Update, August 19, 2009: The video of this talk is now available. I added it below and I’m re-publishing this post.
I recently gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2009. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and the Automattic folks for a great time! The video of the talk is here, but you can also watch the video below:
If you want to browse the slides, here they are:
You can also download the talk in PowerPoint format.
Thanks Matt. Did they record the audio or video of your talk?
Great tips. Looking forward to the video. ๐
Quick surface comment, Matt…you may want to look at slide #31 before the Google legal team beats you about the head with briefcases and law books citing precedents (the s***ty CEO part). The word doesn’t bother me personally, but it’s better if someone it doesn’t bug says something than it is if someone who it does bug says something, right?
Looks promising. I am looking forward to getting the audio as well. It has been announced that the full presentation will be uploaded to http://wordpress.tv/ ASAP.
Matt, I blog for a variety of reasons and I will explain my behavior to you. Three years ago whilst my wife was alive Sylvia invested in my capabilities in that she believed in me. She allowed me without question to buy a number of articles which overall cost a couple of grand or more. I wanted to look further down the future road at that point and I believed wholeheartedly that I could raise funding online to support farming communities in Australia & the United States with those products. Along the way I never quite expected to fall into darkness and since I’ve been strong enough to bury my wife, I am blogging in the same manner as when I previously left off. The only difference now is that I’m as poor as a rat in a bag because, in the last two years we simply reached our hand out to help a number of people and businesses and the cost has crippled me. I would do the same all over again for charities and this is precisely why I continue to blog. I have no one to believe in me now except myself and as I see my current situation, I wont just give in without a fight and if I fail this time, I will die knowing I gave my best. If you haven’t had a chance to view my blog on blog spot, then please do so as you will learn of a few other things I failed to mention here. Keep well, Frank Burns http://tinyurl.com/cle76u
Slide 14 : I didnt know about it.
Slide 21 : It’s really make sense
Slide 32: LOL
I haven’t seen your speach, but I really liked the way you outed the vulnerability of the American Nazi Party in you presentation. Wonder how long it will be like that…
hi Matt, that was quick. I noticed that you are not using the “all in one seo pack” plugin. any thoughts about it? thanks a lot …
Awesome slides Matt. This has given good insights about how Google crawl works, is there a video or audio of this presentation?
Matt…thoroughly enjoyed your preso this morning. ‘Cookies for comments’ FTW! Your time and expertise is greatly appreciated.
I think Adam may have a good point. You might want to reconsider that slide.
Thanks Matt, i follow your speach from Uruguay using Internet and social media tools.
We publish a spanish article with all your tips and comments in my blog.
What if I’ve already done my site? Should I change things?
Thanks ! dd
Very interesting slides, but I feel like I’ve only got one eye open – please can we have the words that go with it? Thanks.
Hi Matt,
I would like to ask the question you posed in your slide show. If you have made mistakes in your site structure ie. catfood vs. cat-food is it worth it to change it? I am still a little green being on the internet and a webmaster for about 3 years. I started with html but I am interested in switching to a better content management system ie. WP or Joomla.
I worry that this may prove to be a a very difficult task as all my url’s have some uppercase letters in them and would be very different from the auto-generated query-string url’s these systems produce. I know you can use 301’s to mitigate the loss of PR and create a better user experience by eliminating potential 404’s but I believe Google says no more than 6. Any help would be appreciated as you obviously are an expert regarding this subject with the dullest/mattcutts experiment as a prime example.
Nice info. Since there is no audio/video, i have a doubt. Are you suggesting not to make an association (www and non www). All advice I have previously heard is to make an association in webmaster console and enforce it using .htaccess redirect
so why isn’t your domain name matt-cutts instead of mattcutts? eh?
Multi-Worded Adam and Charles Richey, that’s the Fake Steve Jobs blog. I just took a screenshot to show an example of an “interesting blog.” This was WordCamp, which is a more informal audience, so I decided it would be okay for the presentation to be a little more informal too. The Fake Steve Jobs book is a bestseller in a lot of places and I think people can take the book/blog in stride. That’s why I used Sergey’s blog as an example to show that you should update often, for example. If you watch the video, you’ll see that I took the opportunity to cut loose a little more than I usually do for an audience.
cail, at WordCamp 2007 I recommended a plugin or two dedicated to SEO, but WordPress has made a lot of progress in recent years. You can certainly install stuff like the “all in one SEO pack” and it can help, but the impact tends to be less than it used to be. If you’re the kind of person that really wants to pay attention to that last few percent of details, feel free to use it. Personally, I don’t bother with it myself. That slide wasn’t “The Five Plugins You Must Install, And Install No Others.” It was just a slide to show “Hey, here are the plugins I like and have installed.”
Shivaranjan and Manu, I think audio/video will be available soon.
manfmnantucket, good question. I tend to like domain names without hyphens (people still link to you with the distinct words) but I do like hyphens in my url path.
Jesse Stay and Frederick Gimino, I wouldn’t go back to change things–it’s not worth the effort because it’s a minor effect. If you get a chance to change things going forward, that should be fine.
Martin Wind, agreed. Cookies for Comments rules.
That Katamari slide just made my day. ๐
Thanks for such a great presentation Matt.
The spanish gan will rel=follow you forever… ๐
Matt, at one time Google would seek out the best content REGARDLESS of it being SEO or not. That is, the playing field was level. Now, it would seem, there is distict movement of Google employees to have SOME Webmasters cater to Google the SE, creating an uneven playing field. That is, those who cater more to SE’s than they do to their site visitors, read your blog, attend SEO conferences, read the RIGHT SEO forums etc,
IMO, Google should either make its algo open source for ALL to see, or (my preference) keep tight lipped on ALL SEO. Loose lips sink ships, Matt.
BTW, still no discalimer, so I take it your posts are now all official Google posts?
Hello Matt,
At first, I thought that all these slides will have all the old and the same content that we always hear: like Writing Useful and Excellent Content etc: But that was not true.
You have wrote many tips in these slides.
Thank You
Even a minor effect can see a move from #11 (page 2) to #10 or less (page 1).
So in slide 39, we shouldn’t select our preferred domain?
