Short anchor text versus longer anchor text

A short anchor text looks to be better for ranking on the related keyword text while a longer anchor text offers rankings on additional keywords.

Ex. As for ranking on the “adventure travel” keywords, the short anchor text “Adventure travel” probably provides a better ranking than the anchor text “Adventure travel to South Africa”.

But, the latter provides also ranking on keywords such as “travel south africa”, “adventure travel south africa” and “adventure south africa”.

 

It's also easier to get ranked high for long tail key words which are normally more targeted toward the buying phase

 

It is depends, if you look for niche keyword, then the longer one the better.
Again, remember this:
3 types of Keywords:-

1. Seed Keywords (1-2 words)
2. Broad Keywords (2-3)
3.Buying Keywords. (3 +words) (you refer here as"longer anchor text")

Buying keywords is combined 3 or more words.
Any industry you try to be in, must have at least 5 Buying Keywords.
It will help you in your ranking page.
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What is the question?

 

I don't think it makes much differance when it comes to anchor text. Personally i try to use the anchor text which makes most sence to visitors, very long anchor texts can be annoying to visitors.

Usually i just use the title, or first heading of the page as the anchor text. Thats unless I'm linking to a subsection of the page, where it would most often be the subheading I'm using as the anchor text instead.

 

The extent to which a particular link text helps your URL rank for its targeted keyword phrase has absolutely nothing to do with shorter vs. longer link text. It has to do with which keyword phrase you are attempting to rank for and how closely the link text matches the targeted keyword phrase.

Link text that exactly matches the targeted keyword phrase will ALWAYS help the most. If you're targetting a 5 word long trail keyword phrase then using that exact 5 word phrase as the link text will help you the most to rank for it. If you're targetting a one word head term then using that exact 1 word phrase as the link text will help you the most to rank for it.

If the link text doesn't exactly match the targeted keyword phrase then several things come into play including but not limited to:

1) keyword density within the link text,
2) how close to the begining of the link text the keyword phrase appears,
3) whether the exact keyword phrase appears somewhere within the link text or only some of the keywords that make up the targeted keyword phrase

Generally speaking, the closer the link text is to the targeted keyword phrase, the more it helps... and you don't get any closer than exact match.

Of course, you don't want ALL of your inbound links to a URL to have the exact same link text. It looks unnatural to the search engines and is an SEO footprint.

 

I always say, Long Tails are the money makers. Because the people who type long tails are the ones closest to buying your product / services...

 

Correct. Long tails keyword is better. As this is the keyword give us the buyer. Not the browser.
We have to focus on buyer than a browser.

 

Go for the low lying fruit - Use longtailed in the beginning just to get your sites coming up in the searches. Then, once you think your content is good enough to compete with the better sites/pages go for the short-tailed and see if you can get up there!