is it possible to have too many links with h1 tags and keyword anchor text? suppose, for instance, that 85% of your inbound links had h1 tags and anchor text for your top keywords. would search engines react in any way to this?

that is a grossly exaggerated example but i wanted to see if there could be too much of a good thing.

How much is it helping in the first place?

And more importantly - does it look contrived, or comform to W3C guidelines?

How much is it helping in the first place?

And more importantly - does it look contrived, or comform to W3C guidelines?

i was planning on buying links from relevant sites, and wanted to give them the code they could use to link to me. i would have the code reference a stylesheet on my domain so that i could ensure that the look of the link was how the webmaster of the site i was advertising on wanted it to look. by the same token, i would be able to put in an h1 tag so as to maximize the value of the link.

from what i've read (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/) this seems to be w3 compliant.

if i go on a link shopping spree does this create a problem? would search engines frown upon it?

In my experience, I don't see that it makes any difference whether a link has a header tag associated with it or not. It is more about the content and popularity of the site/page that is linking to you and the anchor text (if any) that is being used in the link.

I haven't experienced/hear of any penalties due to the exact factors that you mentioned.

This thread here http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::thread/forum::seo-professional/thread::1104022391
coments this issue.

IMO the content of H tags are credited to the page they are located on and the content of anchor text is credited to the page they point to. I seriously doubt that the H tag over an anchor text is going to make that a better link.