Matt could you explain this or give a little more info.
I blog for just one reason, be more popular and show interesting things to interesting people.
Nice article !
i don’t think wordpress is good choice for seo, we should use so many plugin to achieve your demand.it’s one reason that the plugin named all in one seo is so popular.
Dave (Original) I added back the disclaimer/disclosure link on the top nav menu. Thanks for the ping reminder.
“Even a minor effect can see a move from #11 (page 2) to #10 or less (page 1).”
True, but in the same amount of time, someone could probably write some kick-butt posts that could rank themselves. Also, that would be more fun. ๐
I’ve always thought that the advantage of using permalinks was that pages with URLs like “somename.com/?p=144” are not indexed well. Turned out it’s not the issue. Matt clarified that using a name instead of “?p=” provides a relevant info about the page. Totally makes sense.
Thanks for the great presentation.
“Avoid Paid Posts”
At what point do you draw the line on paid posts? Most of the pay-per-post sites I’ve seen exist primarily for link-building purposes. Is this sort of behavior treated any differently than the “contest posts” that seem to be all the rage right now?
Matt, thanks for sharing this. It confirms a lot of the approaches I am taking in promoting websites and blogging-etiquette. However, I didn’t know about the wp-admin security stuff. Thanks for sharing. I’ll be sure to have that up.
Matt, they should bite the bullet sooner or later, no? Doesn’t have to a choice of one or other, does it?
However, I was sort of hoping you could address my 1st paragraph, please?
BTW, thanks for NOT hiding the disclaimer as someone suggested?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the file. It’s really nice to see the wordpress plugins. I see that you do have the deep desire to post pics with cats ๐
I have a question though but I don’t know if it’s offtopic and if you will answer it (I hope so). I have been searching for a good answer for almost 4 months now.
My question: Will I get penalized by google for creating wp themes that others use and for placing a dofollow link in the footer?
Thank you
Matt, from you disclaimer;
That to me states you are feeding us DUD information and answers, if your “views” are never those of you employer (Google).
Perhaps you mean:
The views expressed on these pages are mine and not necessarily those of my employer (Google)
While I’m on the topic, what about the answer you give on Google moderator? Are they official, or just your personal opinion?
Thank you Matt for the slide!
Nice little insight, I’ve seen a few of the things before, and just started out blogging, so thank you muchly, it’s appreciated!
Thanks Matt, I’ll use this Powerpoint in my Web Class tomorrow if that’s OK
Regards Tony Hogan
Thank you very much for this latest update, Matt. It was refreshing to read through, and comforting to know I’ve been on the right track. Thanks for sharing, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Matt,
Thanks for taking the time to present to us at WordCamp. I learned some very interesting techniques which I am applying right now. Since I’m not that familiar with the Website Optimizer, that’s my next tool to master.
Being totally “old skool” (on and off web since 1994, I have stories), I tend to disregard a lot of the received opinion on matters like “link juice” and page rank. I’m glad to see that writing solid content with interesting links will eventually move my website up the food chain, even if I’m “bleeding link juice.” I use links to add value for my readers. As it used to be, and as it should be.
Thanks for the tips. I have noticed that since you moved to Thesis your blog is much faster and you are no longer the dullest…
Who on Earth is Katamari??…got to check the Google search trends to see all the SEOs searching for this ๐
The biggest question left unanswered is whether you’ll ever get tired of talking about CUPS, Matt :p
Thanks for presenting at the WordCamp – it was a really informative talk, and always good to hear the facts directly from Googlers!
Best presentation I’ve heard you give. Impressive to watch how you are growing as a public speaker, it makes covering the basic stuff fun again. Also, I recorded presentation to mp3, if you don’t get video uploaded, happy to forward that your way.
Thanx Matt,
Its a nice Presentation and very useful for SEOs..
One thing i wanna ask…when it took so much time in reading & understanding ..How much time it took in slide creation?
Really hard work behind this presentation..
Thanx for it..
really cool video, i just launched my own wordpress blog site and have used some of the techniques you mentioned above. My question to you is how deep a level should i put pages on my site?
Matt, in a backhanded way that was my point…it’s not immediately obvious that it’s the Fake Steve Jobs blog. You’re probably right in that the video would add context to the slide, but the video’s not up yet. So I intentionally knee-jerked my own reaction whereas I normally don’t do that. Again, it’s not a big deal to me personally…nothing in any of the slides offends me. But you get the wrong idiot with an axe to grind and you’re spending the next six weeks defending yourself for something relatively innocent.
Maybe a slide at the beginning that states something to the effect of “This slide show references other slides and content containing viewpoints that Google does not necessarily endorse”?
One other thing…on the American Nazi Party site, that doesn’t look like WordPress to me…unless it’s a really old version or something. Or are you just talking about the server itself?
Oh, nice!!
You read the icanhascheesburger.com too ๐
Thanks for the welcome refresher on best practices, Matt. I look forward to the video.
Regarding the .htaccess tip:
# whitelist home IP address
allow from 123.45.67.89
# whitelist work IP address
allow from 123.45.67.98
One problem is that most people have Dynamic IP addresses at home so this won’t work. Is there a way to tie this to a service like dyndns.com ?
Matt, thank you very much for posting the slides and the PowerPoint! It is really helpful for us who are living outside USA. ๐
Matt,
I take painstaking efforts to make sure every WordPress URL, Meta tag, Image Name, Image Alt etc.. on my site are done extremely clearly. Yet the reality I am facing this bleak reality. As a blogger information on my site is extremely relevant for a short period of time; I write music reviews so think of the time surrounding the release as the frame. Since our site is only 4 months public it would make sense that we are not “Google Trusted” yet.
The end result is my writers and I spend 15-20 hours preparing for a post and then publishing it. Yet Google will never give it any high rankings because its not on a site thats been around for 6 years.
My question is as blogging becomes an increasingly relevant news source how does Google plan on creating a system where the most relevant posts win the rankings war, vs. some syndicated dribble that is posted on a large site?
Or maybe I’m just not optimizing correctly?
Ah man! You won me over with the cat pics.
