Link popularity and link reputation is important.
But don’t be so obsessed with linking that you build your entire strategy only around link building.
Use all of the basic principles to carry your Web site and you may want to do some linking based on what will make sense to your visitors. You are not only just trying to please the search engines.
What secondary and third supporting phrases would you like to be easily found for. Remember to allow for about 20% topic drift in your inbound links. That means keep your focus on your primary keyword phrase in link text (about 80% of the time.) About 20% of the time use your supporting terms.