Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn't Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter | Microsite Masters Very, very good article. Short: No keyword/anchor text over-optimization anymore! Anchor (keyword) texts GREATLY lost their importance, in fact can be detrimental. Use "natural" anchors and keep "money keywords" at a minimum or avoid them altogether. Avoid ANY wild sites ("article sites"), crap blog networks etc. which do NOT have subject/category specific sites. Micro sites catering to a specific niche is where it is now. Blog network owners and users MUST abandon their crappy networks (if not already) and start making high quality, niche specific sites. A link from a site related to YOUR niche is now much more worth while the importance of anchor texts is basically ZERO. Avoid links from unrelated sites. Private "high quality" blog networks with niche specific "micro sites" still work! The good news: All of this is actually easy to fix.
You still need to use your "money words", but you need to use them in different orders, in different combinations and with additional "fill" words. This appears more natural than having 90% of your backlinks as your money words. For example, if your main keyword is "blue widgets", start using combinations like this: buy blue widgets find widgets that are blue get blue colored widgets click here for blue widgets learn more about blue widgets more blue widgets information You still want to include your important KWs, but you just want the frequency of "exact" KW phrases to be lower. By drastically switching it up (like in the example above), you'll get the best results.
It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the results I'm seeing dominate Google in practice. Depending on the niche, it may be that exact-match domains with exact-match backlink anchors are still crowding everything else out of the top.