Due to the fact that people have filled there Meta Keyword Descriptions with so many keywords that its not even funny Google doesn't really pay attention to the keywords that you put there anymore. Its more important that you list back links to your site with the keywords that your trying to target as the link like if you had a site for selling cars and your keywords were "buy used cars" you'd want to put <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com>Buy Used Cars</a> that way it will come up as "Buy Used Cars" in a text link. Then Google will go to your site and see the keywords and it will start to help you rank higher! Hope this helps someone! You can check out more of my tricks to making your site worth more at www.monsterflipper.com
There's many different names for it anchor text is used more when you are talking about your personal web page. Anchor texts are used to point you to a different spot on the same page.
Please, make sure that your coding is done correctly....it is true that a lot factors don't play a huge roll in optimization today, however all of your tags should be useful on every page with keywords inputed....however, please don't forget to write rich content for each page....remember you are trying to combat a search spyder...he will read the tags first and then go to the content.....make sure there is a corresponding keyword attached in the content and your tags for each page.......otherwise it can serve useless.