Thanks a ton for this info.
slide 17: How page passes its link juice. very interesting.
Didn’t know among dash or under score which is better so Slide 27 was helpful
Slide 36: FeedBurner: MyBrand for free
feeds.mattcutts.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com
Could you plz tell me how to do this?
Hey Matt,
It was once again a nice collection of tips and tricks for everyone around. There are several questions in my mind which i will share once the video is up.
For now i would like to ask, how if we are running our blog on Blog Spot and are posting once or twice a week just for the sake of gathering good information of our SEO industry and merging it up with news and ideas people are sharing. Will Blog Spot will help the same way as wordpress ?
For the tip on installing WordPress in blog folder..
What if we are using WordPress as the site’s main CMS?
Dear Matt,
I love your blog and thank you so much for giviving me the oportunity to learn new and useful things.
I everyday do a search website on your blog where i learn interesting things so i can have a successful campaign for my SEO clients.
Allah will take care of you Sir,
Ahmed.
Matt,
Google need to know that Bing is a search engine, at least the Analytics folks haven’t added it to the list yet:-)
Morris
ok in regards to wordpress camp i wish i could have gone to have heard some wisdom from the horses mouth (not calling you a horse) there is too much misinformation out there especially in the field of SEO, and it complicates things further having all the hot shot SEO’s fraternizing with the #1 spam fighter then giving us all dubious advice. i think im done with anything resembling SEO, does that sound right?
I’ve been using the URL display tool in G webmasters to display my website as example.com for both example.com and http://www.example.com
But you said, to keep it not associated to anything in slide 39. Just wonder whether it’ll cause any negative effect if I change it now?
Waiting for a reply from someone..
i think its great that you support bloggers and give them a chance because it gives a voice to the people. away from whatever the major media channels are pushing, people can get out different music then what is on top 40 radio and different news then is on Fox or CNN. for that Google has done much much good.
I hate to hijack the post/comments, but I couldn’t figure out how to contact your directly…
There’s a major Gmail SPAM issue going on, and if you could pass it on I’m sure Reddit will love you.
Here’s the proof on Reddit.
Thanks
–Kyle
Matt, this is great stuff as always. Much appreciated on slide 48 about the WP-Admin .htaccess format – thanks!
Swansonager
Sure WordPress is great but one thought that Blogger.com would increase quality over time. It isnt much it need regarding basic functionality to make it possible to fix other issues reagarding Google with a custom template.
Leaving that one thing that Blogger.com could do that would be nice is that making redirecting possible (without getting external Blogger-hosting) so one could consolidate blogs and possible leave one for a WordPress-hosting service.
Great presentation Matt! I think one key point that is so very important is “relevant” and “reputable”…as far as I am concerned this are the most important factors online…
some things i didn’t know on those slides, thanks, might be helpful for me, can i hear the voice or watch the video of this presentation?
This is one of the best presentations you have written so far.
Thanks for this.
Sometimes skimming over various so-called SEOs I almost end up losing ‘trust’ that Google will somehow not rank me unless I am trying to ‘drive massive amount of traffic’ to my site.
All I want is relevant readers who are passionate about the same stuff I am passionate about too.
HI matt, Its a really nice job you have done here once again and I want to know one thing how you manage time to do all thing everyday something new and unique ๐
Thanks!
Let’s do Katamari Blogging hehehe… nice update Matt. Looking to your next SEO update.
Hi Matt,
I too would love to have some clarification regarding the Webmaster Tools URL preferences. If we choose “www”, and have .htaccess enforce it, what happens with backlinks that don’t have “www”?
Thanks,
Mark
Matt – you’ve included the LIMIT GET again, even though you removed it from your old WordPress security post after being told it was insecure.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/three-tips-to-protect-your-wordpress-installation/
Hi Matt,
Thanks for great guideline.
My Q:
1. So you say one can do without SEO expert services?
2. What about all the ebooks the seo experts put out about on-page optimization, KWs in title, headers, at least x% in page etc etc?
3. Tags, category slugs – whats your take on this for SEO?
4. The Conversation Domination and similar grey/blackhat social media for SEO tactics – where’s Google going regarding this?
Have a nice day!
@ Origional Dave
Mats just being very carefull and using the standard form of words to make sure that hr or some bureaucrat doesnt have a hissy fit and Google does seem to have quickly developed a bureaucracy to rival BT or the Civil service.
I always had at the back of my mind that i could have got stick for going to First tuesday – but i was carefull to preface anything i said with a disclaimer.
Being “relevant and reputable” is great advice, both online and off.
I know there are tons of blogs out there already, but I still wish more people would get online and blog about what they know and love — it always feels good to share, plus you never know when something you know will help someone else.
Thank you for this slide, loving it. I learn a lot from all your posts!
Great review for some practical seo, I still have not been able to find a video of the conference, but look forward to seeing this to help fill in some of the blanks!
That’s my point, he is NOT using “the standard form of words”. If he was, it would read along the lines of;
The views expressed on these pages are mine and not necessarily those of my employer (Google)
Matt:
That was a really bad ass slide show. I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thanks to the tips I have learned on your blog, I was able to finally take a long needed vacation.
I am a lawyer in LA and it is very competitive. And yeah, blogging and writing is a lot of work, but my branding and socializing has gained me big reputation with my community of law.
The vast majority of my success I feel is due to the tips I learned right here! Mahalo from Maui!!
Great movie thx for putting al the slides together ๐
from slide #17 it results that the page rank is distributed evenly among pages and that’s about it. From that it seems that there is a finite number of page rank score (whatever that is), which it seems a bit off. Did G by any chance calculated the max size of the internet? :P.
Or
If Page A has only 1 link and it sends to page B it means that B gets all the juice (let’s call the amount of juice x). Then if B has only 1 link and that is going to A does it mean that A is gonna have an ammount of juice of 2x? and then it’s gonna send 2x towards B so after another loop A is gonna have 4x and so on.
No offense but something is wrong in that slide. Anyway, as always: thumbs up!
Looking forward to seeing and hearing this being presented. Looks like great content but the audio and video will help a lot in getting a real sense of the presentation. Thanks!
