I read on some other places there might be a anchor text filter, where if you have a ton of links all with the same text there is a penalty, is there any truth to this?
If it were only that easy, and that black and white. The answer is that nobdoy knows. Google doesn't tell anyone what they are and are not looking at or using. Lots of people have had the number of reported backlink and PR changed quite radically , up and down, over the last several weeks. The possible explanation for some of these changes might be to many link with identical anchor text. But there are all kinds of other pages with identical anchor text links, that haven't been downgraded. So it is a guessing games. The problem with this simplistic point of view is that Google doesn't place pages in their SERPs based on a single factor. Their algorithms look at and evaluate 100s if not 1,000s of factors. Sorry I can't give you a better answer, but the truth is nobody knows. Everyone is purely speculating.
That's right no one knows - just like the majority of SEO experts don't know how Google or any other SE works. It's all speculation, that's why it is best to let these experts stick to speculation and simply SEO your website with the basics.
It's not likely, but the best advice I've heard is to mix up a little bit with your anchor text. Even if there is no penalty, you are positioning yourself for rankings in other keyword searches besides your main target.
Two thoughts: 1. That's just silly. How many people link to International Business Machines with the link text of "IBM"? That's not spam. 2. I have tested a script which generates semi-random link text. Look at the links on the bottom of the right skyscraper on Fort Liberty. Now, reload the page and look at the links again. See how the link text changes? I have run this script for about a month to see what results it would have. Results this far are... none. I am still subject to the same "multiple links from the same site" dampening filter as everyone else.
The only problem with that advice is that we know the more links the better. In turn if the anchor text is used by the SEs to determine the relevance of the links then the more time the same anchor text is used then supposedly the more relevant that page is for that search term or anchor text. Use the McDar tool http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp. And look at the correlation between the allinanchor: and the SERP placement. Allinanchor is how many times the same anchor text can be found in links. In my mind there is no clear evidence that prolific use of the same anchor text is being devalued. I think that for every site you can show me that may have been devalued for prolific use of identical anchor text I can show you one that has done it and prospered
The commonest anchor-link text is the name of your site as usually used (which, ideally, contains your front-page keywords). Surely, 1) that text is going to be used an awful lot; and 2) no sane SE (so we exclude Yahoo) could possibly penalize a site merely for having many links that are simply its name. Sounds like just another urban myth . . . .
Owlcroft, I agree with the urban myth theory, but not that the site name is the most common anchor text. If you are seriously practicing link optimization, your site name may not appear anywhere in your anchor text.