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Old 02-14-2005, 01:07 PM   #129 (permalink)
Thermit
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I have to agree with awall19's and dcristo's recent comments about anchor text.

While unedited directories that let users erroneously enter a list of keywords as the supposed title of the site will wind-up looking quite junky, there is nothing wrong with a correct classification of a link by using appropriate anchor text.

There are so many websites that have dull hard-to-remember names like "Best Vacation Package Getaways" because most directories don't support for the corner stone of the SE algys: the anchor text.

Let's look at a hypothetical website called "Bob's Hangout", which is the top Net forum where marketing gurus meet to talk shop. The traditional link, especially with respect to links from a directory, is done by linking the site's title which tells Google that the website is relevant to "Bob's Hangout", but it doesn't reinforce the association between Bob's and the search term "marketing guru forum", for example. Naturally, a search for "bob's hangout" will likley bring up Bob's site, but this is only useful for people who already know about Bob's forum but forgot the URL. As a webmaster, Bob can both help SE's with the relevance that they seek, and help new members find his site by getting some links that do a better job of describing the content of his site, as opposed to the name of his site.

Nothing wrong with traditional-style title links to help Google and others provide relevant results for an identity search, but I think most people are actually searching for content on pages that they don't know about yet, which is why it's a good thing for search engines, webmasters seeking relevant traffic and searchers seeking relevant content to have inbound link anchor text based on content.
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