Matt Cutts SEO and Blogging Advice

Matt Cutts (not cats), Chief of Google’s webspam team and the respected voice of Google for web developers, has given a presentation on the subject of SEO and blogging at WordCamp San Francisco not long ago. With the compliments of Matt, this presentation has been made public and reproduced below. You can also download the PowerPoint version if you prefer. You will notice, after viewing the presentation, that there are some hints that I would like to go into more details.

Straight from Google: What You Need to Know

The Hints:
# 7 – Matt loves cats. Sounds like an interesting niche to blog about:)
#12 – WordPress – The right choice. If you are still wondering why many people prefer WP over other platforms, this gives you the answer straightaway. Just imagine, all the mechanics of SEO taken care of in about 80 – 90%. Wonder what the remainder 10 – 20% is? Somebody know?
#13 – Basic but recommended WordPress Plugins.
#14 – Does this answer the “Is PageRank Important” question? Google crawls in accordance with PR. The higher your PR the more frequent your website is crawled. Therefore it is more likely that you will get your articles indexed faster and get higher chances of ranking better on the SERPs.
#15 #16 – Slide 15 is really easy to understand. Trying to figure out what slide 16 means:)
#21 #22 #23 – SEO Tips. Keywords and content. Think what users are looking for.
#26 – Optimizing and tweaking Titles, URLs and content
#27 – SEO Tip. Choosing categories and including keywords in the URL path.
#28 – But don’t overdo it – aka Keyword Stuffing
#34 – Summary. Gain reputation by being creative and informative. Provide something of value.
#35 – Is Google putting more weight on Branding? Definitely. Read this article from Nicolas Prudhon, one of my favorite sources for advanced SEO. Let’s put it this way, if I don’t know something about SEO, I ask him:)
#36/#39 – Use Google’s Free Webmaster Tools.
#44 – Avoid Paid Posts. Google does not like it. Remember Google Japan Drops PageRank?
#46 – Save the Internet.
#49 – The final blow. Convinced yet? I am.

There you have it. Did something in particular call your attention, that you might disagree with? What say you?