It’s not often Google comes right out with highly specific SEO advice. But when it is there, people hang on every ort of minutia. Earlier this week, chief webspam fighter Matt Cutts had them dangling at the WordPress WordCamp as he connected some nuts and bolts.
Not to take away from the dutiful bloggers out there who have kindly relayed a modern kind of Gospel – Loren Baker, Stephan Spencer, Patrick Havens, Stephanie Booth – thanks to all of you.
Key SEO Takeaways from Matt Cutts’ Presentation
URLs:
Underscores are now treated as word separators
File extensions (.htm, .html, .php, .asp, .aspx, .jsp) won’t affect rankings
But avoid .exe
The number of slashes doesn’t matter (for Google)
Dynamic URLs are treated the same as static
Question marks are cool, but don’t overuse the equals sign (2 or 3 limit)
Don’t go back and tweak old URLs, just keep tips in mind for the future
Usability:
Site is crawlable
Dates of posts are conspicuous
Double check for mobile browsing
Full-text RSS for user loyalty
Standard pings
Switching IPs:
Reduce time-to-live
Back up site, bring up on new IP
Watch Googlebot until it indexes new IP
Take down old site
Moving Domains:
301 redirect one subdirectory at a time, testing
Notify linkers and ask them to update links
Standardize backlinks, choose www or non-www
Other Advice:
SEO Title Plugin for switching out blog title with post title
Use Alt attributes with photos, 3-4 relevant words
Dashes are best, then underscores
No spaces are worst
Use a thesaurus
Use a different stylesheet, not different site for mobile/iPhone
