Text or image with alt for anchoring pdf within site?

Hello everyone. I am a new member to the dp forum.
Before I ask my question I would like to thank everyone for sharing such a wealth of information here. Very much appreciative.

I'm going to be developing many pages that will contain some descriptive copy and have about a dozen links to pdf files (with preview images). I'm wondering what will be the best way to link to them.

Some options I'm considering are:

Link with "widgets" as the anchor text.
My only concern is that "widgets" will appear many times. Could this be considered spam?

Link the preview image to the pdf with the alt tag "widgets"

Use a "download file" gif , but not sure about alt

Does anybody have any thoughts as to what direction I should go here.
May be a combination of a couple of these or maybe something I haven't thought of?

Also, could the file name of the pdf benifit the page?

And again, Thank you all!

 

why not link with "widgets" and a word or two that describes the distinction between the pdfs. I assume they are different, so the link text can be different. If all the pdfs are different parts of house plans, you don't have to link each one with the anchor text "house plans", you can use "house plans - first floor" house plans - Second floor" etc.

 

The pdf contents are extremely similar. They only differ visually.
I should have stated that.
This is why I'm unsure about what to do.

 

If they differ, put the difference in the links.
"widgets - pie chart"
"widgets - bar graph"
"widgets - list"
etc...

 

I'll do that.
Sometimes I over think things to much.

Appreciate your response.