Anchor text, or the text used when linking to other sites, is very important in search engine optimization. Search engines use anchor text to try to determine what a site is about, so it's important to have relevant words, especially your target keywords and/or keyphrase, as the anchor text of all incoming links to your site.

For example, let's say a webmaster joins the LinksMaster.com link exchange service and is impressed by the fully automated services the company has to offer. Thinking her visitors might appreciate the boost in traffic and higher rankings offered by LinksMaster, she decides to post a link to LinksMaster.com on her site, as shown:

Click Here

Notice that she chose to use the words "click here" instead of descriptive text, such as "Join LinksMaster.com" or "link exchange" or "LinksMaster link exchange program." Although the link still will be counted by the search engines and will help boost LinksMaster.com's overall link popularity, the text "click here" simply isn't relevant. It doesn't describe what LinksMaster has to offer and won't help the search engines (or visitors) determine anything about the site.

On the other hand, let's say she chooses anchor text that is a little more relevant:

Automated link exchange program

In the above example, not only does the visitor have an idea of what LinksMaster has to offer BEFORE they click on the link, but the keywords "automated link exchange program" will be analyzed by the search engines and will help LinksMaster rank well in the search results for the term "automated link exchange program."

As you can see, anchor text is indeed important. But recently, a lot of search engine professionals have speculated that having all your inbound links contain your target keyword or keyphrase is not enough. The current belief is that anchor text variety is just as important as the link itself.

This pattern of thought stems from the idea that if all inbound links pointing to a website contain the same words or phrases, the search engines might eventually pick up on this SEO trick and, if the search engines consider the links to be artifially arranged, they might weigh the link value less. Throwing some variety into the mix would probably appear to be more "natural" and favorable to the search engines. This seems to be backed up by some sites that took a plunge after Google's Florida Update, causing some WebmasterWorld members to refer to this new theory as the "Post-Florida Anchoring Strategy."

One way to ensure that your anchor text has variety is by manually submitting written requests to potential link exchange partners, explaining the benefits of exchanging links to your site, and providing them with a sample of code they can easily copy and paste onto their site if they wish to take you up on the offer. In your code, be sure to include the anchor text you wish to use, such as "blue widgets." Every few emails, you could change the anchor text to a different target keyword, i.e. "red widgets."

It also helps to have inbound links from a wide variety of sites, especially those with high PageRank, because they will in turn transfer more PageRank to your site through linking. One way to increase the number of individual sites linking to yours is to join a link exchange program such as www.LinksMaster.com.

For your own sanity, keep things simple. Don't try to optimize for too many keywords. Only use keywords that are relevant to your site. It's also easiest to start with a broad term and as you start to rank well for that term, narrow it down until you're ranking well for your target niche term. For example, "automated link exchange program" could be narrowed down to "automated link exchange" and eventually just "link exchange."