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248 official Google answers to common SEO questions

Google's Matt Cutts answers SEO questions

Matt Cutts works for the search quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

Search our Q & A database to find official answers to your SEO questions. Watch the videos in which Matt Cutts answers questions or read short summaries of the answers.

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All questions about the topic "Link Building":

Question Views
1. Will SEO still exist in 5 years? 1,751
2. Organic link building, according to me is one of the most difficult tasks for SEOs of SMEs. Can you please list 5 effective ways of organic link building other than building great content? 1,545
3. Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on "brands" in search engine rankings? 1,068
4. What happens if I link to a good page that later becomes spammy? 567
5. Do tag clouds help or hinder SEO? 550
6. Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic and acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, Facebook to a website? 549
7. Uncrawled URLs in search results 533
8. How can I make sure that Google reaches and indexes pages that are on a lower (deeper) level of a website? 511
9. Does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects? 509
10. Does PageRank flow through image links? 508
11. Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as sources of paid links? 505
12. How accurate is Google's backlink-check (link:...)? 504
13. Some people are under the impression that blogs are good for SEO only if they're updated frequently. How much does frequency play into PageRank for blogs and other dynamic sites? 493
14. How can I get my business to become known online? 482
15. How would a photographer gain any significant PageRank for his or her site when the subject that really matters-images-has no anchor text? 479
16. HTML sitemap vs. XML sitemap. Which one is yummy for Google search engine spider? 476
17. As Google's algo evolves, is it better to have exceptional links and mediocre content, or exceptional content and mediocre links? 472
18. Is first link priority an on-page SEO factor? 470
19. Whitehat linkbait 465
20. How much time is Google taking to index a new webpage, and how can we accelerate the process besides using Google Webmaster Tools? 462
21. Regarding "nofollow" on internal links: Does it hurt? 459
22. What are your views on 'PageRank sculpting'? 459
23. Is there such a thing as building too many links, if you're following Google's webmaster guidelines exactly? 458
24. I keep a "blogroll" page with links to all my friends' blogs on my blog. Will that affect my blog's reputation in Google? 446
25. Is there a limit to the number of pages that Google will index from one site? 435
26. Does Google value its own links for PR/Linkjuice? 432
27. Does Google treat links in footer s differently than links surrounded by text (e.g. in a paragraph)? 431
28. An SEO suggested that I take all the content on my Twitter page and auto-feed it into a section on my website. Will this really help my site's PageRank? 430
29. I have a client who was hacked. The SEO consultant said things were cleaned up, but they weren't correctly. All 30,000 viagra/cialis type and paid links have been removed, but no improvement in SERPs. We send reconsideration. What do we do now? 425
30. A site for my client's competitor shows up on a SERP for keywords that never show up in the site anywhere (not even hidden in the source code). How is this even possible, and isn't this spam? 419
31. How much of a difference does the number of levels in the URL make? 417
32. Now that Google can crawl JavaScript links, what is going to happen with all those paid links that were behind JavaScript code? 406
33. Is it a good thing to put 'nofollow' in links to a disclaimer, privacy statement and other pages like that with the internal PageRank in mind? 405
34. If I have 3 websites, is there a problem to cross link websites? 403
35. How can linking remain a major part of a search algorithm when the majority of internet users are unable to post a 'followed' link on the World Wide Web? 401
36. The Sitemap.xml file states there are 10,000 URLs but only 1500 have been indexed. After numerous crawls it does not appear Google is going to index these additional detail pages. What can I do to get Google to index my unique and current detail pages. 398
37. How can Googlebot crawl and index pages that don't have any links to them on my website? 394
38. I see so many people asking "Will this increase my PageRank? 391
39. What is Google's thinking about links from article marketing, widgets, etc? 386
40. Seeing as the "link:" search query is hardly ever accurate, what would your favorite/preferred way to check for inbound links be if you were a webmaster? 385
41. What are the factors that go into determining of PageRank of a Twitter page, e.g. it is the followers, backlinks? 383
42. Does Google crawl and treat TinyURLs using a 301 redirect the same as other links? 382
43. Are there negative SEO implications to having a blog with do-follow comments? 381
44. Is there a way to benefit from content scraped from your site? 381
45. On what basis are you increasing the PageRank for each PageRank update? 373
