The backlink article itself should rank in the search results for that backlink to be worth anything.
This means keyword research should be done to write the backlink article as well and it should be written with proper SEO guidelines (headings, keywords, etc.) for it to rank in the SERP.
It’s important to get backlinks from sites in the same location you are doing business in to make the link as relevant as possible for the article.
Anchors
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) – Words that are conceptually relevant to the main topic of the article should be used around the anchor to make the anchor relevant to the article itself. Instead of using the search keyword directly, which would make it look spammy for the algorithm.
The anchor link should be relevant to the topic of the article as well. For example – writing an article about ‘time management‘, and linking to a ‘food reviews‘ website doesn’t make sense. The article could be something about ‘Here are the best food spots in town for a quick bite if you are on a time crunch‘, this would be relevant enough to link to a food review website.
Keywords used in the article should match the search intent of the linking page in anchor link. (Eg. commercial, informational, etc.)