europeforvisitors - 6:10 am on Oct 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

And I'm going to do more than that. I'm also going to make every link say "cleaning tips for red cars" because...that's what the page is about.

Makes perfect sense. If I have a major section of my site devoted to widgets, I'll have a link with the anchor text "widgets." What the heck else am I supposed to call that section?

Links from external sources are a different matter. If I talk 100 Webmasters into linking to my Acme-widgets.com site with the word "widgets," that's going to look unnatural. To a human being, at least, it would make more sense for most of those links to read "Acme Widgets" or "Acme-widgets.com."

It's also worth remembering that factors such as anchor text aren't likely to be considered in isolation. (I think someone else may have pointed this out earlier in the thread.) Profiling doesn't say "fat guy is likely to be a drunk." It says "fat guy in a Bud Lite t-shirt with an open beer bottle in his hand, a Jimmy Buffet CD in his car stereo, and alcohol on his breath is likely to be a drunk."