are too many factors involved to offer the analysis you seek while on a general level. Can you offer us your site URL along with the keywords involved?

By looking at your site, the keywords, and the sites who are outranking you we can have a chance to get some ideas as to why these sites are outperforming you.

Some key factors to examine:

• the keywords and phrases involved, how competitive are they?

• the sites involved, how strong are their root domains?

• how strong are your links versus your competitor's links?

• how well is your site optimized for SEO vs your competitors?

[Whipeout77]

Perhaps my question is to difficult without showing the Url. I don't want to post it here, but I think it will be helpful to refine my question that you can answer it on a general level.

Can you give me some best practice tips how to optimize strong subpages which are still ranking on top 3-4 if you consider, that these pages already have 50-60 incoming links from different sources and exact anchors / anchor variations which is much more than the pages from competitors. Is it too much at some time for one single subpage? Or should I keep going with optimization for this keyphrase until I'm on top 1-2 or in the filter? What is best practise to avoid those filters?