(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

WordCamp SF was a smash hit, at least in my book. Immediately following Tim Ferriss, Matt Cutts from Google search took the stage and spoke for an hour on how to get better search engine results, including how to use keywords, and how backlinks affect page rank. While he didn’t spill the beans on any of the Google “special search sauce,” he did state flatly that plain old WordPress gets it right: 80%-90% of all the “mechanical parts” of SEO, are handled correctly, right out of the box.

By “mechanical parts,” he means that WordPress-based websites are by design very easy for search engines to crawl. That’s good news for us! We need only consider the content of our writing, and never worry about how that content is presented to a search engine crawler.

Matt graciously posted his slides (link above). Here’s my notes on what you can use immediately.

Page rank does matter… Sort of

It’s official: page rank does matter… but it may not matter as much as you think. According to Matt, page mostly affects how often Google searches your site. There’s lots of articles about page rank on the web: so here’s the quick recap: Page rank is computed by checking:

1. how many sites link to your site,
2. how important those sites are.

Some backstory: in the old days of the web, before search engines, we would link wherever it made sense within an article. We used links to support an article, in a way similar to how footnotes and endnotes are used in books and papers. Nowadays, people fret about losing their “link juice” when they link to other pages, because they don’t want to lose any page rank. The irony of course is that without links, it’s hard to crawl the web, and there is not such thing as page rank!

Losing link juice is a valid concern… but as Matt states unequivocally, it’s a minor concern. Page rank isn’t the only factor in determining how search results are calculated. It may not even be the most important factor. Here’s what I took away from the discussion: link intelligently to benefit your readers and don’t worry about losing link juice. If your copy is good, and your outgoing links benefit your readers, your search ranking will improve as you get more and more traffic.

For an example of “old school” linking, check out Philip Greenspun’s home page. Dig around a bit. Longevity and superb content trump any issues of lost link juice. By far.

The take home here is this: use links to add value for readers.

Relevance and reputation

Matt provided some hints that Google has ways of determining the validity of content, that is, whether the web page is about what it says it’s about. For example, driving traffic by loading up a web page with popular keywords that have nothing to do with the web page will get you punished when you get caught, and Google is getter better at catching people that do such things. Being relevant should not be an issue for anyone serious about establishing a reputable web site. As Matt says, “be interesting.”

If you’re interesting, and people like reading what you write, they will link to you. Obviously, backlinks from very popular websites will help establish your reputation.

And once again, your search results improve when you write interesting content, often.

The Katamari Principle

Matt made a passing reference to the “Katamari Principle:” just keep blogging, your work will eventually get picked up.

Here’s how Matt explained the Katamari Principle, which you can use immediately: start writing on a very narrowly defined niche, something that’s fun and easy to write, something you know well. Write a substantial amount of material on this topic such that you build a reputation as an expert. As your expertise grows within your original niche, start picking up related topics to broaden your expertise.

This is excellent practical advice… and exactly opposite the advice that Dave Gray gives in an afternoon session on building your business on the web.

Exploit Google Website Optimizer

Google has a number of interesting tools that can help you improve your search engine results. One you may not be familiar with is Google Website Optimizer. Turns out, I’m not that familiar with it either, so I’m not going to write about it here… watch for an article in the future.

There’s more…

Matt covered other topics which didn’t resonate with me quite as strongly as the topics I’ve written about. Watch the video to find out about key words, permalinks, Google tools and more.