Matt,
in slice 21 you say: “Don’t forget image search, videos, etc.”
But what, if I do so and your image safe search filter has a big bug for over a half year? I have reported it in my Google Webmaster Central account.
In short: Do a site search with and without activated save search filter (activated is standard), than you’ll see what I mean –> example
In long: If you are interested I can translate my german “bug report”, but the short form should be enough to see what I mean.
Matt,
in slice 21 you say: “Don’t forget image search, videos, etc.”
But what, if I do so and your image safe search filter has a big bug for over a half year? I have reported it in my Google Webmaster Central account.
In short: Do a site search with and without activated save search filter (activated is standard), than you’ll see what I mean –> example
In long: If you are interested I can translate my german “bug report”, but the short form should be enough to see what I mean.
Matt,
sorry for the double post. You should add a preview ๐
greats,
Robert
It’s good to hear this stuff from the horses mouth, particularly while I am still in the process of setting up a blog.
I think much of the SEO emphasis is a bit of a fad and the search engines will make sure that things even out over time and that the important factors i.e. content and relevance will do best.
Thanks Matt for the nice slide ๐
I’m already a wordpress developer ! I applied it on many different projects.
Thanks for making the slideshow of your talk available. A lot of great tips, some of which I know, but forget about from time to time. Can’t wait to see the video for elaboration.
Slide #12 you say that WP takes care of 80-90 % of seo issues. Would be neat if you could elaborate on the remaining 10-20% !! (i know i am a kind of smart axx ๐ )
The .htaccess tip I like. However, I only have access to my site from home and my cable provider has a habit of changing our ip addresses without warning. Is there a way to put in a range instead. Granted, not as safe by a long shot but at least if the IP changed on me I wouldn’t be locked out of my own site.
Maybe the to-ing and fro-ing on the disclaimer issue comes from the fact that your blog is mattcutts.com and represents your views. But you have (generously and thank you for doing it) posted a presentation that you gave as Matt Cutt, Head of Webspam at Google so that would seem to indicate that the slides, at least, are aligned with your employers’ views. As perhaps the title of the presentation does !
However just to add a little confusion on the Title slide you also present yourself as Matt Cutt – the blog !
And we thought SEO was complex !
Charles, what has your cable provider and your IP address to with using a .htaccess file on you host server?
Charles, you’ll find your answer here:
http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess.php
Don’t bother explaining the concept of DHCP and how it applies to your cable modem and why you’d want to edit an .htaccess file once and only once to Dave. Your idea makes way too much sense for him to understand it.
Matt, does google rank blogs differently than other websites?
I plan to use wordpress for a static website that will have the content in posts that won’t contain dates or any comments. The posts would contain content that is relevant forever.
By the way, when you say “Update often is good”, would it be as good to edit/update old posts as to write new ones?
What has happened to Google in last couple of weeks? Been doing research for many different keywords and in 60 % first place page belongs to some crappy sites. Damn if big G continues this policy Bing will become more and more popular, I mean what the hell happened in the last couple of weeks? I’ve been in contact with many respected webamster and many of them suddenly dropped way down on Google, despite having old quality sites, full of excellent backlinks, many of them are ven planning to give Bing a boost because even guys from Microsoft are currently better in displaying right results than big G is. If I were you Matt I would definitely have a deeper look into this latest algo, to me it seems like one of the biggest G crap of all times. And I’m not the only one that thinks so. P.S. I know you won’t publish this comment because you google guys only publish comments full of praise, avoiding to admit mistakes. Am I right or what?
Another cheap shot from the hypocritical fool. Dude, your upbringing went horrible wrong somewhere for you to develop such insecurities.
Interested to know as when will be the video released. Hope to see it in a weeks time. Thanx for lovely tips. I would really aid me alot.
excellent matt. Want video as some photos are very unclear and misguiding without your speech.Please upload it soon
Dave (Useless), it’s only a cheap shot when it’s right and you’re proven wrong (yet again).
The guy asked a completely legitimate question.
You asked an idiotic question in response.
Therefore, you got the response you got and he got the response he got.
If the response you received bothers you in any way, then don’t ask stupid rhetorical questions in a pathetic effort to demonstrate superiority when you don’t know a thing about the topic at hand. That’s just common sense, and I’m doing you a really big favor by helping you out like this. All I ask is that you pay it forward.
You’re welcome.
Ok, so it’s only a cheap shot when YOU say it is. Speaking of idiots and cheap shots, you keep firing them and making an idiot of yourself almost daily lately. Why not seek out professsional help, you don’t have to be a “hypocritical fool” but yet you CHOOSE to be one almost daily? (That IS a rhetorical question). You see my question to Charles WAS sincere as I know little about the subject. The “pathetic effort to demonstrate superiority” has your name all over it. Ironic? I prefer Karma ๐
You’re the one who keeps accusing everyone else of cheap shots, not me. I didn’t even bring it up. You’re defining the cheap shot rules…I’m merely reiterating them. It’s only a cheap shot when Dave gets hurt by it. If it were anyone else, you wouldn’t give a damn.
Strike one.
Calling someone an idiot isn’t a cheap shot? It sure would be if someone called you an idiot.
Strike two.
No, since that has nothing whatsoever to do with irony.
Strike three. You’re out. Sit down, shut up, and get a clue. And you still owe the world a “pay it forward” gesture.
Ain’t Karma a bitch, hey? (rhetorical) ๐
Does your memory always fail at your convenience? (rhetorical) Would you like me to quote you? (not rhetorical). Also, it ONLY you (not “everyone”) I’m accusing of “cheap shots” as YOU accused me of them while asking Matt to fight your self created battles for you. Like you are ATTEMPTING to do now by using the word “everyone”. Quite sad & desperate, really.
