Lots of links on homepage to internal pages with keyword rich anchor text - problem?

[debi_zyx]

Hi, All!

We have a new potential client, that when looking at his site with a tool, we noticed that the previous SEO company they worked with filled the homepage copy with lots of keyword-rich anchor text links pointing to different pages on the site - many links going to the same page, just with different keywords.  These links are not indistinguishable in format from the other text, which is why we only noticed it with a tool.

I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that to start with, but once all these links are there, would you recommend taking them down?  Is there any conceivable chance it could help the site? Is there a significant reason to think it will harm the site?  Or will it just be pretty neutral?

In all that's been written (much by SEOMoz) about only the first link's anchor text counting, do subsequent links work like a no-follow in the sense that they are a waste of the link-juice of the page, or is it as if they aren't there at all?  (And is "only the first link counts" still the most widely held theory, or have there been new developments since?)

Thanks, All!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I am assuming that they are looking at SEO because they need some help getting ranked in the SERP's, and what they have already have done is certainly not a practice I would endorse. My thoughts on this would be to remove all those links that take you through to the same page but with different anchor text. It is OK to have a few other links in the copy that take you through to other pages as, if nothing else, this can help with Google crawling the site and visitors whilst they are browsing through.

Regards,

Andy

[debi_zyx]

Thanks, Andy.  Can you explain why exactly you wouldn't endorse it and you would recommend removing the links?  That's my feeling also, but I wanted some definitive reasoning before I do anything.

Thanks,

Aviva

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I have been doing this a long time now and have never come across anyone who endorses this as a technique. To me if it smells even slightly of desperation or 'grey hat' then I steer well clear.

You can  rest assured that Google will get what the page and site are about without having all of these multiple links to the same pages being thrown at them - in the same way they say not to keyword stuff because they don't need to keep being told

Regards,

Andy