I know that the anchor text on a link is nearly as important as the link itself. I also know that varying the anchor text is important on some level, but I am unsure how it works. If I had a auto site and wanted to use 'car parts and accessories' as my anchor text, is it the entire anchor that counts or do bits and pieces count for it? As in, would it help in SERPs for the term(s) car, car parts, or even car accessories? Or does it only truly work for the phrase as a whole? Thanks in advance, Q
Besides counting for car parts and accessories, it would count to a lesser degree for the variations as you suggested.
You shouldn't make too many variations of your anchor text. Its better you decide upon 5 anchor text phrases for your link and among them one main anchor text. Then start promoting. of course..all anchor text should be contextual to your site!
you are right about the anchor text variation but you can only use few different anchor text for a specific site. only time parts of the anchor text will give you result is if they are all pretty much similar and you have lot if backlinks. for your example on car parts, if yo use KW like 'cheap car parts', 'used car parts', 'discount car parts', etc and have lot of backlinks, then you will get ranked on 'car parts' as well. again, depends on how many backlinks you have and who's linking to you.
First of all, car is not a generic keyword. You can use, car parts, car accessories, car wheels.... and so, on. What this makes is weight of car will increased in your anchor and trailing words won't have any much more competitions, so it will better, Still use of long tail is better for business usage, as it directs focus for what you are selling and easy to get rank higher on top of the SERP's.