Matt Cutts says No follow links won’t hurt search rankings in Google
No follow links serve as the main purpose of generating traffic. What happens if you have many nofollow links? Does that have negative impact in your site?
“No, typically nofollow links cannot hurt your site – so upfront, very quick answer on that point,” says Matt Cutts “That said, let me just mention one weird corner case, which is if you are leaving comments on every blog in the world, even if those links might be nofollow, if you are doing it so much that people know you and they’re really annoyed by you and people spam report about you, we might take some manual spam action”
Here Cutts points out blog comments as an example for nofollow link as it is practiced in large scale throughout internet. In case if you are spamming in large scale, then Google may take manual action despite of nofollow links. In general nofollow links have no effect on rankings until you don’t annoy the entire web.
Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QSEqypgIJME
How Google ranks content with no links – Explains Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts latest video portrays how Google determines the quality of the page even if that particular page does not have many links pointing to it.
Cutts says,
“But typically if you go back to a user is typing possibly some really rare phrase, if there’s no other pages on the web that have that particular phrase, even if there’s not that many links, then that page can be returned because we think it might be relevant or might be topical to what the user is looking for,“
Google ranks the content if the unique search phrase is not found in many other pages
Matt Cutts also says that Google uses different ways to determine the quality of the content, even without links. The search engine makes use of other factors like:
- Quality of previous content on the domain
- Keywords in the content
- User’s search phrase especially if not found on other pages
At the same time overusing of keywords, usually referred as keyword stuffing, creates a negative impact on the page. Google has always been good at differentiating the normal keyword usage and keyword stuffing.
Of course getting high quality links to competitive search phrases will state its authority to Google.
Google is rolling out Panda 4.0 update starting today
Matt Cutts tweeted that Google has released Panda 4.0 on 21st May 2014. The panda update is to avoid the low quality content site appearing in top search results of Google. First Google update rolled out on Feb 24 2011 followed by many major and minor update and even data refresh.
After many monthly refresh, Panda 4.0 is considered as one of the major update. Google says that this update has varying influence on various languages. In English the impact is ~7.5%.
As a result of Panda 4.0, some major sites have moved down in SERP and some sites have seen improvement in ranking. As all know, Panda 4.0 mainly target the content. The sites with duplicate or syndicated content been hit and dropped down. On the other hand some sites that were previously punished by panda have seen a positive impact by this update. This means that they have started publishing their own quality content.
Panda 4.0 Update – Big Hit To Ebay
Ebay is the biggest loser, dropped for 33% of searches and no more in top 10 rankings. Not only ebay but also Ask.com, biography.com, retailmenot.com, spoonful.com and few more has been dropped in Google SERP
On the other side, glassdoor.com, emedicinehealth.com, zimbio.com, medterms.com and few more sites are big winners that gained ranking by panda 4.0
Duane Forrester, Sr Product Manager of Bing talks about natural links
Duane Forrester, Sr Product Manager of Bing posted “10 SEO Myths Reviewed” on official Bing blog. The blog post revolves around the SEO tips on what should be done to rank your site. The post is very clear about the title tags, social, video, ads, content, links and so on.
The point he makes about the link is so obvious. Duane says,
“You want links to surprise you. You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path.”
http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2014/05/09/10-seo-myths-reviewed.aspx
This clearly highlights that you should not do anything that would get link from other source. To make it simple, one should not buy links or even request webmasters to link to your site.
Natural links are appreciated by search engines and thereby better rankings in search results.
Matt Cutts – Significance of links will fall in Google over time
Google search engine algorithm was actually based on evaluating the content and backlinks. But currently, after panda and penguin updates, webmasters believe that more importance is given only for content and not for backlinks. Many webmasters just wanted to know if backlinks have lost their importance.
Matt Cutts says, “ Over time, backlinks will become a little less important.”
He says that Google strives to provide best search results for user queries. So links still hold their value in order to find the reputation of the site. Though backlinks are considered as a factor, quality of the content in the page is given more importance while ranking. He emphasizes that the reputation actually maters but not as much as the content of the page.
Currently the Google search engine results are still depending on the links but this will change soon. Cutts admits that links will lose its importance in the upcoming days.
Google still needs to better understand about user needs, what they actually want so that the search results can be delivered better.
Influence of Google on search results Title
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team posted a video regarding why Google disregards your title tag and use something else in the search engine result page. Actually Matt Cutts suggests that the title tag must be in such a way that it matches the search query of the users. A perfect title tag is not only displayed in Google search results page but also drives higher traffic to your site. Thus benefits both the user and the site owner.
