Awesome, yes Matt Cutts in that video does imply what you are saying. I also agree with higher CTR (another thing I hadn't thought of!)

Ryan, this is great. Thank you.

Hi Ryan,

I know that anchor text is really important. In my career I've used anchor text such as, if one of the four keywords on a page was "Brown Shoes" then the link would look like

Brown Shoes

for the best anchor text, but I didn't know that

http://www.zappos.com/brown-shoes

also helped by providing anchor text for "brown shoes" As you said, many times people just use the URL, and I didn't know that Google would separate the URL into pieces and give weight to "brown" and "shoes" since it's in the URL.

In my experience, there's been quite a bit of difference in anchor text between

brown shoe

and

brown shoes

where an exact match is important, and I thought the keywords in the anchor text had to be just words (with spaces) and it is new to me that the URL string works too.

I can see that Google might want to do that, is there any documentation on this? It's OK if there's not.

Hi Ryan,

I see what you mean about the technology extensions, I'll avoid them from here on out.

As to the anchor text, I didn't know that Google parsed the anchor text like it does a URL to extract keywords. You are an excellend SEO, so I'd like to just take your word for it, but could you give me more understanding of how keywords in anchor text works just like keywords in URL (parsing the "-" and "/") or a link to a Matt Cutts video that implies this (I just searched and didn't find one).

I can't just take your word for it, even though you're an amazing SEO, since I've found that many advanced SEOs are wrong on a few details (though I think you are great)

Thanks again, this is invaluable information

Ryan,

I am very impressed by your comments. I've been doing this a long time and I never thought of that.

So if someone's anchor tet is www.shoes.com/brown-sandles

and my keyword is brown sandles

then google will see "brown" and "sandles" even though there is a "/" and an "-" in there too? Could you go into detail about this, and how you know it works?

Also, what is the reasoning besides keeping the .html off of the end of the keyword rich URL?

Again, amazing advice.

Hi,

Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice.

But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important.

On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages.

Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart

For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes".

I'm wondering if I should redirect something like

shoes.com/shoecolors.html

to

shoes.com/brown-shoes.html

In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?

Theo, that list is really good. I've got one idea already. Thank you.

Hi Ryan,

We're already in Dmoz, and the Yahoo Directory and BOTW are both out of our price range. How would you go about finding directories for personal development in San Francisco, CA that meet the criteria I listed above?

I think your 3 suggestions are great though. Thank you.

Hi,

Does anyone have a list of high ranking free or almost free directories that have high search engine rankings and have an opportunity for a link or links for a personal development site in the USA?

The directories should have the following qualities:

Old Site Age

A lot of unique content (or as much as a directory can have)

A clean site

Plenty of Backlinks going to it

Facebook followers (if possible, though this might be stretching it)

high search engine rankings

I think you get the general idea. I'm looking for directories that are high ranking and in for the long haul. They don't have to be free, but it's best if it's inexpensive.

Thanks!