How Important is Internal Link Text

We all know about incoming link text, but ...

[Monkscuba]

I ask the assembled experts..

Google seems to place a lot of emphasis on link anchor text for incoming (and outgoing) links. What about internal links from page to page on one site. If I have a page about Green Widgets, would it be useful to use the words "green widgets" in a text link from the home page?

On our site, most pages have a link back to the homepage by clicking on the company logo. I have put Alt text on all of these (not keyword stuffed, just something like " Bob's Widgets - Widget Supplies". Would this help the home page in any way? In any case, it can't hurt, right?

[instand1]

Internal link text is important. A competitor of us has lower pagerank and no external links with "blue widgets" als link text, but they are ahead of us. The only reason for their success: Ten of their pages (not the homepage) have "blue widgets" in link text for a link to that particular page.

All other aspects of that page are not optimized, they don't even have "blue widgets" in the TITLE of that page! (Our webmaster is slow, therefore I can not yet tell you whether using the same method on our site puts us ahead of our competitor.)

[edited by: instand1 at 10:17 am (utc) on Dec. 23, 2002]

[vitaplease]

In general, all links help.

Although internal links could be seen as "self-congratulatory", they are often best motivated, as they are described by the author-him/herself.

In my opinion, external inbound links help more than internal.

For the rest, I could imagine Google puts a cap on the added value of an extra inbound "motivated" anchor text after a certain number. (same could be for the signing of pages of clients by webmasters)