Anchor Text Percentage

[stevenmusumeche]

At the linklove conference, many of the speakers emphasized the importance of not having too high a percentage of anchor text for your incoming links, because it looks unnatural.  I was wondering whether this applies to your keyword being in the anchor text along with other things, or just exact anchor text matches?

For example, if my keyword is widgets, is it bad to have too many of these:

Please buy widgets from Acme Corp.

or

Please buy Acme Corp widgets.

[stevenmusumeche]

Right, I understand all of that, but it doesn't really answer the question.  My question is regarding anchor text that INCLUDES the keyword vs anchor text that is ONLY the keyword.  So is it OK to have a high percentage of anchor text that includes the keyword (based on numbers in OSE's anchor text "terms" instead of "phrases")?

[stevenmusumeche]

So it is OK to have a high percentage of the keyword being included in the anchor text, as long as it is not a high percentage of EXACT keyword anchor text?

[CPU]

In the process of natural link building I would expect that anchor text will vary and won't always be the exact keyphrase that is being targeted. Sometimes it would be the company name, the site URL, a longer sentence with the keyphrase in it or even "click here".

The suggestion is that if a high % of links are just the keyword that this sends a signal to Google that their acquisition may not be from purely natural means.

[MatthewEgan]

I'd take a look at the competition and see the anchor text variety that they have, like was shared at LinkLove.  Essentially you don't want the extreme.  So if you have 40% widgets, 40% acme corp widgets and only 20% Acme Corp that might stand out to Google as being out of whack.

A link without "perfect" anchor text is better than no link at all, especially if you've built a ton of links with that keyword rich anchor text.  In Rand's presentation at Link Love he discussed this a bit also, that anchor text is worth less than it used to be.