Matt Cutts Interview

I was listening to an interview with Google's Matt Cutts. Also, lately I've been going through some SEO books. I hope to improve myself as an SEO specialist by allotting some time at the start of each day to keep myself in touch with SEO principles and techniques.

The Matt Cutts interview lasted around an hour and a half, and I learned a lot from it. Many of my thoughts regarding SEO were confirmed, and some did not quite fit. For one, PageRank really is important. But I still believe that anyone doing SEO should not chase after PageRank alone, as it is only one of the HUNDREDS of factors to determine search engine placement. Relevance of links and content is also important.

The power of linkbuilding and anchor text is also affirmed. It doesn't depend only on the quantity of links, but also on the quality of links (based on PageRank, contextual relevance, position on the page, and several other factors). Google has developed complex algorithms to filter out the SPAM links, links that aren't really of any importance and are just there to improve link popularity for certain sites.