If you can’t see the irony of YOU accusing me of โpathetic effort to demonstrate superiorityโ you are worse off than I thought. Why do you think Doug Heils IHelpYou forums have become a virtual ghost town? (rhetorical). Why did it start becoming a virtual ghost town a few Months after you turned up? (rhetorical). Hell, many Mods don’t even bother posting there because of your insecure need to “demonstrate superiority” by attempting to drag all those, who stand-up to your Cyber Bullying tactics, down to your low level of childish insults. While you may THINK it makes you funny and inflates your ego, it’s a special kind of coward that hides behind a username on the other side of Planet. Even School girls can do that ๐
Depends if the “someone” has 1st accused of me of firing “cheap shots” while firing off unprovoked “cheap shots” themselves. If you don’t like being an idiot, stop being one. It’s a choice, OR, as I say, you need professional help.
Has Google given up on Blogger?? Everything out there is very WP oriented, but what about us Blogger users who are stuck in the blog mechanics dark ages? Are our 5 years worth of blogging just lost? I feel like the kid in the family who isn’t any good at sports, makes crappy grades and is totally forgotten by the time I’m 17.
I guess Karma is REALLY is a bitch ๐ Just been reading a thread on Doug’s IHY forums, where SEFL (AKA MWA) is AGAIN making a โpathetic effort to demonstrate superiorityโ. The OP even pointed out, while his condescending tone is NOT out-of-place on IHY forums, it SURE AS HELL puts off others reading the SAME tired old personal rants of SEFL. I’m not alone in “virtual ghost town” theory.
You have no shame or ethics, MWA. You have multiple sites where you can rant as much as you want, yet you CHOOSE to use other peoples sites for your personal vendettas and ego inflating.
Grant, you raise a good point. It was the ability of Google to return the most relevant results when 90% of pages were NOT optimized for SE’s, but humans, that shot it to fame. Now “You Need to Know” SEO tricks.
Dave, you’re boring now. Before, you were amusing in a lunatic sort of way. Now, you’re boring. Incorrect (AGAIN), and boring. There’s only so far a train wreck can go as far as entertainment is concerned, and you’ve long passed that point. That, and you’ve long since proven mine.
No, I’m not explaining to you, either. I already did.
Do you ALWAYS avoid the issue and questions by name calling and firing MORE cheap shots. Children do that when they are being shown up, they also get angry and red in the face. They attempt to drag people down to their level and change the subject, so they feel less foolish. It NEVER works , YET they do it time-and-time again.Most grow out of this, a few never do. ๐
Your whole argument is based on my sincere question being rehetorical. Do you always base your arguments on false a premise? < THAT IS RHETORICAL ๐
Ain’t Karma a bitch, hey? ๐
Great to see you and the G folks at SMX in Seattle. Man, I just finished a marathon PPT session getting ready for IRCE and the Y! Summit thing and after seeing your slides … I gotta tighten up. Thanks, I guess! ๐ Holla — r
Matt,
A lot of people have been complaining about the recent google search results, specifically from WMW. Is there an update in effect right now and will the results soon stabilize to more relevant results? Thanks for reading my post, love the blog.
Hey Matt,
Is there video available yet? Would like to see it…
thanks!
For the information of others reading my defending myself against the cyberbully (Multi-Worded Adam). Here is just one example of MANY to show the sort of person Multi-Worded Adam REALLY is.
http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/showthread.php?p=287536#post287536
It get’s worse as HE goes on and on and on………..with each of his bully and self ego inflating posts.
The man (cough) has no shame or respect for any of his peers and crawls up the bums of those who he can take advantage of. BIG HINT MATT ๐
Don’t worry his Moderation buddy has moved all his rants and insults out of the public view. Too little, too late for the forum though, hardly anyone posts there anymore for fear of the cyberbully (Multi-Worded Adam) launching an attack.
Since the custom url structure “%postname%” is highly recommended by so many professional bloggers as well as providing SEO benefits, I wonder why worddpress doesn’t include it as an option in the permalink structure?
wow, amazing tips… thanks a ton Matt
Matt,
I second @Hans comment.
I am a top contributor at brazilian blogger (blogspot) support group (it will be easy for you to check that). As far as I can see you only addressed the specifics for wordpress users.
Please, give me a straight answer if possible: blogger is not as good as self-hosted wordpress for SEO? “Labels” in blogger, for instance, are restricted in robots.txt. WordPress tags, however, are not. Does it have any negative impact for us blogger / blogspot user?
If blogspot is not as good as self hosted wordpress for SEO, please say it once for all, so we can migrate. Or have blogger engineers to fix that if possible. If blogger is as good as wordpress, than say it as well. And remember to give us, blogspot users, some of your wisdom.
Right now it is beyond my comprehension why talk about the details of wordpress, but not blogger. Of course a lot of what you say applies to both platforms, but you gave specific information about wordpress (such as slide 12 – it can take care of 80%-90% of the mechanics of SEO) and none about blogger. Can it take care of the same amount of the SEO Mechanics? Or we, blogspot users, cant have access to this information?
Thanks for your attention.
I should have mentioned in my previous comment: That was an wordpress event, and I am ok with that. However, I always read your blog and you never mention blogger / blogspot here or elsewhere.
The same thing was noticed by @Grant Hammont here:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/my-2008-traffic-stats/
Let me quote him:
Something went wrong when quoting @Grant Hammond in my previous comment. Those are not his words, but mine.
Hi Matt,
Any tips on how to change wp permalinks without your old search engine links pointing nowhere?
Any news on the video or transcription? Really excited about it.
Hi Matt
Thanks for making my day with the thing about posting pictures of cats ๐
I was on a SEO course about 2 months ago and the guy who gave the course said to use blogger as “Google rates it almost instantly” and so I did… so 2 month’s and 5 blogs all with legitimate posts every 2 or so days later and I haven’t even got one more inbound link from Google. Going to give WordPress a try now.
Hello Matt
To be honest I was expecting some unusual new informations but found your slides very ordinarily and bias specialy promoting wp.For the last four months no one is able to understand what google is realy doing and a lot of webmasters- people have been complaining about the recent google search results and indexing.Google Webmaster Tools are ok.to follow but information and support is so lausy.Google should and must clearly understand now more people are switching off google search engine as a first option.Google should stop being a unfaithful company against users who made google so succesfull.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for these tips. I’ll work on it. Also your cats are pretty. ๐
Grant, you raise a good point. It was the ability of Google to return the most relevant results when 90% of pages were NOT optimized for SEโs, but humans, that shot it to fame. Now โYou Need to Knowโ SEO tricks.
