Using "keyword rich" anchor text for NAVIGATIONAL links sitewide

[Kratos]

What do you think of using anchor text rich navigation links?

Say your topic is red widgets. You have a category of your site that covers the best aerial red widgets. It's full of posts (in excerpt form) covering this topic and the actual title of the category page is something like:

"These are the greatest aerial widgets in red that we have!"

You then use a sitewide link on navigation (e.g. menu bar) that says "best aerial red widget`" and links to that specific category.

So...

Title of category page
These are the greatest aerial widgets in red that we have!

Sitewide link somewhere on the page (top/side/below):
best aerial red widgets

The actual keyword to rank for is "best aerial red widgets" but using that as a title for the category page just looks off to readers, while it looks less spammy as a sitewide link to save on text space.

What do you think of this approach? Is this too spammy or something the Panda algorithm could frown upon?

We have been testiing this for some time but have yet to come to a conclusion.

Anyone?

P.S. While we are not trying to rank the category page by itself, we are hoping to transfer all the keyword anchor juice on to the posts in that category.

[netmeg]

I don't do it. Looks spammy.

[toidi]

In my niche i kind of have to do this just so the menu makes sense and so users know where to go.

however, 'best' and other subjective descriptions do not belong in a menu.

[lucy24]

If you say outright "best" or "greatest" the user will be looking for that other link where you offer "worst" or "second-rate" or "cheapest".

[goodroi]

IMHO Good usability can often lead to bigger seo results than outdated keyword stuffing.

[adder]

There's no need. At worst you will tip the balance towards spamminess, and at best the search engines will simply ignore your move.

Let me put it this way, if you could persuade Google to improve your website's ranking for "best aerial red widget" by placing this keyword inside your navigation bar (i.e. creating thousands of sitewide anchor-rich links) all webmasters would be very happy with their rankings and all searchers would be extremely unhappy with the SERPs :)

Anchor text doesn't matter as much (if at all) as it used to. If you've got time to read "scientific" stuff about co-occurrence and if you want to see Rand without the beard, check this:
[seobythesea.com...]
It also references a few patents taken out by Google.

In other words, Google can assign value to links based on different factors.

Forget about navigation links and other sitewide links and make sure you help Google find your best content by improving your internal contextual link structure.

If you've got a descriptive page about aerial red widgets, other related subpages will link to it using a descriptive (non-spammy) anchor text. If the "aerial red widgets" page's authority is high, you may find that you rank well for "best aerial red widget" keyword even though your page or incoming links never mention the word "best"

[Kratos]

Makes sense. Unfortunately navigation menus need to be short in words and thus there may not be enough contextual presence to indicate that our "blue aerial widgets" are indeed the best ones. The only way would be by using the word "best" in the anchor text (of course, doing some on-page seo on the landing page too).

I do agree that it seems spammy but I have seen this technique in big sites and I would say to an extent that using words like "best" or "most important" or "cheapest" in anchor text for navigation is useful.

Perhaps using such a technique is not frowned upon by the big G if the rest of Panda-killing factors are clean and do not raise any red flags? I would actually side more with this theory as Cutts has said in the past that they (webspam) do look at sites in the overall scheme of things.

[netmeg]

Big sites get away with things that other sites can't. Mostly because of trust signals. If you feel it necessary than go ahead; for myself, I would not advocate for it.