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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

Rand reiterated in a recent whiteboard that yes, only the first instance of the link would provide value. "Now, we all know as SEOs that the first anchor text link counts and only one on the page is going to pass that value. Linking repeatedly to the same page with the same anchor is not helpful for SEO, and it makes our sites look really spammy and manipulative and questionable to someone who's browsing it." http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday Think about the user 1st, do they need another avenue to find that page, or is the naviation well structured enough to get them there.

That was a good catch Alan and Ryan, I just looked at the Alt and Title and did not even notice the example used them in an anchor. Doh! I would only ever use them in images. Since I develop on the Microsoft platfrom using it anywhere other than img flags a syntax error.