Hi, lets say I have a tutorial site, and i start building links. If I'm targeting the term "photoshop backgrounds" and "Photoshop Codes", will "Photoshop Backgrounds Codes" help? Should I just keep building links with the anchor text "Photoshop Backgrounds" and "Photoshop COdes" instead?
Yes to the first questions. Maybe to the second. If you use "photoshop backgrounds codes", you will rank well for "photoshop backgrounds codes", "photoshop backgrounds" and "backgrounds codes". The term "photoshop codes" will do almost as well, while the individual terms "photoshop", "backgrounds", and "codes" will do less well. Use my wife's site as an example: By Request DJ & Karaoke Company (which is often abbreviated to By Request DJ Company and frequently includes Fargo, ND in teh anchor text). Google the various terms in their to see how it ranks. Some examples: DJ Company - 1st Karaoke Company - 1st "By Request" - 1st By Request - Nowhere in the top 100 Request Company - Not in top 100 By Request Company - 2nd Request Fargo - 1st Obviously some of those terms are far more competitive than others, but as you can see, disjointed words from the title fair less well than the whole phrase or connected portions of the phrase.
Hmm does it matter how the keywords are ordered? Will "codes photoshop layout" rank the same as "photoshop layout codes"?
Good question! I would assume so, but let's find out: Company DJ Request By - 1st Company DJ - 3rd ^^^^^^^^^^^ Looks like that very well proves that order is important too.
Thanks for the reply, I'm thinking about making the anchor text "Photoshop Backgrounds Codes" however it would make more sense to the visitor if it was "Photoshop Backgrounds AND Codes", how much would this effect the ranking?
"And" is ignored by search engines, so it would seem to have no effect in this case. However, searching for "DJ Karaoke" produces my wife's site in the #2 spot. Searching for both "DJ & Karaoke" and "DJ and Karaoke" produces her in the 1st position. Searching for "Request Karaoke" and "By Request Karaoke" drops her site to 5th. So it apparently does have some effect. How much is anyone's guess.
If you use only two keywords for 1000 links over and over then it'll look generic and search engines may think you are trying to manipulate SERP by getting only links. Best is if you can vary anchor texts every after 100 links. if you have 5 keywords then after getting 500 links get back to your first anchor text from 501th link.
Good advice! I wrote an application called article distributor that helped article authors submit their articles to lots of sites. I gave it away free, but I also added a link to the software's download page at the bottom of their resource box. The anchor text was "article distributor", and if you look at the backlinks for the software's download page, google shows 768 links. However if you google the exact phrase Submitted With article Distributor, you get over 100k results. This means less than 1% of the links got counted. This is most likely due to two things: 1) the anchor text is exactly the same for all 100k links, and 2) 99% of the links are on only 300 sites (essentially making them partial site-wides).
Bullshit, you could have mentioned just use different anchor texts instead of some theory that was beaten to death in the past. There exists no solid evidence for that sort of penalty. For instance, Travelocity.com is linked from many websites as Travelocity.com or Travelocity How is it they rank well for both Travelocity and Travel? The term Travelocity is comptetive. Tell me, why isn't that website penalised for using Travelocity as the anchor text in thousands of websites? The idea of using different anchor texts was to get a wider reach. Period.