Search Engine Optimization

part 1 | part 3

About Matt Cutts | Blog

More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?

The answer is short and sweet. You can use it on the page more the once, where it is needed and there are no negative consequences. Google has also developed an algorithm to catch the abuse of the H1 on the page, such as cramming tons of H1s and styling them with CSS to look as regular text.

The word of advice is - use the H1 once as the main title with main keywords. Use H2 as sub headers. Easy to do, does not cross any guidelines and works well.

Two questions about the link: operator

In this video Matt Cutts discusses “link:example.com” command for websites as a way to get link data about a website. Matt is very clear on the fact that Google shows a VERY limited and randomized snippet of links for any link:domain search search. So for instance if you search link:www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca you will see a very small, random sample of links that we have. He also mentions that Google used to show highest PR links in the sample, but has since change this, and now shows trusted links along with links it considers spam that do not pass any power at all.

The reason for this, as confirmed by Matt, is to protect webmasters from spammers and competition who would like to back engineer search rankings for your website. If for instance competitors can type link:yourdomain and see all the links you have, then go after all those links (with whatever strategies) and gain similar search rankings.

Another reason Google leaves out link data is the fact that links play a KEY role in ranking websites, thus showing it would mean releasing too much proprietary data to the world.

If you want to get complete or nearly complete backlink profile for a website, then register with Webmaster Tools. There Google willingly shares nearly all link data (as Matt said) with webmasters.

If you still want to see links that competitors have, then try Majestic SEO or Linkscape. Yahoo Site Explorer is the free tool for the job, but results are limited to a 1000.

My reviews of the Majestic SEO and Linkscape on SEOChat.

Paid text Link Ads: What Google and Matt Cutts Say

Matt clearly states - if you want to sell / buy links there are ways to do it without breaking Google guidelines. One of the ways is to use redirects or Javascript. If however you do sell links for the purpose of passing Page Rank then Google takes action.

So don’t do it, or if you do it then don’t get caught.

Matt Cutts takes a bribe….. (sort of)

LOL. This is a funny one. A guy walks up to Matt Cutts with a suitcase saying there is $500,000 in it. Can you fix me a first page ranking? Here’s Matt’s Answer:

No, you cannot guarantee a ranking on Google. There’s no amount of money you can pay to guarantee a ranking on Google. Even in the ads, because we sort not only by amount of money, but by the amount of the click through, so if someone says they can guarantee you a first place ranking, they cant, not even me…

We should show this video to he clients.

part 1 | part 3