Andem - 11:54 pm on Nov 14, 2011 (gmt 0)

That's a great post, Yellow_Sun. Too bad you haven't written more here.

One note though:

>> Google will think you are starting to build a brand if the anchor text is "www.AbcXyz.com" or "AbcXyz" or "AbcXyz.com"

I completely agree. On one hand, Google loves adding our brand name to almost every single page we're listed for in the SERPs. From "Weird and Wacky: Widgets", we often see " - Site Name" appended. A good half of our external backlinks include our site name within the anchor text.

Here is where it gets tricky. Since Panda especially, but even dating a year or more before, sites outranking us *do not* contain their brand name, but artificial anchor text that no human being would use.
It seems like

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet et <a href="http://example.com/cheap_widgets.htm">cheap widgets</a>, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

seems more important than

So my wife was out the other day shopping and came across <a href="http://example.com/cheap_widgets.html">a handy device from brand</a> and so far, we're pretty happy with it.

My first ever and only consultation with an SEO company (very expensive in the U.S.) gave me several examples 3 months ago of their clients pulling in thousands of visitors a day with sneaky and unnatural-looking injections of keywords in real, quality articles.

I don't think brands in that sense have much to do with ranking in Google these days.