Hey Matt,
I’d like to add to the earlier question about Blogger.
Of course we’ve all seen the WP-centric focus, and some of it is quite appropriate given the open-source nature, the huge community of developers, yada, yada.
That said, Blogger fills a very important niche, is owned by Google, yet seems to be almost penalized in what appears to be an effort not to bias SERPS because they’re “Google properties”.
I manage a number of Blogger blogs – one example, Nursing School Programs that seems to get ‘short shrift’ in terms of indexing. Some pages are, some aren’t, no seeming rhyme or reason.
Blogger holds such promise as a platform, yet Google seems to not want it to succeed.
Elaine Abel
Good tips but I think theres nothing new. You have to be unique (up to date too) and think “what others will type?”. High PR and as low as possible outgoing links from site with Your link to Your site (Your “competition”).
RappeR: seo tricks? what seo tricks You want to see? If anybody write some seo tricks all others will be his/her competition:)
Think of it: why theres thousands of “website design” books and only 3-5 (maybe 10?) seo books on the market? Because that books are “recipes” for EVERYBODY how to get top10 in Google (not everything is written but…) and thousands of “design books” because the look/functionality/other of a single website depends from Your creativity (not for everybody).
With seo book everybody could be a SEO engineer or make money with that skill (after gaining some experience). Not everybody could make a good websites if he/she dont have a high creativity:)
Thats why You wont see “seo tricks”:)
200 factors to equate the SEO value and rankability of a page? Wow, I knew there where a lot, but i wasn’t expecting 200.
I better get back to the lab.
Matt – when you going to start playing with Joomla?
Gotta love Matt,
I think the best spam-fighting tool that Google has is the BS that spews out of Matt’s mouth. (I’m on to you, man)
– I love the way you intentionally say things that will get misinterpreted.
– I love the way you give vague answers to direct questions.
– I love the way you plant seeds of disinformation to send people on wild goose chases.
That’s the reason that 99% of SEO “experts” have no idea what they’re talking about.
Keep up the good work, you crafty bastard.
I’ve got to the end of the video! On the IP thingy in .htaccess; I’m on a broadband connection — kinda on some sorta proxy — any way to like add wildcard characters to replace part of the entire home IP?
(or I’m not making any sense with this question) Hmm. ๐
Along the lines of the Google search results for the query “matt” …I chuckled when I saw this, so I took a screen shot and posted it here: Google Search Results for “matt”.
Matt,
I have to say, while you were always fun to watch on stage, you have really become a rock solid public speaker. Funny, insightful, informative, authoritative, and entertaining. If search ever dies, you have a future in motivational speaking.
I really appreciate your sharing this video for those of us that could not attend. Very informative.
Thanks!
Great Video!
Just one question. I wasn’t clear about the .htaccess white list for WordPress. Correct me if am wrong, so basically if I place lets say the IP address from my home on the .htaccess file, that’s the only place I can access the admin panel, so if I am on a friend house or my job, I would not be able to access my blog right?
Thanks
I didn’t hear or see anything “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know”,
which is good as your disclaimer contradicts each and every SEO post you publish here.
IMO, you’d be better of saying zilch about SEO as you only add a ton of noise,confusion and rubbish already posted out there.
I remember the days when Google simply crawled the web and ranked pages WITHOUT Webmasters NEEDING to know anything but HTML (or Frontpage) and their chosen topic. In fact, I still THINK this is true and you are feeding us all useless and/or false information.
looks like a nice video tutorial for seo sturtp ups!
thanks!
Matt, you to change your avatar! It’s like “2” people speaking to us. ๐
Great video Matt. You should be in stand up!
Thanks for the information, will need to take a look through the archives and see what other hidden gems are buried here ๐
Matt,
Despite being a long time blogger with a probably five books worth of content in my blog, I’ve been telling people for years that blogs are simply a lousy way to get search traffic for a variety of reasons. Rather than repeating those here, can you tell us how much of your site traffic is from search, and how much of that search is new search, as opposed to people using “Cutts” in the search query because they’ve already been to your blog and are just using search to navigate it or find something they remember from the past.
Go beyond my experience, to the extent that Alexa is accurate (Hah) on their search% tab, it looks like blog based sites average a half to a third as many visitors from search as non-blog sites.
Morris
Nice presentation…
Meanwhile we have so many tools to play with in order to optimize our systems for Google: robots.txt, canonical urls, meta things, keyword search, analytics, … a lot of great stuff.
Do you think there might be a little chance for Google to provide one more thing like:
in future?
This missing thing might be very helpful for example to easily set up WordPress archives without having to kill our very small piece of global PageRank where not meant to throw it away, I think. ๐
I mean, many people do not make use of excerpts for their archives by category, tags, date, month, year or other duplicate content pages nor do they want to noindex and nofollow these pages (like you do) in order not to kill their little own piece of pagerank (looking at “new” pagerank sculpting methods). Especially in little Germany it is not so easy to get it. ๐
With 20 years of internet experience (including the things before) I should be able to work with the existing tools or write a plugin to sort things out where needed (if needed). But other people might run into trouble with so many things to have in mind today … The lazy and crazy ones already use rel=”nofollow” for every single outgoing natural link (even within their posts and single pages) or simply do not link anymore. Very strange. ๐
So I put the missing meta tag on my christmas wishlist. May be someone picks it up without having to write a WordPress plugin for that. I mean – it`s meant for pages, not for the links. ๐
By the way: Is the canonical link overwriting meta robots rules?
Was just wondering about the website assessments you mentioned? Can I sign up?
most of the tips I already follow and some are new..thanks for all this
Great information and 90% of what you talked about doesn’t just apply to WordPress as far as the SEO tips go. ๐
Matt you mentioned you would post the code for the htaccess here but I didn’t see it.
If anyone often Tweets about SEO, web design, CSS or programming related topics please Follow me and I will do the same.
Thanks Tony
Any chance we can get the HTACCESS ip limit code you talked about? ๐
Thanks for a great talk, you made a very slow morning a LOT more survivable!
