There is no disputing the fact that keyword-targeted backlinks help with search engine rankings.  But in the SEO world, there is such a thing as over-optimization.  And links that are always perfectly anchored to the same keywords are an example of this.

The danger with perfectly anchored text links is that they look unnatural and manipulated.  An unnaturally developed link profile makes it look as if you are artificially inflating your site’s worth, like someone who buys links or uses link farms.

If search engines flag a website or page for over-optimization, that site or page could get penalized, its backlink values reduced, or worse.
At one time, perfectly anchored backlinks were quite effective.  They still are, but now they carry a risk to those who overuse them.

Understanding What Natural Backlinks Are Like

The best thing you can do to avoid this is to build backlinks in as natural a way as you can.  Since you are reading this, you probably don’t want to wait for people to link back to you on their own (although if you make great content they will do that). So instead you need to know how to get backlinks that (hopefully) won’t rouse suspicions among search engines.
Here are some helpful hints about organic backlinks:

• Natural links do not all have the same anchor text
• Natural links come from a variety of sources (websites, forums, blogs, social media, etc.)
• Natural links may sometimes contain the URL, not an anchor text (e.g. http://www……)
• Natural links sometimes have the website title in them (e.g. Biritsh Museum)
• Natural links aren’t built overnight  (300 links one day and then nothing for a week)

In short, natural, organic links ARE NOT ALL PERFECTLY ANCHORED and take time.

Steps in Safe Link-Building

1. Choose your primary keyword and secondary keywords.

The primary keyword is the main keyword you are targeting with that page.  Secondary keywords are variations of the primary keyword. An example would be “build Facebook apps” as the primary and “build Facebook apps for free,” “steps to build Facebook applications” and “how to build Facebook apps” as secondary keywords or variations of the primary.  There are no rules to how varied the secondary keywords should be.  What you want to achieve is a natural, organic link profile. Think of what anchor text you would use yourself if this were someone else’s article.

2. Add your site title and URL to your keyword list.

Over-optimized anchor text tend to omit the brand name of the home site.  They want to rank for keywords; they don’t care about website reputation.  A “real” website on the other hand, has a recognizable brand. People know its name like ProBlogger or MakeUseOf and mention it.  Do the same with some of your backlinks.  Don’t be afraid to use your website or blog name instead of some SEO keyword all the time.

3. Find a variety of websites, forums and article directories to the submit article to.

Real, organic backlinks come from a variety of places.  Don’t limit yourself to guest blogging.  Go to forums in your niche, article directories, Web 2.0 sites, social media, and whatever else you can think of (barring of course, bad neighborhoods like link farms).

4. Vary the anchor text and positions of your backlinks.

Now when you write your guest articles, use a varied combination of your primary and secondary keywords and your brand name.  Sometimes you’ll make it perfectly anchored to your primary keyword; other times you’ll use a long tail variation; still other times you include your site title (like “My Blog”) in the anchor text.  You could keep track of your backlinks with a spreadsheet program if you want, but that has the potential to eat up a lot of your time.  What matters is you vary your anchor text enough to not make it look like you are artificialy trying to rank for a specifc keyword or set of keywords.

5. Build links consistently, but not too aggressively.

Too aggressive a campaign can get you flagged especially if your site is new, or you haven’t built links to it in a while.  Be consistent in your link campaign, and learn to pace yourself.

With this approach, you might not get results as fast as you would otherwise.  But it is safer and with the advent of Google Panda (and more changes like this coming, no doubt), it is really better to be safe than sorry indeed.

Guest author L.J. (Blog Lady) Is a blogger and Internet marketer with years of experience in freelance writing both in the USA and abroad.  She also enjoys graphics design and web design. Visit Blog Lady for articles on Facebook, WordPress and SEO.

When you request a page, the server it lives on returns some ‘header info’ that classifies the status of the web page, usually a 200 if everything is normal but sometimes other codes (there can be more than one) such as a 301 or 302 redirect or the failure responses

I love a good infographic so for those of you with an interest in these things Oliver Mason and the other good folks who work at  conversion optimisation at SEOgadget have provided this excellent one to explain those response codes more colourfully than I ever could.

Their snippet reads:  “We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years.”

Any ideas as to what this might be? Anchor text? If thats the case there could be a bit of pain ahead for some backlink builders and SEO’s particularly those who rely on backlinks a little too much. I’ll be watching the famous search example of “click here” to see if ADobe’s pages fall in the rankings over the next few days.