46. I'm seeing Google PR for some Twitter profiles, even a PR of 4 for someone with less than 50 followers and 100 tweets, whereas for some more meaningful profiles there is no PR. Does PR of Twitter profile pages matter? 370
47. Google is showing breadcrumb URLs in SERPs now. Does the delimiter matter? 368
48. As far as big brands go, why is it that they seem to do well regardless of relevance, content or links when analyzing keyword placement in search engine results pages? 366
49. A client has a leading competitor who has created 100 or so blog sites with little depth - Google gives them a top ranking on every related term to their industry. Why does this tactic still win? 364
50. What are Google's plans for indexing the deep web? 364
51. Websites lose backlinks due to other websites going out of business or closing (Geocities, AOL member pages). Does Google remove the back link juice that once came from these pages? 356
52. Are nofollow links worth getting? 355
53. How much does the size of a web site (# indexed pages/content) have an effect on its authority in Google's eyes? 355
54. Is it OK to sell links as long as we use the nofollow attribute? 353
55. Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? 341
56. What factors influence a video universal result in Google? 338
57. When you search for something, let's say "LinkedIn", you will notice there are some quick links on the search result such as "Jobs, About, Advanced" etc. How does that work? 336
58. If a site owner has a personal relationship with another unrelated site in a different nice and adds a link to their site from his, this link looks a LOT like a paid link. Since paid links can harm your site, what is best practice in this situation? 334
59. How does Google rank sites which run on a different port than the standard port 80? 326
60. Any updates on "site hierarchies display in search results" (aka breadcrumbs)? 314
61. If a page is disallowed by robots.txt, will a link to this page transfer/leak link juice? 310
62. Last year, one of my client's web servers when down for over a day. Would this have affected the site's PageRank at all? 308
63. If we were to syndicate my written content (entire articles) to multiple domains then would we be able to use the imminent cross-domain <link rel="canonical" tag to confirm which site we would like to index for a given piece of content? 301
64. What if there are external links to a URL that is not the canonical one? 297
65. If I link back to a press article about our company, will Google perceive this as a reciprocal link and therefore give less weight to the inbound link? 293
66. Do you think web search will ever make use of references (web site mentions that are not links) as a ranking signal? 291
67. What are Google's thoughts on blog commenting? 288
68. Are different sites treated differently? 284
69. Does Googlebot use inference when spidering - having crawled site.com/article/page1.htm and /page2.htm, can it guess at the existence of a /page3.htm and crawl it? 283
70. Has Google changed the relevancy it awards to Social Media sites in the last six months? 279
71. Does PageRank take into account cross-browser compatibility? 279
72. What is the nofollow equivalent for JavaScript links/redirections (now that you follow those too)? 276
73. When you move a domain from one registrar to another or your registrant information changes very slightly (e.g. new phone number) will Google ding you for instability at the registrar? 270
74. Sometimes when you search for a company, you won't get the main page as a search result. For example, you search for [example-company-name] and get their FAQ page listed first. How does that happen and how can we avoid it on our own websites? 268
75. Can I use robots.txt to optimize Googlebot's crawl? 264
76. JavaScript and email addresses 263
77. Is Google doing anything different when it comes to serving up Twitter results? 253
78. Does the new canonicalization tag make it safe to add tracking arguments to some of my internal links without fear that Google will split the quality signals between the two addresses? 247
79. When I do a Google search for my business name, Google suggests "did you mean:" with some other company name. Is there anything we can do to keep that from happening? 240
80. We got rid of a profitable pop-under ad (since we thought the concept was user unfriendly), but then pages-per-visit and time-on-page dropped - along with our rankings. Does Google reward or penalize for a pop-under, directly or indirectly? 239
81. I didn't get to PubCon this year but heard that if there was at least 1 unfollowed link in a webpage, all links were considered unfollow? 235
82. Hidden gems of Google - Search Options 234
83. Is there a good way to kick off a feed in Google Reader by doing something like temporarily making the feed include a whole bunch of old content? 231
84. Will the new canonical tag help with issues where you, by accident (stupid editors linking to wrong addresses) have indexed sites by the IP address rather than hostname? 225
85. If you have inbound links from reputable sites but those sites do not show up in a link:webname.com search, does this mean you are not getting any 'credit' in Google's eyes for having inbound links? 180

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