There were two recent YouTube updates from Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam prevention team, with some useful and important SEO updates.
First, we will discuss a few items from a live question and answer session with Matt Cutts, from September 11, 2011, and then Matt Cutts’ August 11 video with the answer to the question: “Does Google consider SEO to be spam?”
From the Q&A video, a quick question was “What effect does +1 ranking have on SEO?” Matt’s answer was, “Right now we are still studying it.” He says that Google is very excited about it and expects good things to come from it. A follow up question asked if +1 ratings helped Ads, and the answer was no.
A viewer asked when PageRanks would be updated again. Matt’s answer was that Google runs a script automatically every three months or so, to update the PageRank. In addition to the … automatic script, they have constantly running processes that will lead to human review of sites.
Speaking of PageRanking, Matt discussed the reconsideration request process. He says that this process is becoming more transparent than it has been. Google had originally been concerned that being too open in their reconsideration responses would tip their hat to spammers. Matt recommends requesting manual reconsideration if you think Google penalized your site. He says there is no downside to it, and the manual reconsideration team will now tell you more than simply saying that they had done the reconsideration. Now they will also tell you if they took any action. He says the most common answer, and the best one to get, is that a review occurred and resulted in no change. Matt says that means that they did not find any policy violations and all you have to do is to improve the website’s algorithm score to improve its ranking.
One question was if it was OK to use double 301 redirects on a site. The answer was that anything up to four nested redirects was OK, but more than that would have a bad result.
How to defend against website content thieves was another question. Matt’s suggestion was to be sure that your website pings Google when you post content. Use Google’s FeedBurner or another established ping service to let the world known when you have published content. If you get the word out first, it helps to establish your ownership claim. He also recommended reporting copycat sites as spammers and filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint.
The answer to “Does Google consider SEO to be spam?” is “No.” Matt explains in this video that Google does not consider white hat SEO to be spam. Matt says that an optimized site improves the user experience by helping users to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. He also pointed out a number of the free webmaster guidelines and tools available from Google, along with their SEO starter guide. As Matt says, “There are many valid ways that people can make the world better with SEO.”
You can see a lot of Matt Cutts’ SEO advice on the YouTube user channel GoogleWebmasterHelp.