What is Google looking for in a high quality website, worthy of top rankings? Well according to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, you must first use as many keywords as possible; the optimal keyword density is actually 77 percent. Definitely link to porn sites. Annoying users: that’s a plus. You do get a boost for running AdSense, he revealed. Oh, and all those other search engines - Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo - they’re a bunch of hackers doing illegal things. You heard it hear, folks.
If you bought any of that, I have some icebergs I’d like to sell you. That video was actually a mash-up spoof Google put out, one that was played at the beginning of You & A with Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced 2012.
All jokes aside, Cutts got into some great topics and dispelled some modern-day SEO myths in his session. Here are the highlights.
Is Penguin a Penalty?
No, neither Penguin nor Panda are manual penalties, Cutts said. He explained that Penguin was designed to tackle “the stuff in the middle;” between fantastic, high quality content and spam. Panda was all about spam, but the need for Penguin arose from this middle ground.
“It does demote web results, but it’s an algorithmic change, not a penalty. It’s yet another signal among over 200 signals we look at,” he said.
A penalty is a manual action taken against a site and you will “pretty much always” be notified in Webmaster Tools if it’s a penalty affecting your site.
Will a Reconsideration Request Help You Recover From Penguin?
No. “People who think it should rank higher after Penguin can let us know and we can look at it, and in a couple of instances, it actually helped us make a couple of tweaks to the algorithm.” You should submit a reconsideration request if you receive a warning.
Negative SEO - Will Google Add an Option to Disavow Links?
They sure seem to be thinking about it. People have been asking about negative SEOfor a long time, Cutts said. He noted that Google has changed their documentation over time to reflect that negative SEO is not impossible, but it is difficult. Google is “talking about” being able to enable disavowing links, possibly within a few months.
Did Google Send WMT Notifications About Penguin?
Google is trying to be more transparent by sending out more warnings, he said. Only a single-digit percent of those 700,000 unnatural link warnings that went out around the time of Penguin were actually Penguin-related. The majority were for obvious black-hat tactics.
Is Google Trying to Make a Point About Buying Links?
Yes, they are. According to Cutts, “People don’t realize, when you buy links, you might think you’re very careful, that you have no footprints, but you may be getting into business with someone who’s not as careful. People need to realize as we build new tools, it becomes a higher-risk endeavor.”
Is SEO Going to Get More Difficult?
Yes. He notes that it’s become more challenging over the past five to seven years and SEOs should expect that trend to continue and even increase.
Does That Mean Google Hates SEOs?
Of course not. Though Cutts did hand out a spanking for SEOs who buy or sell links: “There are people who continue to sell links, although they don’t do any good, and that’s part of how SEO has a bad reputation.”
Later, he said he would consider giving link building for non-profits a try to better understand what SEOs are facing. When asked about the war on SEOs, he said, “There’s no war on SEOs!” and that it’s just a war on spam.
If you bought any of that, I have some icebergs I’d like to sell you. That video was actually a mash-up spoof Google put out, one that was played at the beginning of You & A with Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced 2012.
All jokes aside, Cutts got into some great topics and dispelled some modern-day SEO myths in his session. Here are the highlights.
Is Penguin a Penalty?
No, neither Penguin nor Panda are manual penalties, Cutts said. He explained that Penguin was designed to tackle “the stuff in the middle;” between fantastic, high quality content and spam. Panda was all about spam, but the need for Penguin arose from this middle ground.
“It does demote web results, but it’s an algorithmic change, not a penalty. It’s yet another signal among over 200 signals we look at,” he said.
A penalty is a manual action taken against a site and you will “pretty much always” be notified in Webmaster Tools if it’s a penalty affecting your site.
Will a Reconsideration Request Help You Recover From Penguin?
No. “People who think it should rank higher after Penguin can let us know and we can look at it, and in a couple of instances, it actually helped us make a couple of tweaks to the algorithm.” You should submit a reconsideration request if you receive a warning.
Negative SEO - Will Google Add an Option to Disavow Links?
They sure seem to be thinking about it. People have been asking about negative SEOfor a long time, Cutts said. He noted that Google has changed their documentation over time to reflect that negative SEO is not impossible, but it is difficult. Google is “talking about” being able to enable disavowing links, possibly within a few months.
Did Google Send WMT Notifications About Penguin?
Google is trying to be more transparent by sending out more warnings, he said. Only a single-digit percent of those 700,000 unnatural link warnings that went out around the time of Penguin were actually Penguin-related. The majority were for obvious black-hat tactics.
Is Google Trying to Make a Point About Buying Links?
Yes, they are. According to Cutts, “People don’t realize, when you buy links, you might think you’re very careful, that you have no footprints, but you may be getting into business with someone who’s not as careful. People need to realize as we build new tools, it becomes a higher-risk endeavor.”
Is SEO Going to Get More Difficult?
Yes. He notes that it’s become more challenging over the past five to seven years and SEOs should expect that trend to continue and even increase.
Does That Mean Google Hates SEOs?
Of course not. Though Cutts did hand out a spanking for SEOs who buy or sell links: “There are people who continue to sell links, although they don’t do any good, and that’s part of how SEO has a bad reputation.”
Later, he said he would consider giving link building for non-profits a try to better understand what SEOs are facing. When asked about the war on SEOs, he said, “There’s no war on SEOs!” and that it’s just a war on spam.
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