Matt Cutts is the guy at Google who figures out how to deliver better search results- what gets to the first results page. Officially he’s the Head of Web Spam at Google- which makes sense once you realize a big part of his job is making sure that you aren’t trying to “game” Google. All those SEO tricks that may work for a minute- aren’t near as useful as new helpful content on a fairly regular basis. We’re in an “Expert Economy” and those with the newest, best answers to solve searchers problems- will be the people who get to the front page.The days of the static brochure type site are long over.Watch the video- and realize, everything that Matt is talking about is what we teach in the Websitetology seminar. He even praises WordPress, our content manager of choice right at the beginning of the video. And if you need further proof that WordPress is the bomb, it’s the tool he uses for his blog (see link above)
Some tips Matt makes are some of the things we emphasize- like make sure you add descriptions of your audio or video content as text, because Google can’t index audio. (That’s what we’re doing here!) He talks about Googles other tools, like Google base, Google Maps, Google local, as well as tips on video- Google video longer for videos longer than 10 minutes, YouTube for 10 minutes or less (although we’ve got “Directors Status” and have loaded up 30 minute videos to YouTube). He also reminds smart web content creators to use Google ad words to generate alternate key words for your posts.Matt’s best advice to a budding site builder- use a really old browser, or a text only browser to see how a bot sees your site. Flash and Javascript make your site much harder or impossible to crawl. If you do insist on using Flash, use it as decoration, but leave the navigation in HTML.If you are in Dayton OH, and want to learn all the ins and outs of building the best site for Google rank, or, if you want a seminar on how to build an easy to use, effective website that can get you to the front page of Google, you can read up on Matt Cutts or you can take the Websitetology seminar which will give you the insight to get to the top, without having to buy ad words.The next Websitetology seminars will be held, Tuesday Dec 11, 2007
8:30am to 5 pm
Location Nehemiah University, 750 S. Main Street Dayton OH 45410
If you are wondering if you should take this seminar: http://websitetology.com/?p=91
Sign up for it here: http://websitetology.com/?page_id=247
You often get what you pay for- and Microsoft is now so desperate to gain users and traffic for it’s Microsoft live search- that they are willing to host your site for free as long as you get hooked on their advertising keywords business.
Design tools, Web hosting, and business e-mail for small business | Microsoft Office Live – Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft Office Live Basics is the easy way to get started on the Web. If you have always wanted your own Web site, Microsoft Office Live Small Business has just made it easier — much easier.
- Free domain name and Web hosting
- Easy-to-use Web site design tools
- 500 MB of Web site storage space
- 25 company-branded e-mail accounts
- Web site reports
- Search advertising tool with $50 credit
Get Microsoft Office Live Basics for FREE
and get a $50 search advertising credit
As Johnny come lately to the world of search and even the Internet, Microsoft is so desperate to compete with Google that they will try almost anything- and spend good money doing it. A cursory look at the sample sites show that as always, Microsoft still doesn’t get the idea of easy-to-use- since the small business sites I looked at were still missing normal data: like a page title other than “Home”
Neither site had RSS, or the search engine friendly features that come in the true Open Source solution we recommend that are built into Word Press. When you elect to go with a closed loop system like Microsoft office live’s free hosting- you will be forever locked into whatever feature set Microsoft chooses to support.
There are inexpensive hosting packages out there, and there is also www.wordpress.com where anyone can build a highly effective WordPress site for free- but in the end, you still get what you pay for.
We don’t demand you host with us after taking our seminar- although we do believe our $159 annual hosting fee with URL registration is reasonable, considering we provide support- and give you true Open Source solutions to support maximum flexibility and adherence to W3C standards.
If you want to see sample sites from our websitetologists, take a look here: Websitetologists.
Compare the amount of content on their sites to those of the sample Microsoft Live sites- and remember- content drives traffic for smart people. Paid ads drive traffic for, well, stupid people.