Usually when Google engineer Matt Cutts posts something it is treated like gold. He could post about what he ate for lunch last week and people would hang off every word. I'm not usually one of these people. That doesn't mean that I'm not a fan of Matt Cutts. I am, in fact I think that he is one of the good guys of SEO. I just don't hang off of every word that he says. However, when I read a post from him that contained a Whitehat - SEO Tips for Bloggers presentation I felt a need to pass some of the information on.
Some of the stuff is pretty basic, but there was mention of some items that people tend to forget. Take the whole use of dashes vs. underscores in the URL thing. According to Matt (and thus Google at this time) when creating keywords in URL paths:
- Dashes are best
- Next best is underscores
- Having no spaces is the worst
Other helpful hints for Blogging SEO mentioned by Matt:
- Placing 3-4 relevant words is alt tags is "handy"
- Make your post creation dates easy to find
- View your blog on a cell phone
- If you are moving to a new domain use a permanent 301 redirect
- Standardize your backlinks (www vs. non-www)
- Keep your links update, contact the important sites and ask them to update their links (I would like to add that this will have direct impact on your Inbound Linking score)
- Set up Google Webmaster Tools for your blog (this is a great tool)
- Set up Google Analytics for your blog (hey it's free and it works well)
- Get your blog known - creativity creates buzz and helps with the viral push (remember the million dollar homepage?) You can also get known through the use of "link bait" such as tutorials, lists, insightful analysis, controversial posts etc.
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- Change default permalink (domain.com/?p=111), instead use /%postname%/
- Refer to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com from time to time for additional tips
I digress, Matt's post on Blogging SEO tips is very informative and may even be a review for some. Here is the complete presentation. We'll see you at SES San Jose Matt.
Labels: matt cutts, SEO tips
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