I've been spying on my competition and I notice they have 200 anchor texts that are almost identical, for example whatever is their keyword, so it goes... whatever (196 backlinks) whatever inc. (46 backlinks) That is it, for their 200+ backlinks, I thought Google penalised for this? They are no 1 for the keyword!
Big G won't smack you for having tons of backlinks with only one keyword combination in the anchor text. You'll probably find that that website ranks only well for that particular keyword combination, but poorly for any other related keyword combination. Best practice is to get tons of backlinks, but vary the anchor text. Suppose you sell "widgets" (yes, I know this is a boring example, but it's a good one), then you could try getting links with the following anchor texts: widgets blue widgets quality blue widgets widgets for sale quality blue widgets for sale quality blue widgets for sale in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (long-tail keywords are the best, especially the Welsh ones )
no, google will not penalized for it as one can have numbers of back links from same anchor text. this is normal stuff for any website. Just think, if google penalized for this stuff than one can easily do such things for their competitor's website and get penalized them.
In my experience Google has been quite appeasing of this sort of behaviour, whereas Yahoo has devalued many of my identical anchor text links.
I think they are manipulating it just to fly under the radar, and I think google does panalize for it I just got a google bomb today!!!
Seojig is quite right. Jim Feeney gave another example of the effect of tons of backlinks in this thread.