30 Wordpress tips from Matt Cutts

Wordcamp San Francisco – Matt Cutts talks about Wordpress and SEO

Here is a link to the video if you would like to watch it:
http://wordpress.tv/2009/05/30/matt-cutts-google-sf09/ 

Here are my notes and comments on the video.

1. Matt said uses WordPress, not Google’s Blogger. That is interesting from two aspects: 1) he works for Google; if there was the least problem he would side with his company; 2) he feels confident about WordPress ability to get good Google juice. "Wordpress built in SEO is pretty good"

2. Security Tip:  ADD .HTACESS in WP/admin – done correctly then only the admin can get into the blog, not hackers.

3. Wordpress takes care of 80% of the SEO said Matt, but there is still more we can do to optimize.

4. Highly recommended Plug-Ins: cookies for comments, feedburner, word cache

5. What Page Rank does to help your blog: 1. increases bot activity. The higher the rank the deeper the bots will go into your blog. Page rank is "the number of people that link to you and how important those linkd are". If you have high quality content then you are likely to get more incoming links and higher Page Rank. Matt cautioned not to obsess about Page Rank.
         
6. The best way to create a successful blog is to talk about stuff that you are passionate about, things you care about. Write often (daily?- he did not say that but implied it IMO). The more you write the better will be your copy.

KEYWORDS

7. "jargon mismatch" – if you don’t have the right keywords on your site, the ones people are using to find information, then it is "very difficult for Google to find your site"

8. Google looks at 200 different things to rank your page (things in the URL, TITLE, H1 tags, he did not specify more nor did he comment on which was most important but he did sound to me that these three rank high in the algorithm in my opinion)
 
9. Matt likes a "custom structure" on his URLs ( %postname% ) I am not really sure what he means by this but it seemed important to Matt so I pass it on.

10. Put keywords in the URLs you create on your site. For example, don’t use mygreatsite.com/p=123. Use mygreatsite.com/wordpress-tips/

11. another URL TIP:  Use a different keyword in the URL phrase mygreatsite.com/wordpress-tips/ than you use in the Title tag. The Title tag might be "Great Wordpress ideas"

12. WRITE THE BLOG POST, THEN CHECK GOOGLE’S KEYWORD TOOL AND ADD THEM TO YOUR POST – stressed strongly

13.   BETTER TO USE DASHES IN THE KEY PHRASES – don’t run words together in the interior URL pages (I’ve never seen this addressed until now)

14. DON’T OVERDO THE KEYWORDS – use the keyword maybe 3 times and you don’t have to BOLD it either – have someone read your post back to you. If it sounds stilted, change it.

GAIN A REPUTATION

14. BE INTERESTING!  – IS IT FUN? – ADD NEW INSIGHTS – the more you write, the better you get at writing. Makes sense to me!

15. The deep secret of blogging – KATAMARI – start small, build up, build up – if someone tells you there is a shortcut to bloggging success, don’t listen to him (Matt stressed this strongly)
 
 
     WAYS TO GET INCOMING LINKS

16. Provide a useful service
      exsample: Eric Goldman, blawger about legal issues and search

17.  Do original research or reporting -HUGE!!!
       example:  Danny Sullivan – compared spam between GMail and Yahoo
       example:  Lewis Gray – watched his referrers – your search engine log – unearthed REBURNER and two others

18. Give great information
        example: Lifehacker – high quality tutorials and guides 

18.  Find a creative niche
        example: Icanhascheezeburger.com – One Sentence Penny Arcade – xkcd

20.  Write some CODE – Wordpress Open Source is beckoning you

21.   Live blogging! – people are blogging while they watch Matt speak – getting links because the news is so new and people crave – go to your favorite conferences (think Wordcamp LA on Sep 13, 2009)

22.   Post lists (11 reasons why WordCamp ruled)

23.   Create controversy – but not too often

24.   Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed (note: he did not include LinkedIn)

25.  Podcast or Video? – Matt likes videos because it’s really easy to do and ten to rank well on Google. He said if you rank high on AmIHotorNot.com then do podcasts (his joke)

26.  ADSENSE – use these tags so Google will target the meat of your blog post in results instead of including everything else on the page
      <!–google_ad_section_start–>
      <!–google_ad_section_end–>

27. google.com/webmasters – "Free Links"  will show you who linked to the 404 on your site – gives all kinds of CRAWL STATS – can set to have "www" or not

28. Google analytics – you can see which blog POSTS get the most visitors
        – Bounce rate – idea: show related posts gives the visitor something else to do other than just leave your blog

THINGS NOT TO DO

29.  If something looks to good to be true, it probably is -don’t be spammy
       example: Google Money Tree (filling out forms) he called "incredibly spammy"

30.  Keep your blog updated

Greg Cryns

Wordpress design and SEO promotion