What if you had the same hyperlink twice on the same page but the first hyperlink used one set of anchor text and the second hyperlink used a different set of anchor text. Is that a bad thing? Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that they would be treated as normal links and are not considered spammy.
Here are those tweets:
Nothing special would happen. They're normal links. Why would it be spammy?
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 1, 2021
This is not a new question, it came up back in 2014 in a video Q&A with Matt Cutts. Then he said that last time he looked, which was in 2009, Google would count the first anchor text and not the second but the link signals, outside of the anchor text, would be split. He was careful about how he responded, saying this is based on the original PageRank paper from the 90s and this is based on when he last checked in 2009, which is now well over 10 years later.
Here is that video:
John then goes on to explain that sometimes tools lead you in the wrong direction on what to prioritize. Which kind of is what Matt Cutts said above several years ago.
A lot of tools flag things that are not critical issues; it's always good to ask them for more details if you find their recommendations confusing. Prioritizing things to work on is important, and hard -- and confusion makes it harder.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 1, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
