This may seem a silly question, but it's been rattling around in my head for a long time. Does the order of nested tags matter at all? For example, does <a href="http://google.com"><b>Google</b></a> have any more/less weight than <b><a href="http://google.com">Google</a></b> ?
It makes absolutely no difference. However, the second code is wrong because you are puttin in bold the whole link which is wrong, you only want the word to be in bold. Even though both versions work fine, the first one is the proper way to do it. For the SEO part, it makes so difference whatsoever.