Greetings, Trying to find out the best way to deal with anchor text... Here is my question.... - Is it best to bold and underline? - Is proximity an issue? Should anchor text be very close to the text that it is associated with? (Example: Should it be in the same table cell?) - Should I get rid of all the "Click Here" and "Read More" links and make them more descriptive? - Just looking for general tips or best practices. Thanks.
Yes, you should get rid of the "click here" and "read more" or any such links and make it more keyword oriented and meaningfull.
Bold and underline don't add any value to anchor text from a SE point of view. Use them if it is appropriate from a visual, design prespective, but not for SEO. No one knows for sure about this and there is much debate. But often anchor text stands completely by itself, see coop ads for instance, and it appears to have the full intended impact on SERPs and PageRank. So I don't think proximity is an issue. Yes! These are totally useless as far as helping the SEs determine the relevance of the link. Hope that helps.