by Matt Cutts
How does Google crawl?
We crawl roughly in decreasing order of PageRank
What’s PageRank?
What’s PageRank?
The number and importance of links pointing to you.
What’s PageRank?
Avoid Backlink Obsession (BO)
“Why are my 297 links:
1 x PR7 + 25 x PR6 + 151 x (PR5 and PR4) + 120 x (PR3)
are nothing in Google’s eyes compared with my competitor’s site which only has got 59 links
(4 x PR6 + 38 x PR5 + 17 x PR4)
That site is the first for the normal KW query and for allinanchor. How can it be true?”
How does Google rank pages?
You want to be relevant and reputable
Being Relevant
Ask yourself:
o What do I love?
o What am I really good at doing?
o What do I have to say?
SEO tips: keywords
o Think about the keywords that users will type. Include them naturally in your posts
“usb drive”
“thumb drive”
“flash drive”
“pen drive”
o ALT attribute are handy (3-4 relevant words)
o Don’t forget image search, videos, etc.
What will your visitors type?
Keyword tool – brainstorm!
Url structure
Tweaking titles, urls, content
SEO tips: keywords
o Use categories that are also good keywords
o Keywords in url paths: example.com/my-keywords
+ Dashes are best
+ Next best is underscores
+ No spaces is worst
o Someone should ask me: what if I’ve already done my site? Should I change things?
Don’t overdo it
Being relevant: summary
o Find something you’re passionate about
o Write often!
o Pay attention to the mechanics, but don’t overdo it
Gaining a Reputation
Be interesting
Update often
Apply Katamari Philosophy
Credit: LaMenta3
Gaining Reputation
o Provide a useful service
+ Eric Goldman – blawger about legal issues & search
o Do original research or reporting
+ Danny Sullivan – compared spam on Gmail, Yahoo
+ Louis Gray – watched his referrers
o Give great information
+ Lifehacker – High-quality tutorials and guides
o Find a creative niche
+ icanhascheezburger, F@#$ My Life, One Sentence
+ Penny Arcade, xkcd
o Write some code
o Live blogging!
o Make lists (“11 reasons why WordCamp ruled”)
o Create controversy
o Meet folks on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed
Make a video
Google tools can help
o Webmaster console at google.com/webmasters/
o Google Analytics
o FeedBurner: MyBrand for free
feeds.mattcutts.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com
o Google Website Optimizer
o Custom Search Engine: free site search
o AdSense
“Free” links – google.com/webmasters/
Google.com/webmasters/
Google.com/webmasters/
Evergreen content – Google Analytics
FeedBurner
Popularity: 5% [?]
Tags: Google, Google Analytics, PageRank, search engine
