gouri - 12:51 pm on Jun 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

@tedster,

Thanks for the response.

I apologize for asking a lot of questions about this, but I feel that this might be contributing to my over optimization.

I don't always avoid exact matches, but I don't intentionally create them either. Instead, I consider the context and purpose of the link and how the anchor text will read to the visitor.

Are you referring to exact matches between the anchor text of the internal link on a page and the title tag of the page being linked to? For example, the anchor text, build great abs, of the internal link on Page B being the same as the title tag of Page D if that is the page being linked to from Page B?

That's why I include "surrounding text" in my writing decisions. The surrounding text is also part of the link's influence on the target page - and it is clearly important to lead the visitor into clicking, too.

When search engines look at the “surrounding text” of anchor text in an internal link, are they looking at some of the words before and after it, a couple of the sentences before and after it or maybe the whole paragraph to see if the link fits within the context of the paragraph?