Hi everyone, Some one told me that Google hates word "FREE" in description or meta tags... How true is that? Also I am building links for my Free image hosting site.... so will it be a good idea to use "Free Image Hosting" or "Free File Hosting" as an anchor text? My main concern is should I use word "FREE" in my anchor text.... Any help will be highly appreciated.... Thanks
I don't think that word is hated by Google. A page containing the keyword "free" could be penalized because of its general content and not because it contains that word. You can use "Free" in your anchor text and I have no problem with it. You can always check out by searching for queries with "free" keyword and you will see what I mean.
I can't imagine it would cause problems: http://www.stayfree.com/ While somewhat a humorous example, there are some companies who use "free" as part of their product/company name. As for the anchor texts, I would use both "Free Image Hosting" or "Free File Hosting" as well as a number of others that are similar and describe your service. A good variety of similar anchor texts seems much more natural than one consistent anchor text for every link.
He's not going to the keyword free alone, however "free image hosting" is still very competetive with lots of established providers in that area, you would be looking at some major link building to rank well for that on Google.
My suggestion would be to focus on the long tail, keywords with fewer search volume but has better chances of ranking. I agree that there are numerous sites competing for the said phrase, established long ago that they command authority and therefore would be difficult to dislodge in the rankings.