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Do not over optimize SEO anchor text, improve URLs instead

As part of our ongoing SEO watch, here's a great tip to make sure your link building practices don't penalize you.

Stuffing keywords in your anchor links may cause over optimization and lead to negative Google ranks. Here's the way it works.

Let's say your url is http://abc.com/widget and that you are changing the hyperlink text to read 'special light candle tool' which are keywords you are trying to rank high for.

Google will spot the disrepancy between the real URL and the hyperlink text and penalize you for it.

How do you fix over optimization? Simply by using better URLs

You can fix this and achieve a more natural (less deceiving) result by simply using better landing URLs that contains the keywords. So instead of linking to http://abc.com/widget and masquerading the hyperlink text (the anchor text as we call it), create a landing url on your website that points directly (without 301 or 302 redirects) to your product page.

In this example, changing the URL to http://abc.com/special-light-candle-tool-widget and leaving it as is on the website will achieve better results.

Of course, all this is trivial with the LVSYS CMS - which provides all the built-in tools to review direct landing URLs to product, articles, business members, web pages and many other areas.

The formula, an easy method

Target your landing url with keywords appropriate for that page.
Use the url directly in the copy - that's the most user friendly experience where you can guarantee that the url visitors will visit matches what is presented on the site.
If the landing url is complicated and very long, then use anchor text that contains only the keywords present in the url. This often happens when you link a complicated CMS landing page from other systems.
BONUS: if you use the LVSYS CMS platform, then use the shortURL field to assign specific urls to your products, or articles, or members, or events, etc.

Conclusion

Really, that's it. Great SEO results are achieved by understanding that search engines care about relevancy and user experience. Let your content work and diversify your targeted keywords accordingly to achieve more exposure over time, but do not keyword stuff your anchor text, you will just be delaying the inevitable penalization.

Read the full story here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story