USA Today Interviews Matt Cutts On Search Engine Optimization

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, June 24, 2008

USA Today carried an interview with Matt Cutts on ‘How to drive traffic to your website’. It makes for an interesting read particularly if you are into search engine optimization as a means to drive traffic. A short precise of his comments on the topic:

Search Terms On The Page:
Find the search terms that people are going to use to find you and put it at the top of your page.

Title and Description Tags:
In Matt’s own words, these two tags are crucial. Forget the keyword tag - Google doesn’t put much weight on that tag.

Links:
What’s an interview with Matt without the link factor. Google looks at over 100 bits of data but links are the cream.

Blogs:
I wrote about blogs and search engine optimization yesterday and now Matt comes out and says pretty much the same as what I wrote - blogs are good for business.

Google’s Tools:
Well it is a newspaper interview so he has to plug Google somehow. Register for Google’s free tools and learn how to use them.

His final words, don’t overdo the keywords. In fact he suggest that two or three repeats of the keyword is all you really need.

If I am going to disagree with Matt it is on the last tip. I have mentioned Matt several times along with Google. None of these are keywords for this page. It seems to me that search engine optimization needs to ensure that keywords can be differentiated from the rest of the content. In an article like this it may require a five or six repetition.

I am pleased to see that inclusion of blogs and the search engine optimization boost they can give to websites. Otherwise, the interview offers little in the way of new information. Still, it is nice to get some reinforcement occasionally.

Category: SEO

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2 Comments

Comment by namecritic

Made Tuesday, 24 of June , 2008 at 5:45 pm

Funny how people will take what Matt Cutts says as SEO Advice. When Matt Cutts is talking, he is talking about Google. Google is not the only search engine and optimizing just for google is not the sum total of SEO or Internet marketing. There is so much more to marketing and optimizing a website than just listening to the latest drivel about google.

An example; “In Matt’s own words, these two tags are crucial. Forget the keyword tag - Google doesn’t put much weight on that tag.”

But maybe some other search engines do pay attention to those things. Google will not punish you for using keywords as a meta, so why ignore anything that might help a website get traffic from another source?

The title of the post “USA Today Interviews Matt Cutts On Search Engine Optimization” should read “USA Today Interviews Matt Cutts On Google Optimization”

Yes, we want traffic from google, but if it is someone’s main focus and they believe that optimizing for google is all you need to know, then they are missing out on a whole web out there that does not come through the google portal.

Pingback by » Funny How People Will Take What Matt Cutts Says As SEO Advice Search Engine Optimization Journal - SEO and Search Engine Marketing Blog

Made Tuesday, 24 of June , 2008 at 7:38 pm

[...] McElroy, AKA namecritic left a comment on this morning’s post USA Today Interviews Matt Cutts On Search Engine Optimization and I just had to take his opening line in [...]