linking strategies

does link text need to exactly match keyword?

[semiaziz]

I'm going after about 50 phrases, but there are two high yield ones that I'm going after with my homepage. My site is divided into two sections, one of them is about "keyword1 keyword2," the other is about "keyword3 keyword4."

On the bottom of every page there's a navbar linking to the homepage and to relevant category pages.
The link to the homepage is:
"sitename keyword1 and keyword3 homepage"

Does this help me at all? I have thought of changing the link to read "sitename keyword1 keyword2 homepage" for one half of the site and "sitename keyword3 keyword4 homepage"
for the other half of the site.

Does having extra text in the link text hurt?

[Terrier]

Interesting question, one I have been wondering about myself, after thinking about this for a while I am of the opinion that one should target the keyword without the extra text in the link. keep it simple.

"keyword1 and keyword2" is better than "sitename keyword1 and keyword2 homepage"
It wont hurt, but better for allinanchor to keep it to the keyword.