How Important is Placement of Anchor Text

[Falconberg]

I'm working on a series of guest posts to help promote a site.  These are competitive, high quality posts from a well-respected resource in the industry. I placed the author introduction at the front of the posts, with anchor text for the keywords we are targetting (e.g., "This is a guest post by John Doe, a [keyword] who ... and writes about [keyword].").

I understand that having the anchor text in a prominent location - such as near the front of the post - will probably be more authoritative than a sentence at the very end.  My question: how significant is this difference?

The blog that I am posting on wants to include author information at the end only and only have one link using the site name (which doesn't contain keywords). The post I sent had two deep links using keyword-rich anchor text, placed at the beginning. I am trying to decide whether to walk away and keep shopping the material around.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I'll also add this - if the link and it's surrounding text are NOT directly related in a laser-focus manner to the content topical focus of the article itself, it's not even an ideal link from a "pure" SEO perspective, even if it's high up in the content area.

Which just reinforces the whole "don't get lost on this being such a big deal" concept.

[AlanBleiweiss]

From a pure SEO perspective, the higher up in the page's main content area the better.  However once you introduce overall inbound link profile factors, if all you have are top of content area links, it looks unnatural.  So eventually it becomes a negative.  That's why it's vital to not get hung up on any single particular SEO tactic.  Aiming for "perfect" SEO ultimately causes you to end up with "flawed" SEO.

[Falconberg]

Thanks to all who have responded.  Let me bring it back to my original question, though, which I may have obscured with all of the related information.  All else being equal:  on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it that the link and anchor text appear in the first paragraph in the post instead of 500+ words later in the author attribution box? I know that there's some benefit (in terms of more authority), but how much?

Of course, I know this is somewhat speculative. Just wanting to get your views.

[SteveOllington]

Link placement is pretty much the whole point in block level analysis so it's definitely important. But all I know is that links from within the body content surrounded by relevant text wins against footer, side bar, and links page links. I "think" but could be wrong, the only link worth more is a link from the main nav... but I assume that would only be for internal links anyway?

[EGOL]

" It's a so-so site."

Then maybe you can get a better deal elsewhere.

I publish some "contributed content" but as soon as the person starts talking about links and anchor text my interest in the content falls through the floor.  I immediately worry about linking to a site where manipulation is happening.....  the content usually isn't worth it after that.

Just sayin' how some people view articles and links.

[Falconberg]

Thanks for the response.  It's a so-so site. The site has a DmR of 4.2, but doesn't seem to pass much authority to the blog portion of the site (the blog is integrated into a larger website).  The article will be relevant to the site visitors, but we are unlikely to see any conversions from visitors of this site (it's a legal article and the attorney who authored it can only practice in her jurisdiction). Other blog posts by guest authors don't seem to rank particularly well, but there are some exceptions.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Every site needs a variety of inbound links from a  variety of sources, with a variety of "footprints".  So don't turn down a high value site opportunity just because you don't get the kind of link profile you think you need from it.

Not only is it good for SEO to have such a variety, it's good for visitor click-through traffic, which in turn can lead to more interaction, more engagement, and more buzz.  Those then in turn bring back even more value from an SEO perspective in full circle.

[EGOL]

Without further information about the website...  the one that you consider walking away from might have the best links - even if you only get one of them.

The guy obviously has his standards and isn't going to prostitute his site to linkbuilders.