I do have to say, the section about starting small really resonated with me because thats what I’ve been trying to do with my company. I’ve even decided to pull back from some cool ideas I had because I think it will stretch me too much and bring down the quality of my work. Hearing you talk about it positively is very encouraging!
Thanks Matt
– Matt Montgomery
Hi Matt
This was a great presentation and will obviously be seeing what else you have to say on this site becuase of it.
Anyway, when you were asked what WordPress plugins you use, you mentioned several but interestingly you did not mention the like of All in One Seo or Headspace…. does that mean there is no need to set the meta tags and Google actually ignores these tags and works them out itself?
Thanks for answering this question in advance.
Sherry
To me, this post/video a must view for any client or person who desires a WordPress blog. While it moves quickly and some people will not understand it (although Matt does a great job keeping it simple) it re-enforces what god SEO firms do and justifies the time it takes to do SEO correctly. We use the phrase โSEO is never doneโ which has been used in software development for years. Software indeed, is never done. One of my big beefs is that when web developers pitch a web project, many shy away from talking about professional and long term SEO because of the time it takes, thus they avoid the sticker shock discussion.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for posting this video. You did a good job up there and your a great speaker, you just earn’t yourself a new regular reader. ๐ The best thing I got out of it was the security measure involving the .htaaccess file.
(Btw, I had to visit your blog using Firefox because there is something to your page that kept crashing IE8.)
Rock on dude!
Luke
Hi Matt, i have watched the seminar video, is awesome learning material I can say. The only thing I want to ask is more about the Katamari Philosophy. When you say this is to adopt the philosophy with starting with anything small, niche and get roll up bigger and bigger, if I going to promote any service like interactive web design that already very popular and buzz word anywhere? Does it mean that I have to also starting with little of content, tutorial, thoughts, source about it also? Because this is so tiny exposure to the search engine when the resources is around the web? How can it become very popular and increase the reputable?
It makes sense, every blog you own should be on a topic you are interested in. I realized this recently and it makes adding content a lot easier when you have something to say!
Great information on SEO. Question about WordPress – does adding tags make sense now that nofollow doesn’t hold weight anymore? Multiple tags for the same post? Or will you be penalized for duplicate content?
Hey Matt,
Thanks for sharing these tips – they will go a long way to help me promote my video production blog. I’m implementing changes right now to make sure my audience can find me whenever they are searching video a Vancouver videographer or video production company. I’m pleased the quality of your video is also improving since the last time!
I want to know more about this topic.
Nice Tips Matt.Your explanations about page ranking and crawling of search engine was useful.But I have the same doubt which you have explained in the 27th slide.Do i have to change the keywords of the URL and use dashes if i have already not used one.Do that affect the SEO of the site.
Thanks Matt , some really great information here , Its so much easier to watch a simple video , than reading masses of information . Good Work !
Tom
Great presentation and video. Lots of good stuff about using WordPress as a blog platform and how that automates much of the SEO process, but I have one question. If you have a website, which is a wordpress blog as part of the navigation and hosted on the website, what is the best way to provide fresh content for your site. Should I write new and fresh content by adding web pages, or should I simply write new posts on my wordpress blog which is part of the website. Which has more value?
Matt, this was great information! I have already started to do some of these things you mention on my wedding photography website, but you did teach me some new ones. Thank you!
Thanks Matt for the nice slide!!
But,unfortunately,I have only today to see…
Great tip on securing WordPress. Thanks for the video, it had a lot of great info for the beginner bloggers of the world.
Thank you Matt, the video is fantastic. It is good to know that I am still doing things right. I love sitting at the top of the engines and have realized that it really is mostly about well written and informative content. The #1 spot in Google definately rules! Thank you.
Very useful and entertaining presentation ! I liked those cats , can I get to know the names ?! One question: How to make optimum use of Blogger Blog ( I Like Blogger Platform ! ) Could you explain or share your views on it ? The way you did for WordPress !
Thanks again for such a wonderful article. ๐
The WordCamp San Francisco 2009 video was great! I have a blog at my search engine optimization the woodlands site but am new to WordPress so all this was great information for me to SEO my blog.
Matt,
It was interesting to see your recommendations on keywords in URLS – I guess I’d always believed the opposite – so thanks for clarifying.
I love your slide about avoiding “short cuts and scams” – and focus on adding relevant valued content. Always enjoy your insights – thanks!
Hi Matt,
Love your videos, Love your way of putting humour into talks
Regards
David
Great video. It is so good to have someone shedding light on the current search engine trend
What if I have already done my own site. Should I change tose things?
I really enjoyed watching the video, much of it a refresher… I will (today! right now!) make a back up file of my favorite blog, and then update to the latest WordPress… Yesterday I spent until the wee morning hours finding code that a hacker had put into the header of my wordpress blog, redirecting to “top5search.com” ARRGH! Where’s a long walk off a short pier when your need it???
Hi Matt,
Nice stuff, It would be very helpful if you can provide similar details for Blogger as well.
Thanks in advance
How did i not know about this blog? :). Great video btw, it gives a good insight about google and their techniques, and you can never get enough of that type of info.
very helpful ๐
the video available as a podcast would be very useful for those of us who are often away from an internet connection.
In response to Frederick Gimino above:
Just make a note of your old url stucture, and then 301 redirect all the old urls to where the new ones will be. Thats what 301’s were designed for, for when content permanently moves.
Hi matt,
This was learning and having fun at the same time, thanks!
Thanks Matt for the awesome information. Very informative and confirmed a few questions I had about seo. Again thank you!
Hello Matt,
I’m new to SEO and search engine marketing and just saw this blog of yours and I’m learning more. Loading the video now, gonna watch later. Thanks.
Sure WordPress is great but one thought that Blogger.com would increase quality over time. It isnt much it need regarding basic functionality to make it possible to fix other issues reagarding Google with a custom template.
Leaving that one thing that Blogger.com could do that would be nice is that making redirecting possible (without getting external Blogger-hosting) so one could consolidate blogs and possible leave one for a WordPress-hosting service.
very handsome young man with a very sweet cat together with a very east to understand presentation. great job.
