Choosing the right anchor for a backlink

Let's say I have a post for peoples who are looking for nike gift cards and I want to build links for it.

My main keyword would be nike gift card generator, but there are also many variations that peoples search for.

My question is when building links should I use exact match of the main keyword, aka nike gift card generator, or should I include words from the long term searches too, aka free nike gift card codes generator unused.

A good strategy would be to mix them, but what would you suggest if I can only choose one of the two options?

Of course, you should include variations.

Why wouldn't someone want to rank for variations? Variations also tell G that your page is relevant for your main kw and will make it easier to rank.

Here's the anchor ratio I use:

Brand anchor - 20%
Website URL - 20%
Generic words - 20%
Call to action anchors - 20%
Exact match - 10%
Secondary keywords - 10%

This is one of the oldest SEO questions ever, the frickin anchors.... Google knows we're trying to game the system and they tend to change their algo every once in a while just to mess with us. So what works now, won't work in 3 months, what worked best last year is definitely useless already.

If you want to stay safe in the long run and under the radar stick to branded, generic and naked URLs with very very little partial match and even less exact match.

Everything what @Dante12 said is correct. I try to use only 1 time the exact keyword at the beginning. If that doesn't do the job, I'll use it 1 more time (depending on the competition). However, I mostly use partial match exact keywords and branded too.

This is a good thread by @BassTrackerBoats https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/anchor-text-are-you-doing-it-right.1122480/ for anchor text.

Geasy said:

Everything what @Dante12 said is correct. I try to use only 1 time the exact keyword at the beginning. If that doesn't do the job, I'll use it 1 more time (depending on the competition). However, I mostly use partial match exact keywords and branded too.

This is a good thread by @BassTrackerBoats https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/anchor-text-are-you-doing-it-right.1122480/ for anchor text.

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Thank you for the tips. Do you have any best practices for internal link anchors?