AdesBlog.com

Matt Cuts’ white hat SEO tips, video + text summary

leave comment 

As you all know Matt Cutts is a software engineer who works for Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

Here is a video from WordCamp that was organized by WordPress this July 21st to 22nd, 2007.

You might have already watched this clip, but if you haven’t, here it is. He gives many SEO tips… It’s one hour clip, so you might want to get comfortable in your seat.

Below, I have summarized the video clip, listing important SEO tips that were mentioned in the video:

• Use variation of the same keyword in the url, title and content separately

For example, if you want to blog about changing firefox skins. You could use URL: yourblog dot com/change_firefox_skin and title of the post you could use: Changing Mozilla Skins (Mozilla is used instead of Firefox, and plural word is used for skin - skins) and in the content you could repeat keywords like: firefox, mozilla, firefox.com, skin, theme…etc

As you can see, it’s the same thing you are talking about, but you are using different keywords in each place that Search Engines deem important. These important areas are URL and Title, content area is less important but it does add to your advantage if you back up what you write in the title of your post.

• Use dashes and underscores in the URLs to separate the words

It’s good to use dashes and underscores in the URLs, because Search Engines can detect them. It’s worst to use no space in the URLs between different words.

Example: Good to use yourblog dot com/firefox_skin_change or yourblog dot com/firefox-skin-change and not recommended to use as yourblog dot com/firefoxskinchange

Because when you use no space between the words, Search Engines find it difficult to break it. And it’s probable that some Search Engines won’t be able to recognize them at all.

• Name categories after the keywords that you are chasing

When you name a category, it’s good to name them after the keywords that you want to improve your position in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for. For example if you want to rank high for a keyword “Make Money Online”, it’s good to have a category name for that keyword. Because as you know WordPress and other blogging platforms, directly inserts category names in the URLs.

Example: Your category called “Make Money Online“, would look like in the URL as yourblog dot com/Make-Money-Online/…

• Merge your www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com

Typing in a site with and without www can bring up different sites. Normally all webhosts show the same site (content). However not all Search Engines will think it’s the same site, unless you tell them it is. Usually Search Engines will treat them as different sites, and their statistics (number of backlinks..etc) will be logged separately. So merging them (redirecting one to another) will merge the stats and Search Engines will treat them both as one (same) site, and this might help your site’s position in SERPs.

• Make a buzz on the net and Google will notice you

Google doesn’t want to notice you (your site) through text-link ads from high ranked websites. And Google hates when you do that (buy PageRank). It might even ban you, so do it sparingly.

But what Google likes is, when you do a buzz and when everybody talks about you. When the net talks about you and links to your site naturally (without you buying ads from them), Google will notice that and will improve your position in the Google SERPs and it might also give your site higher PR.

What can you do to make a buzz? Here are some of the suggestions:

- Do a linkbait (what is that?)
- Write a tutorial
- Make a list (ex: 101 Tips for Making Money Online)
- Create controversy (not recommended)
- Make an analysis and publish the results (ex: Usability in emails, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail…etc)

After you have done them, promote them on social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit..etc

Avoid .biz and .info type of domains

He didn’t really give much info on this but he hinted that it was not a good idea to have a website with these kind of domain extensions. So stick to .com and .net if your priority is SERPs and SEO.

That’s about it, I think it pretty much summarizes the video. However, there are lots of questions and answers in the video. So if you want to get more information about how Google works (not only on SEO) then you might want to watch the video.

His last words were “Selling links and buying links are against our guidelines, and we do take action on them”. ;) But then again, don’t they sell links themselves through AdSense? So that advertisers can show up on the first page of Google…? Mmmhhhh… his words would make sense if Google was not selling text links itself. Anyway, I think that’s a totally different topic that I might talk on a separate post.

Subscribe to RSS to read upcoming articles from AdesBlog.