Category: Google

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Matt Cutts of Google Talks About Content and Keyword Density

I found an article recently that included an interview with Matt Cutts on the changes that Google wants to see in website content. The article is excellent reading but the author plugs his approach a wee bit heavy handed. The full article can be read here and it is worth reading, but the key points are detailed for you below along with my comments.

  1. Heavy keyword density on a page may actually now be considered spammy by Google. Google is now looking for natural looking and natural reading content. Cater to the reader not Google.
  2. Google does not need the phrase you would like to place on in the same order over and over on a page. Use the phrase you like once or twice and then you can mix up the way the words show in the phrase.
  3. Google can now identify synonyms and the meaning of your content with its technology. It does not need for you to control content in an unnatural way to place on certain phrases.
  4. If you overuse keywords phrases in a page, Google may consider your page spammy and not reward organic placement.

Matt Cutts of Google says “Never sacrifice the quality of your copy for the sake of the search engines. It’s just not necessary. The next time you write a new page of copy, test this approach to writing for the engines and see if you get as good (or better) results than before. I’m betting you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

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Google on Duplicate and Scraped Content

This is an interesting video and deals with the issue of duplicate and scraped content. Google says clearly that content you grab from other sites that you do not add additional information to and scraped content do not add value for your users. In plain speak this means “we won’t rank you for those pages and may penalize your domain if you do this!”. Watch the video and then make sure to read my added value 🙂 comments below.

Here are my nuggets to consider:

  • Duplicating other people’s content damages your organic placement. There is no value to doing this!
  • If you are doing an affiliate program, make sure you have unique content and added value. Don’t just be another cookie that has been cut with the same cutter.
  • e-Commerce site that have simply picked up manufacturer product information for their store that matches lots of other sites on the web without providing additional valuable content will be penalized in organic rankings.
  • Doorway sites that work to drive traffic to one website using a strong use of keywords or black hat optimization will effectively drop the rank of the receiving site. Don’t use blogs, mini sites, or lenses to drive traffic to your parent website.
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Google on Website Spam

Watch this video from Google to see what Google specifically acknowledges is spam and may affect your organic placement.

Nuggets from this video:

  • Blog and forum comment spam can impact your placement on Google.
  • Keep an eye on your comments look for small comments with links and links in a signature block.
  • I recommend on your blog only allowing comments to be posted that you approve.
  • It is not unusual for a blog to get over 1,000 spam comments a month. If you are set to auto approve all comments this could negatively impact your placement on Google.
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Errors Google Reports About Your Website Crawl Explained

Michael Wyszomierski of the Google Search Quality Team talks about errors that Google will report to you in the Webmaster Control Panel about the crawl and indexing of your website.

My Comments

There are two types of crawl errors they are site errors and specific URL errors.

Site errors means that the Googlebot cannot access your website and are usually from an item listed in your robots.txt file. You should give these errors top priority for fast resolution.

The most common URL is a “not found” error. This means that a page may be missing from your site or the URL changed and your sitemap.xml file should be updated to remove the triggering of these error messages.

Having specific URL errors on your site is completely natural and nothing to worry about, but best practices should include a review and clean up periodically of these problems.

The crawl errors are more important. Although a crawl error can be caused when your server is not available due to a glitch or network error, they should be investigated to make sure that your site is not blocking the crawl by search engine robots. You may even need to get with your web host if server errors happen frequently.