What you say about Anchor text?

[JessicaJohn]

I herd that now anchor text is more important like content because according to google guidelines if anyone targeting any particular keyword he should not target his anchor text same in every back link. It can hurt his website ranking against particular keyword therefore he should give some change or use variation in anchor text to get good results. I want to ask you all what you say about this topic and what your experience say about it.

[sbglobal123]

Anchor text is the visible characters and words that hyperlink display when linking to another document or location on the web. {source http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text } for example reciprocal links, in which "reciprocal links" is the anchor text.

[Sujan]

Anchor Text is the visual representation 0f your URL. Please avoid aggressive exact-match anchor texts.

[Dany87]

Well, you still can use some anchor text on your link, but you have to not use the same keyword all the time. It's good too to have "natural" anchor text sometime like "my business" or "mybusiness123.com"

[LD]

Please avoid aggressive exact-match anchor texts.

Adding "why" and explaining "exact-match anchor text" samples and how to avoid this would be more helpful to the OP rather than just making a statement.

[milina788]

Anchor text is clickable text or keyword which can be linked with some external link or location or document and this leads to that document or location. Do remember that if you are going to use anchor text then avoid using same keyword all the time because you may penalize for this activity.

[LD]

Do remember that if you are going to use anchor text then avoid using same keyword all the time because you may penalize for this activity.

Who is enacting said "penalty? and what exactly would be the penalty for creating anchor text this way, other than said efforts being depreciated?

[seodecompiler]

I think he is referring to anchor text over optimization. If you have a website and want it to rank for blue widgets and 92% of your anchor text backlinks are "blue widgets" then that could hurt, because it doesn't look very natural, and Google could assume you are trying a bit too hard and send you a penguin on your way. It is good to have some backlinks with the keyword you want to rank for, it just has to be done in moderation, to look more natural..

[C0ldf1re]

... what exactly would be the penalty for creating anchor text this way, other than said efforts being depreciated?

People do tend to use words loosely. Once you are accustomed to certain SEO benefits, you feel "entitled" to them. If Google removes those SEO benefits suddenly, because of a change of algorithm, it feels like a "penalty".

I have seen a website kept at number 1 on serps for the owner's keyphrase which he had, "made his own". His only off-page SEO comprised his many thousands of signature links from forums. (He is an active moderator on another forum.) When his links were depreciated, and his site fell from number 1, it was no consolation that it was not technically a Google "penalty".

... Google could assume you are trying a bit too hard and send you a penguin on your way...

Google "sent him a penguin", indeed! A really good phrase. Some green reputation is on its way to you, for a helpful post. Welcome to the forum!

[jan111]

A couple of years ago when I first started linkbuilding, I got what I assumed to be a penalty (drop about 5 pages or so) for over-optimisation of anchor text. I changed the anchor text I could to make it more varied and started some more - gentle - linkbuilding with a whole mix of anchor text. Since then, I've always been way more careful not to over-optimise - hence the anchor text in my signatures are for terms I'm not targetting.