Hi, me again. If you want to gain a better position on the serps with a particular phrase -ie: fitness books, will naming your incoming links 'fitness books' help. eg My URL might be: dubbya dubbya dubbya spot gymliterature spot biz (it isn't don't worry), but I want to gain notariety through the phrase 'fitness books'...I place a link on another site and attach the href to the keyphrase in question. I hope you know what I'm getting at, I can't think how to explain it any better. Mark
Yes, link anchor text is a factor in search engine algorithms. There was actually an instance of this way back, when a bunch of bloggers got together and linked to the George Bush site with the keyword 'miserable failure'. Lo and behold, Bush soon ranked #1 for miserable failure in Google. Something like this is called link bombing but it goes to show you that link anchor text is important for search engine rankings.
Yes it helps. It is one important aspect in off-page optimization. Check other techniques of off-page optimization.
Besides the anchor text, the overall content relevancy is important as well. So its good to have other related keywords near by
Using your target keyword as anchor text will help you gain better SERPs ranking. You could also place KWs in Title and Header Tags to give it emphasis
Exact link anchor will haelp Other associated keywords near the EXACT link andchor will help BUT... Yeah... tehre is always a but.... dont over do it or the algo will catch the similar links and it will discount them. So... have a few variations (based on how your users find you) and use them all to keep your links flying below the ALGO radar
using your targeted keywords as anchor text can help to improved your SERP but you also need to optimized your site well with your targeted keywords by creating content using your keywords, keywords in title and alt tags will also help.