http://tshirthell.com/ As you can see, this is their PR6 splash page, they have various keywords underneath the image (which they are now #1 for in Google), all of these keywords link to their website. I'm wondering: a) if this gives any bonus, if not, why is such a popular company doing it? b) if this is a form of blackhat SEO, as if it works, then it's deceptive?
It's just internal linking. a) yes it can work, internal links with anchor - why - because it works b) no it's not blackhat If the words were overly repeated or hidden using the same colour as the background then it would be deceptive.
Tshirt hell is one of the most popular clothing sites for teens right now, they are #1 at google because they have a gazillion pages with links to them
Yep, that's what made me wonder why they'd be doing internal linking like that on their splash page (which I've never seen before on other sites, or haven't noticed). Maybe it's just me but I didn't know internal linking with keyword anchors was an effective SEO tool. I'm not surprised. The great marketing behind TSH is that it's intentionally racist, sexist, blasphemous, perverted and ignorant. I'm guessing they do absolutely no direct advertising, as it's extremely viral and word of mouth, blogs, emails and magazines are doing all the advertising for them.