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Google Webmaster Chat Seminar

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Matt Cutts and a few other moderators from Google's webmaster central tools blog conducted their third online webmaster chat seminar on Wednesday, October 22nd. The seminar consisted of an open-forum setup where webmasters and SEO consultants from all over the world submitted SEO-related questions to the team, others would vote on the questions and whether it was worthy to be answered, and the team addressed the questions both online as well as during the audio session. George Murphy, SEO consultant for Foster Web Marketing, attended the session. Here are some questions and responses that were worth noting:

1. Many believe that to rank well, you simply need "quality" backlinks. But how important is having your keywords in the titles, and throughout the site? Is keyword density of any importance to show what the page is about? What % is suggested?

Google Answer: "Links are just one factor involved in Google's ranking of pages. We look at both on-page and off-page content. So what you have on your page can be an essential part of ranking. However, there is no recommended ‘keyword density.' Your content should be high quality and written for users. If you try writing for search engines, the language can become very unnatural, which may end up hurting you more than it helps".

FWM Comment: This is good to know. Foster Web Marketing always stresses the importance of not only creating content, but also creating content that is related to your practice that people want to read about. Keyword insertion into content is important, but if it's overdone, it can look like you're writing for the search engines instead of your audience.

2. Do 301 redirects transfer the site equity from the old domain to the new domain?

Google Answer: "This is a pretty common question that we recently did a blogpost about. In short, 301's are the best way to retain users and search engine traffic when moving domains."

FWM Comment: Sometimes FWM will realize that a client's URLs either aren't including the correct keywords, or are including keywords that just aren't converting. So instead of re-naming the entire page and URL, we'll do a 301 redirect or something similar so that you don't lose any rankings that you previously had for that page.

3. It no longer seems like submitting to article directories is helping to achieve a high ranking. Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?

Google Answer: "In my experience, not every article directory site is high quality. Sometimes you see a ton of articles copied all over the place, and it's hard to even find original content on the site. The user experience for a lot of those article directory sites can be pretty bad too".

FWM Comment: This answer by Matt Cutts, which he also elaborated on during the audio discussion, touches on a few things. One is, if you're submitting your content to article directories, make sure they are quality directories (and the ones that FWM submits to are, of course). Two, there is an issue of duplicate content penalization. When the content of an article keeps getting passed to and from site to site, who will be penalized for the duplicate content, and who shouldn't? Fresh and unique content is a big factor, and taking the time to create that fresh content is worth the investment.

4. Submitting to directories recently disappeared from the link building techniques on Google Webmaster tools. Is Google devaluing directory submissions?

FWM Answer: The best answer to this question came during the audio session. A lot of folks in the SEO community have been freaking out over the past few weeks after the realized that submitting a site to DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, and other directories disappeared from recommended link building methods on the GWT site. While Cutts and other Googlers were quick to poke fun at DMOZ, they do still value a site being listed on certain directories: niche directories. There are a few automated directory submission programs out that SEOers use to submit a site to a thousand directories. But when Cutts and Google see a site popping up in a thousand directory sites that have nothing to do with what they're offering, do you think they're penalizing sites for this? Of course, and he all but said it. The term "quality over quantity" came up a few times in the audio webcase, and it's obvious that Google is going to put an importance on what kind of sites are linking to and from each other. Anyone can submit a site to a thousand unrelated directories, but when someone takes the time to find and submit a site to a high authority directory that is relevant to the product or service? That's where Google sees that quality, white-hat link building is being performed. It's a good thing FWM has been making that long list of niche legal and law-related directories for our clients!

5. Are .gov and .edu links still considered more "link juice" than the common back link?

Google Answer: This is a common misconception-you don't get any PageRank boost from having an .edu or .gov link. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you're not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn't have any PageRank.

FWM Comment: Interesting, Mr Cutts- by the way, when was the last time you saw an .edu or .gov page without a pagerank? While it's probably true that .edu and .gov links aren't overvalued, it's pretty typical that .gov and .edu pages themselves are usually given a higher PageRank. Long story short, while an .edu or .gov page without a PageRank doesn't carry much "link juice", it's very rare for .gov and .edu pages to not have higher PageRanks.

6. Will it make any different between a shared IP and a dedicated IP on SEO or search results, as opinions are divided on this aspect?

Google Answer: "Most of the web is on shared IP addresses, so it doesn't make much sense for us to give those on dedicated IP addresses any advantages. That said, if your server is struggling with the load of your website, it might make sense to move to a dedicated server that helps make sure that your users are happy when visiting your website".

FWM Comment: This was a question that came up from a current FWM client, and even though we assured him that the fact that our clients all come from our dedicated servers with the same IP addresses, that no penalty would be associated. Here is our proof. ?

7. Some search queries show a thumbnail when a result is from a video web page. How can I get a thumbnail displayed by my indexed pages that also offer videos on them? Are thumbnails going to be used more for other types of results too?

Google Answer: "I agree, videos are sometimes much more interesting than text ?! The thumbnails are shown for video results. We generally get video content from Video Sitemaps, which you can set up and submit for your site as well. Sometimes it takes a while to get video content indexed, so it's good to make sure that you submit your Video Sitemaps as soon as you have that content available".

FWM Comment: What, you thought we were spending all of that time recording video for your website to make it look pretty? We know Google loves videos. What do you think they do while crawling sites, just read content and boring info all day?

Cutts and his team also touched on a few other topics, such as why they've been blocking keyword reports from automated software programs (we run ours by hand, of course), and a few other advanced SEO topics. So far, the feedback from the SEO community is positive. The fact that Cutts and his team address issues like these on this seminar as well as through their blog is a huge step for Internet marketers to understand what is and isn't frowned upon. As more and more SEO companies and consultants practice black and grey-hat SEO techniques. FWM will continue to monitor Google's blog and seminars to see what the best techniques are to properly handle your site's search engine optimization and marketing.