A quality guideline now becomes a rule.

Every month we raise the quality bar a little. This month is no different. Effective immediately, we’ve tightened our standards on how many words are accepted in anchor text links – and for good reason.

An “Anchor Text Link” is a clickable word or phrase that links to another web page. [How to create an Anchor Text Link]

Sadly, some authors abuse this ability by linking-up extremely long key phrases – or worse yet, entire sentences. Before you know it, a quality article looks like SPAM because it’s filled with giant text links. Suddenly the emphasis of the article is shifted from providing useful information to merely serving as a vehicle for link space in a spammy resource box.

Our Editorial Guidelines suggest limiting anchor text links to only 3 words but …

Expert Authors can now earn the ability to link-up 4-word and 5-word phrases* by submitting lengthier (over 400 words) high-quality articles.

BOTTOM LINE:

• If your article is shorter than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 3 words*
• If your article is longer than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 5 words*

* Important Note: Any common words, including to, is, in, on, it, and, at, by, a, an and others will now be excluded from the word count.

Make sense?

Member feedback is what lead us to study, and then allow, the “common words” to *not* count towards the total words allowed in an anchor text link.

UPDATED Nov 20th 2009 4:26pm CST: “of” has been added to the common words exclusion list.

Other articles you might like;

• Get Your Search Engine Optimization Going With These Tips
• Get More Accomplished With Your Article Marketing
• Help People Find Your Website With These Search Engine Optimization Tips