A bit under three years ago Matt Cutts gave an interview to USA Today. I saw the article shortly after it was first published and it did strike me as a really good layman’s introduction to search engine optimisation (SEO). It also hammered home that giving Google interesting unique content that is relevant to your search terms is not enough, you do need to spend a couple of minutes per page to make sure that you have made it friendly to Google, and then they will find you.
I came across the article again when I was clearing out my favourites and noticed how the article is as relevant today (three years on) as it was when it was first published and was worth refreshing and re-posting. You can find the original article on the USA Today website, but by the time you read this is could be a dead link.
Matt gave 5 pieces of advice,
1. Spotlight your search term on the page
What Matt is talking about here is your keywords or key phrases. Try to give each page a single searchable topic, to use Matt’s example, chiropractors in the San Diego area, and then think of two or three ways that people might search for it. So you might have “San Diego chiropractor”, “chiropractors in San Diego” and maybe “back pain treatments San Diego”.
Write these terms into your copy two or three times each at the most in a natural way. If this is what the page is really about then this won’t prove a problem.
2. Fill in your Tags
Even before the article was written SEO bloggers were saying that Google paid no attention to the ‘meta tags’ on the page and here is Matt Cutts telling us its important. These bloggers are still out there saying the same old things, but as Matt tells us, its important to fill in the description and title tags on our web pages with good keyword rich text.
Matt says the chiropractor should fill in the title tag with something like,
“San Diego chiropractor. Local doctor serves San Diego community.”
Matt also said that the keywords meta tag should still be filled in but Google doesn’t pay much attention to it (maybe this is what some of the SEO bloggers get confused with)
3. Get Other Sites to Link Back to You
If you ever wondered why other sites link higher than you, this is where it’s at. You need people to link back to you. This is because Google determines your popularity by the number of ‘votes’ for your site and if someone links to your site then this constitutes a vote.
Votes or links from big sites like the BBC or Times Online websites will count as a bigger vote than from your friend’s small blog, but they can still help, so ask your friends to link to you. The best tip for getting lots of links to your site is to generate content other people will want to talk about and link to.
4. Create a Blog and Post Often
Google likes regularly updated, original, relevant content. So our chiropractor could write short posts regarding the causes of back troubles and how we can avoid them, new treatments and therapies. Links from this content to relevant pages on the main site can also help. To build more links you could offer to guest blog for other sites.
The cost is minimal if anything with a great range of low cost and no cost blogging options.
Google Free Tools
5. Register for Free Tools
Google has a number of free tools that are really useful and can also help Google find, crawl and rank your pages. Your web developer should be able to help you set up the three main tools:
Google Webmaster tools: Here you can upload a text-based site map, which shows Google the pages of your site, and see some vital linking statistics
Google Analytics: Use this to monitor traffic to your site, who’s coming and how they’re getting there
Google Local Business: Google are showing business results more and more as the first 10 results so if you’re not registered, you’re missing out.
We, that is rake mark include both Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics with all of our new websites and have done for some time.
About Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts
For anyone who is unclear on just who Matt Cutts is, he works for Google in their web spam department and has an unofficial but authorised blog that talks about Google, its search Algorithm and other SEO related topics. It’s seen as a better source of information to the official webmaster blog as it’s more informal and less corporate.
As well as being the head of the webspam team, Matt attends a number of conferences each year and gives interviews from time to time. This information was from one of them.
I love the comments on this blog, it definitely gives it that community experience!