Matt Cutts about links and google rankings

Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts said that a website with a large quantity of pages won't automatically rank better than others. So addition more pages to your site won't help your home page automatically rank better than minor sites.

However, Cutts said that a site with more pages will obviously get more traffic because each of those individual pages can also rank for their own set of search queries, rising the overall opportunity for sites to gain visitors.

Cutts stressed how links also contribute to rankings, something that a bigger site often has more of naturally.

"Now typically if the site does have more pages, it might have more links pointing to it, which means it has higher PageRank," Cutts said. "If that is the case we might be willing to creep a little bit deeper into the website and if it has higher PageRank, then we might think it's a tiny bit of a better match for users queries.

"So those are some that factors concerned, just having a big website with a lot of pages by itself does not automatically confer a increase but if you have a lot of links or a lot of PageRank, that is leading to deeper crawling within your site, then that might be the sort of indicator that maybe sites would rank just a little bit higher," Cutts said.

So once again, while having a big site is great, those inbound links are still going to play a key role in rankings, much more so than a larger website.

"Again just having the number of pages doesn't give you a increase though," Cutts added. "It might give you a few more opportunities, but usually the only reason you get that chance is because we see more links to your website so we are willing to creep a little bit deeper and find more pages to index.

Bottom line: a larger website doesn't routinely give you a higher ranking, but the aftereffects of having a larger site, such as having more pages and more possible for someone to link to your site as well as getting overall search traffic on those internal pages, does help.

Having a large site is great, but once again you need to make sure that you have inbound links to your site in order to help it rank and get higher PageRank.

Matt Cutts On The variation Between “strong” and “b” Tags In Terms Of SEO

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, answers a query about text formatting in his newest video where a user writes in to ask:

“In terms of SEO, what is the difference between <strong> tag and <b> tag for emphasis on assured words of text. From the user perspective, both tags have the same result (words in bold). Which tags should we use in which conditions?”

This is a throwback question from 2006 when Matt assured us that, when it comes to SEO best practices, there is no difference between using <strong> or <b> tags. Both tags get treated the accurate same in terms of ranking and how pages are indexed.

In the video Matt Cutts recalled answering this question while addition that there is also no difference between <em> and <i> tags when it comes to ranking, scoring and other search factors.

Matt was somewhat vague in his response, saying things may have changed since 2006, “but I actually kind of doubt it.” You can use either one and Matt says there won’t be any difference when it comes to Google ranking.

Matt says that the only difference between the two tags is that that <strong> tag refers to presentation, while the <b> tag is a semantic label. But he reminds us that in practice they both do the same thing, every browser just uses the tags to make text bold.
Matt ends the video by cheering us not to worry about it. Go ahead and use whatever you prefer.

Matt Cutts’ Take on SEOs after latest Update

How’s each one doing post Penguin 2.0? This update only affected 2.3% of search queries, yet some of our users said the following about the new update:

• “It is working.. Now I can see lots of variations in ranking.”
• “It is working.. Now I can see lots of variations in ranking.”
• “I have seen radical changes in our websites SERP rankings.”
• “This has got to stop. Google cannot keep on playing God with the internet.”

Others in the industry believe Google released the update to enlarge their profitability. In this official video by Matt Cutts, we learn quite the opposite:

Other things mentioned by Matt Cutts were:

1. What will most SEOs not understand?

The difference between an algorithm update and a data refresh. Penguin update 2.0 is an algorithm update. For a better understanding of these terms Matt Cutts uses, click here:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/explaining-algorithm-updates-and-data-refreshes/

Another thing that most SEOs won’t understand is that Google in fact decreased their revenues from the new updates. You realize that the new updates actually get better the quality of the internet experience. In the long run, such a move increases trust and brand equity. This is what keeps people coming back to Google and using them for their main search engine.

2. Where are SEOs spending too much time?

SEOs are spending too much time on link building still. They need to embrace the grand picture. This includes compelling content and user knowledge. Matt specifically mentions two areas of experience that we need to focus on: design and speed.

Conclusion

Let’s make sure we aren’t whining, but evolving with the Google updates, learning the proper terms so we can understand what Matt Cutts is saying to us, and spend time in the areas that actually matter (User experience).