I've had some really good results when using a combination of long anchor text links, i'm experimenting right now with some more competetive keywords. The theory goes that if your targetted keyword is 'widget' a anchor text link for 'every colour widget, red, yellow, green and blue widgets all available' would allow you to rank well for a number of phrases that contain a word or combination of words contained within your anchor text. I also recommend varying the anchor text for each link as much as you can.
I accidentally stumpled apon this as the highest searched keyphrase for the area i was targetting was actually a long phrase. So i was simply targetting the best keyword phrase, i then found my site ranking top 10 for around 100 related phrases using a combination of the words contained in the anchor text. So if say i was simply targetting the search term 'widgets' using a single word anchor text, i can safely say i would not generate as much traffic. I'm not saying don't target single word phrases, i'm saying use a combination of methods, when building links. What does p.l.u.r mean?
I don't see any problem with long anchor text, but is that what you really want? For example consider how you want your users to find you? If the anchor text in links to your pages matches the searches users are doing, Google will rank your pages higher. But generally you won't find users doing massively long searches so even using your main keywords for anchor text would be fine. Think yourself as a user how you would do a search for particular topic articles and accordingly use your keywords in the anchor text. Also varying the anchor text according to the links is beneficial and more targeted.
I do think it's a good idea to target longer phrases. There are tons of people searching for long phrases and those are the people who know what they want specifically. So very targeted users. Since optimizing for one long phrase helps optimization for another long phrase, it works for a larger amount of search-phrases that may well add up to more than a single keyword would.
I agree with kh7. Users nowadays are typing in more specific keywords. However, I think it would be more effective if you use a combination of short and long anchor text links. This way, your website's backlinks will appear varied and au naturale to search engines, while targeting several keywords at the same time.
yeah i also agree with kh7..although by targetting long phrases it will also give results to any combination of the words on the phrase...