Recommendations from "Google Guy" on how to increase traffic

[ciarac]

I'm sure some of you will have heard of "Google Guy".
He is an ex-employee of Google and once, kindly posted on WebmasterWorld a list of things that he knows Google to think well off.
Or rather, did at the time. Google are always changing their opinions but I think some things will always remain the same.
Here are some of the recommendations which I found particularly useful.

1. Four of the 26 pointers by Google Guy speak of adding content.

Add, add, add.
Google loves it, and your visitors will love it.
Assure it is quality content though. You are looking for quality over quantity here.
Sure, you can turn out 5 mediocre articles in the time it takes to write one excellent article.
However, once that excellent article is on your site, people will bookmark your page and recommend you to friends and online contacts.

2. Keep your pages small.

Aim for between 5K and 10K.
Many of your visitors will still be using dial-up connections.
Don't alienate these visitors by building pages that load slowly.

3. Use your keyword in the following ways:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page.
Don't aim for misspelled keywords.
The search engines are getting smarter and now often correct spelling mistakes as people search for them.

4. Create links from one page to another within your website.

In this way, you even-out the entire PR of your website, as opposed to having one page which ranks very highly and other pages which don't.
So, for example, if when writing one article, you mention a point which is covered in more detail in another article, link to that article.
Use the keyword for the other article in the link.

5. If you are using your website to promote your off-line business, don't just put up an online flyer.

Provide your visitors with information that they can use, not just information about you and your company.
Unless they are specifically looking for information about you, they will click away from your site.


He actually made 26 points altogether but some are quite obvious, others repetitive.
I have the complete list of pointers which I found helpful on my website at the following link: Website Copywriter - Recommendations on Traffic Building from an Ex-Google Employee, A.K.A. Google Guy

Hope y'all find it helpful!

[Saidin]

Thanks for this post. Nothing really earth shattering, but I wonder if the following translates directly to (part of) the Google ranking algorithm:

Originally Posted by ciarac

3. Use your keyword in the following ways:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page.
Don't aim for misspelled keywords.
The search engines are getting smarter and now often correct spelling mistakes as people search for them.

[mellom]

Good post... quality content is key. More-so than anything else. If you have good content, in your on words, that's easy to follow - everything else will fall into place.

[AdamF24]

Thanks for posting that. I learned a few things from the article that might end up boosting my site's search ranking somewhat.

Although one thing that I don't really agree with is the "keep pages small" tip. Even Steve's pages are well over 15k.

I changed all of my post titles from h2 to h1 (while adjusting the h1 and h2 size to make them both smaller). I'm not sure if that will do anything, but it certainly can't hurt.

[Jill]

Google Guy is actually Matt Cutts, and he still works for Google.

Those things in this thread, however, are not things he's ever said as far as I know as they're mostly not true.

Do you have the URLs for attribution?