Do the rules of “natural” linking apply to on-site crosslinking as well?

[donationtown]

At an SEO conference I attended the speaker said that Google wants the anchor text of a link to be more natural. Specifically you mentioned that the anchor text should be the company brand, the domain name/URL or a call to action (ex. “Click here.”) I thought this was an interesting idea for offsite linkbuilding. BUT, my question is…Does the rule also apply for on-site crosslinking between my webpages? Is there potential harm or a benefit to adding keywords to the anchor text of the links within my site?

[DavidKonigsberg]

Keywords should be in internal anchor text but they should be in it so a user can find what he is looking for not to manipulate google.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Anchor text should always be informative and descriptive no mater where it is and the page it is leading to.

Apart from a cleaner user experience, you will also find this wont feature as a negative with the page quality algorithm. Don't try to be deceptive, but where you can, a link within text is always going to be favourable.

For offsite linking, I can't say I agree that anchor text should be so stagnated that it should say things like "click here". That stinks of something that has been added with no thought to someone seeing it and knowing where they are going if they click on it.

Descriptive in-site and off-site all the way.

Andy