How important is Anchor Text to a Backlink?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Saurabh Tiwari: How important is Anchor Text to a Backlink? ;
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  Edwin Jonk: In short and probably too short:
  Backlinks are used for algo's like PageRank. PageRank is query independent. Meaning that regardless of the search query a URL gets a value. The anchor text is query dependent. Meaning that, if you want to rank for a specific search query the anchor text that matches that specific query will give you a ranking boost. However these days algo's like Penguin might view exact match anchor text as a spam signal. Meaning that instead of a ranking boost your ranking is lowered.
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  Pulkit Khurana: using money keywords as anchor text is like asking Google to penalize my website. it is very important to know difference between money keywords & searched keywords. to know more, you can go through this url http://www.temi.co.uk/expert-roundup-do-you-use-anchors-with-targeted-keywords-for-link-building-today/
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  Blade S: What's important is not to use over-optimized anchor texts, not to mention exact-match ones. Also, make sure your anchor texts are diversified, even if they don't contain keywords.
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  Nebojsa Djukic: It is important. However, not important as it was a few years ago. Make sure to use many different anchor texts, try to avoid over optimization. Over 50% of all your backlinks should have your URL or brand as the anchor text.
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:33:57 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/how_important_is_anchor_text_to_a_backlink +Saurabh Tiwari
  
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