Generic Anchor Vs Branded Anchor?

[dt1807]

Hi,

I have always been very careful when building links, making sure that I use lots of variations relevant to my site in the anchor text, so keep the ratio diluted. However, in recent weeks I have stumbled on some SEO's focussing wholly around branded anchor terms for future link building, I feel that a branded focussed link profile looks more natural.

I'm interested to know what the rest of Moz community think about this?

Thanks

[SaforwebDesign]

Hi

I think you're doing a good job using a lot of relevant variations in you anchors including branded anchors.

It depends of the content you're linking to use brand or keyword anchor.

I hope this can help you.

[Klarke]

Well I think you should focus less on making it seem "more natural", and actually allow it to be natural.  Once you do that, there's no mixing and measuring anchor text as if you're a chemist.   No worrying about ratios to dilute and all that nonsense.

But that's just me.

[Debdulal]

Yes, there has been a lot of confusion regarding what types of keywords are targeting. If you are targeting only targeted keywords, it is like playing Russian roulette. Your website might be enjoying top position until you are caught by Google Penguin update. Probably this is the reason why you might be still seeing low quality sites with questionable links ranking tops.

_The ideal anchor text policy should be the right mix of branded keywords, targeted keywords and natural texts. But as you are playing it safe, you cannot expect that you will see dramatic improvement in the rankings anytime soon. _