Matt Cutts emphasizes some criteria that Google usually considers while deciding if they should use the same title tag. It should be relatively short phrase relevant to your query. And also should have good description of the page in accordance with the site. If your title fails to match the above mentioned criteria, then Google fixes the title tags based on:
- The content of the page
- The anchor text links to your site
- May also use the open directory project
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4
Google slaps PostJoint network following MyBlogGuest
Guest Blogging in simple terms means presenting your blog post on someone else blog. Guest blogging was actually a handy tool to enhance the site traffic. Currently guest blogging has grown as a link building technique. Recently Google started penalizing the guest blog networks that are built mainly for seo.
Initially Matt Cutts, the head of Google spam team declared number of statements quoting that the guest blogging networks will be penalized. Here is Matt Cutts tweet on penalizing guest blog:
Following the announcement, there was a tweet from Ann Smarty confirming that MyBlogGuest was on the hit. Just in next few days, PostJoint, the next foremost guest blog network was on fire.
As we all know, the bloggers involved in MyBlogGuest were penalized so it’s very possible to happen with the PostJoint. Even though there is no confirmation, it is still expected that the bloggers in the PostJoint network will be penalized.
Understanding Matt Cutt’s Quality link building in a paraphrased version
This article is a summary of authorized link building tips gathered from the top picks of Matt Cutts videos and statements. Each of these tips are presented in a simplified version to provide a better insight of what Matt Cutt link building strategies point to.
When you have the stuff you stand out of crowd
If you want to stand out of the crowd you need to be unique and should have the stuff that everyone looks out. The same is applicable for building backlinks to websites that makes it to appear on the top of Google’s search says Matt Cutt. The ‘stuff for website’ here refers to the quality content that outranks your competitors and makes your site stand ahead in search results. Build sites with quality, unique and useful content and people will automatically start linking to your site. If your site has the stuff that others are looking for obviously they end up their search at your site.
When you are an expert you will be known by all
If you are an expert you will be known by all for your expertise. Similar is the case with building backlinks to your site. Share your knowledge by engaging yourself in a community such as online discussion forums, blogs, twitter etc. Building relationship by participating in community can influence audience that spread out your message throughout the Internet World resulting in driving authority links back to your site. But ensure that your skill should be used appropriately. Share your knowledge relevant to the community that is valuable to the users who are looking for it.
When you give you get something in return
When you offer something free to someone you will get something in return such as their blessings or a delight. Likewise you can earn quality backlinks to your site by giving away something for free that is valuable to someone. It could be anything that the community will find valuable such as chrome or a Firefox extension, a part of an open source software etc. Your freebie should be valuable to the targeted community and obviously they will start talking about it and linking to you.
When you have something that someone deserves. Share it.
If you have something that you think will be useful to someone else than start sharing it. Share or promote your stuff over the internet so that one who in need of it gets it. This can help to drive enormous traffic to your site and attracts links. You can make use of social media networks or email networks to share your stuff among the internet community.
Have your presence wherever others need you
When you are the answer of someone’s search then make your presence at the most possible areas of search mode. In this way people will find you and start approaching you for their queries. In the same manner you can attract others to your site and build backlinks by having your sites presence in high quality valuable directories or sites.
Matt Cutt says – Google handles 404 and 410 error pages in different manner
In a recent video, Google’s head of search spam “Matt Cutt” answers a question about how Google handles 404 and 410 error status code.
Here is what he conveyed:
What is 404 and 410?
He initiated the answer by explaining what a 404 and 410 actually mean to Google. These are HTTP status codes sent by the websites, whenever a browser or a Google bot request for a page.
Google make use of these status codes to determine whether the page was not found or is permanently gone.
How Google treat when it encounters a 404 and 410 error status codes?
Matt Cutt says that Google handles 404 and 410 error pages in different manner.
During the crawling process if Google bot encounters a page and sees a 404 then they keep that page protected in their crawling system for 24 hours. This is done to avoid the removal of the page when the 404 error was unintentional.
With a 410 status code Google believes that the page has gone permanently and will never return back. In such cases Google treats a page with 410 as an error.
“Penguin impacts have different levels” Reveals Matt Cutts tweet
The Google’s penguin update released on April 2012, that penalizes sites for building unnatural backlinks has been putting webmasters in a great mourn.
The penguin updates has wiped off many sites from the face of Google and some are thrown at the verge of extinction. The reason is quite simple and has been revealed by Matt Cutts in a recent tweet to one of the webmaster.
Matt Cutt tweet revealed that there are different levels of penguin algorithm we can say it as low, mild and heavy.
Here is the Matt Cutt’s tweet to webmaster:
In his tweet he recommended the webmaster to carry on his backlink cleaning process as he still sees a mild case of Penguin there.
It means penguin algorithm of Google does not affect all sites equally; the impact depends on the extent of unnatural backlinks.
So the impact of penguin update on a site can be a lot or a little or somewhere amid. The tweet is very interesting and reveals that the impact of penguin algorithm varies with sites backlink quality. But it is hard to conclude that only cleaning up backlinks can get out your site from penguin algorithm.