How to Optimize Your Website for Google?

Want to drive more potential customers to your website or to your blog? Here are some basic steps to take that will help boost your website presence in the search engines results.

Google's Matt Cutts gives many SEO tips in a live chat that was hosted on YouTube.

Search engine optimization is the process of choosing the right targeted keyword phrases related to a website or blog and ensuring that the website places well when those keyword phrases are part of a search engine results.

This week's article contains all important statements that were made by Matt Cutts in that chat:

Google's Panda update will be available for more languages

Google's Panda update targeted content farms and low quality websites. Although these website types are not as common in other languages, Google will roll out the Panda update to other languages after some testing during the next months.

Penalized websites can get their rankings back

The website of JC Penney was penalized by Google because they had a lot of paid links. According to Matt Cutts, JC Penney filed a formal reconsideration request after doing a substantial amount of work to fix the issues.

Editor's note: it probably helped that JC Penney is a big company and that the case was in the press. Getting a penalty lifted is much harder for smaller websites.

Data from blocked sites is a ranking signal

Users that are logged in to Google can block websites in the search results. If enough users block a website, it will be interpreted as a signal that the blocked website is of low quality.

Google's +1 button is going to be a ranking signal

The +1 button is Google's answer to Facebook's "Like" button. It is likely that Google will offer the +1 button for website owners in the near future and that the button will be a ranking signal.

Do not use the nofollow attribute for links to your own website

Matt Cutts said that you shouldn't use the rel=nofollow attribute for links to your own website, including links to the privacy policy. You should use it for links to external websites that you don't necessarily trust. The websites to which you link can affect the reputation of your website.

Use 301 redirects and the canonical tag to prevent duplicate content

If the same content is available with multiple URLs on your website, you should use the canonical tag to avoid duplicate content issues. If you use new URLs for your pages, use 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs.

The IP address of your website can influence its rankings

If you want to get high rankings on Google.fr, it helps if your website has a French IP address. Websites that do not have a French IP address can also get high rankings but a French IP address helps.

Remember that if your website does not rank in the top 10 or in the top 20 results in search engine listings when conducting a keyword search, your target audience will probability not be able to find you.

If you want to optimize your web pages for high rankings on Google, optimize them with the Top 10 Optimizer. Enter your keyword and your web page and the Top 10 Optimizer will tell you what to do.