Here is another post on what Matt Cutts has to say about search engine optimization, quality of websites and web spam. We maintain reminding our readers that Matt Cutts is the chief leader of web spam team at Google. Like always, the YouTube channel was the medium of clarification on three common but critical topics – SEO, website quality and web spam.
The first subject that he chose to speak about was web spam. He mentioned that Google is going to send more detailed information about web spam to webmasters. This would help to determine what steps they should implement to make their websites better. In this context, Cutts mentioned that Google has developed a new tool that would allow his team to include more URLs and other stuff that would help webmasters ensure that their websites are improved quickly. He did mention that the new tool may require more changes and will be released after some time. He described the work done so far as good start.
Use of stock photography was the second matter that he chose to address. One of the users had asked whether stock photographs impact the website and SEO negatively and whether original photographs make any positive impact. The answer to both parts of the question from the Google engineer was “no”. However, he did mention that original photographs have the potential to improve the rank of the website in the long run. Cutts seemed to be referring to the quality of the website by positive impact.
The third topic that he discussed was about linking two or more websites and whether linking two or more of his websites on the same subject by the webmaster is good or bad for Search Engine Optimization. As Cutts has always maintained, linking of two or more websites was totally approved by him. According to him, a webmaster puts all his websites at risk when he links all of them irrespective of relevance. It appears to be a network of links and attracts penalty. That does not mean websites on similar subjects cannot be linked.
Like always, there was his usual advice for creating a good website with comprehensive content and relevant keywords instead of innovating one lazy tactic after the other. The scope of spam is getting bleaker because of advancements in filtering techniques. Therefore, the best SEO is that offers long-term success.