Hi Matt,
Do you plan to release this as a pod cast? Its top information and advice and i’d like to be able to download a copy to my iPod.
Talking of blogging Matt, we find with our humble little restaurant guide, that blogs tend to achieve higher positions (almost instantly), then drop either stay the same or drop off over time. ‘Regular’ pages take over them, over time and can carry on growing – its as if our blog gets indexed a lot faster? Also I don’t know if it’s a WordPress thing, but the date appears in the meta description displayed on Google – is that something Google pulls out and displays as it knows its a news/blog!? Keep up the good work sir!
I also have a question for your webmaster video ๐ – Does a link from a website that is using the canonical tag give any benefit other than potential click throughs – what are the implications of receiving links from canonical pages?? ๐
Hi Matt, thanks for a helpful couple of slides but what’s with the link you put in there pointing at the americannaziparty… hope you are not passing them high value link juice to help them promote their cr@ppy ideology..
Also, in the Google Tools section, are you saying that by giving Google space for AdSense advertising, I will rank better? Makes sense because the moment I allow Google to advertise on my blog, they have a financial interest in seeing it at the top of page one… isn’t that morally ok when search results should be about quality content and reputation?
Thanks for the insight!
J
that was some sort of great presentation and have clear most of my doubts which i had about wordpress + SEO both – and have started to use wordpress in most of my new sites and it really works ! ! thanks for the tip Matt.
Hi Matt , this is my first time to watch this awesome slice until end .
50 pages made me more skillful in seo.
thank so much. great job.
hi,
you mentioned on slide 32 “Update Often”…
– does that mean like updating your site daily would hold more authority to google?
– also how does google see internal links from within your website?
Thanks..
One of the hardest things for me to do sometimes is to be interesting enough to develop a readership but not offend anyone. I have an outward personality, and I love slide 31 because that is how I would post. One of the things I’ve taken away though from blogging, is to not compromise your personality for the sake of readership.
Very useful information here Matt, to not only beginners but also those that need to get back to basics.
The last few slides are very important. There are no shortcuts, so don’t get fooled into believing in them and don’t be foolish enough to flog them.
Thanks many for this. Always feel like I am saving many wasted hours after getting tips from Matt Cutts. Well done.
Hey Matt,
I don’t know why but the page rank always seemed very complicated to me and the “juice” dissipation was always a bit of a question but the video was extremely informative and honestly helped demystify some of the mysteries of how Google works ๐ The section about analytics was helpful too…going to check my bounce rate now! Excellent! Thanks again.
Matt,
You are a real pistol. With all the information circulating the web these days, its nice to have a voice of reliability and reason. Keep the Video format coming, it’s definitely the way to go.
Cheers, Orlando
Matt, thank you for the wonderful insight – and delivered so eloquently! A real pleasure to listen and learn from you. I’m just starting out and can’t wait to apply some of your insight.
The Powerpoint attachment was a great addition for the post! I don’t have the patience for watching a video (ADHD?) – nor the time. I like to browse around these various topics and ideas while working, and this was one overview that I had not yet seen. Thanks for the great post Matt!
Thanks for the great video Matt. I have literally watched every single one of your videos on youtube. Its great to have someone who shares such insightful information. I only use wordpress for any of my sites now.
Outstanding information — very helpful to me as I launch a new site. I’m glad to see that WordPress does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of SEO (80-90% according to your slides). It’s nice to get that bit of help from the blogging platform.
Thanks for putting up both the video presentation and the powerpoint — it definitely made it easier to digest the information having the separate formats.
Thanks, billiant information.
Hi Matt
I agree that blogging is fun. I enjoy it immensely but I still do it for business. WordPress would have to be the best thing to happen to my business, ever!
Thanks for the “cookies for comments” tip.
This is one of my fave videos. Even though I’ve been in SEO for a while this is still a great video. I like the way PR is explained and how it is important, when ranking. Thanks again!
Thank you for recommending WordPress. I used it and LOVE IT. I really appreciate all the great information and CUTE CATS!!!
Awesome value Matt, there’s to a certain degree no need to purchase courses on seo, as IU seem to learn a lot just by watching your video’s. Great value and very entertaining, especially cat bloggers lol.
Matt,
I know this is an old post, but none the less, still a good clip, thanks for the video. Once again, you dont fail to give out some cool info. thanks.
Some cool stuff, thanks for posting this video. I downloaded the slide to keep on my HD. I was wondering a bit about the tools section where it mentions adsense. I’ve heard you say that Google doesn’t give priority ranking to sites with adsense on them, but have they ever? It seems that they would profit more in doing so, but would display less relevant search results.
Thank so much for this video. I have just started using WordPress after being a FrontPage user for literally 10+ years. WordPress makes SEO vastly easier and videos like this help even do-it-yourselfers rank better.
Thanks for sharing this video because it clears my basic questions about blogging and SEO.
Hi Matt, great talk. I was wondering what you thought about the various WordPress plugins available, like the All in One SEO plugin. Also, do you have any thoughts on analytics programs like Crazy Egg?
Great job Matt with the video – thanks for allowing us to learn and discuss!
Great job Matt with the video – thanks for allowing us to learn and discuss! Looking forward to seeing more information and we prefer WP for our sites.
Its amazing to see how almost everything that Matt talked about in this video is still relevant. The one thing that is kicking butt right now is video blogging. The ones that paid attention to this back then and applied this method of blogging would probably be making A LOT of money right now or control a large part of a niche. Great Job Matt!!!
Nice Post Matt,
I have been trying to do SEO for my site but i failed again and again as i got lots of competitor. Dont know how to overcome.. have tried almost everything but i never got a pagerank 1 atleast… I dont want to follow those blackhat techniques. Let me know if you have any suggession..
Matt,
Was going through the Slideshow and I must say I am like walking through SEO101 .
Short and sharp reminder of Dos and Don’t that we as SEO consultant or Biz owners should observe – yes evergreen skills that would stick for a while.
Thanks
Matt, you made a great video. The speech will be useful for mane people.
I think tags still help, a little, even though no follow doesn’t change much any more. Now that everything is a lot more strict. It’s the little things that count.