When exchanging links with other sites, how many keywords do you try to squeeze into each link. Surely there is a limit to it, and using too many keywords, could be treated as Black Hat.

What are your thoughts?

I usually try to put no more than 3. Anything more than 5 would look suspicious to an SEO eye expert, I guess. Therefore from SEO point of view, this could be blackhat.

I personally say as many as you want - keeping the following in mind:

1) If you are aiming to rank for some 6 word phrase - go for it - put 6 words in the anchor text. The amount of people who search for that term will be minimal, but hey at least you can say you are number 1 for something.

2) If you are aiming to rank for a 2 word phrase that is part of a 6 word link text, well the part of the algorithm that evaluates the link quality based on link text keywords would only value it at 1/3 as much as if it had two words (exact percentage will vary - it's just an approximation).

In summary - if you are trying to rank for a 3 word phrase in google rankings - use those three words. If you are trying to rank for a 6 word phrase - use those 6 words. Just don't expect you can get double bang for you buck and combine two different 3 word phrases into one anchor and get double for nothing - at best you will get only half value for each and could be less.

Re it being "Black Hat" - it's definitely not, just ineffective. "Black Hat" gets thrown around as a phrase all the time for all sorts of things that aren't. Black Hat implies doing something tricky or against the rules that cannot be easily discovered, in order to rank. It is basically trying to "outsmart" google's robots by doing things that are clearly against the rules of Google, in a way that will be difficult for Google to discover. Black Hat stuff is usually effective short term, terrible long term.

This theory of lots of words is not against the rules, it's just ineffective, and it's not sneaky or clever enough to be called Black Hat!

Hope this helps,
Matt
Marketing Web
________________________________________
Some sites I'm working on currently:
Lawn Mowing Albury
Laser Treatment Albury
Promotional Products
Resourcing Change
Christian Dating
Steel Cattle Yards

For me, I just use from 1 to 3 keywords. I am just afraid that if I use too many keywords then Google can think it is black hat!

Try to follow 70 character max for your keywords and use long tail keywords as well. It becomes key phrases when its long tail, the greater the chances for good ranking result and can drag your future rankings on very competitive keywords later on.

Well, if you want a safe and slowly process you can build from 3-20 links with each anchor text. However, If you are ready to take a risk and you want to rank ASAP then feel free to use the anchor text on your keywords but be prepared if search engine will penalize you.

If your goal is to get high rankings as soon as possible and you are ready to risk, then feel free to focus all of your links on several keywords. But should not use too many keywords. You can have 3 keywords which will be the correct way of achieving your target.

When exchanging links, I insert 2 to 3 keywords in a phrase or anchor text link to make it look like natural.

can you shoot yourself by adding to many key words to rank for??

If I include more than one then they don't accept it, in exchange I also have to give two.