Google’s Matt Cutts On Why Links Still Rule & How SEOs Go Wrong In Getting Them

Eric Enge has published an interview with Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam. The interview is similar to the format he published in 2010 with Cutts, but in this interview, the topic revolved mostly about link building and what is wrong with how SEOs do it today.

In short, Matt Cutts would love a world where link builders thought first about the content or web site and why that web site is worthy of a link, versus first being concerned about getting links. In the interview, the two discuss if link building is legal or illegal, if press releases should be used for link building, the problem with content syndication and guest blogging – plus much much more.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview, but make sure to read the full interview over here.

• Link Building Is Not Bad: Just don’t try to get the link first, have compelling content people want to link to instead.
• Press Releases Links: They still “probably not count” but your goal should not be the link but the exposure the press release gives you to editors who may read them and cover your story.
• Content Syndication: If your content is being syndicated on other sites, give Google signals to know you are the original source. Make sure you publish well before others, possibly use rel=canonical, link to main source of content, and maybe use authorship.
• Problem With Guest Posts: A large number of people are doing it the wrong way, guest posts have become more like article directories or article banks these days.
• Links: Links are still “the best way” to rank content.

New AdWords Integration Platform

Advertisers like to see reports in Analytics which are fresh - reflecting their up-to-the-minute AdWords settings - and consistent with the AdWords reporting. Today, Google Analytics is excited to announce that it is rolling out a new AdWords integration infrastructure for our advertisers to realize these benefits. More importantly, the new integration is laying a foundation for adding new AdWords dimensions quickly -  such as Ads - and paving the path for a rich set of reports such as enhanced campaign bid adjustments and Google Display Network targeting settings. Highlighted below are a few ways in which the new platform will start impacting AdWords reports in Google Analytics.

Improved data freshness and consistency

With the new infrastructure, reports will reflect the most recent AdWords settings such as campaign or ad_group names keeping them fresh and consistent with AdWords. In the example below, a user has renamed their campaign thrice from “Big Deal”   “Big Deals”   “Big Deal - Car Accessories”. In the current reports, visits are attributed to the three different campaign names while clicks are attributed to the newest campaign name. After this change,  both visits and clicks metrics would be associated with the most recent campaign name: “Big Deal - Car Accessories”, thus collapsing multiple rows into a single row.

Current Behavior

Campaign	Visits	Impressions	Clicks
Big Deal	542	0	0
Big Deals	381	0	0
Big Deal - Car Accessories	72	68724	1023

New Behavior

Campaign	Visits	Impressions	Clicks
Big Deal - Car Accessories	995	68724	1023

Laying the foundation for richer reporting

The new integration is laying the foundation for adding new AdWords dimensions quickly and for creating new reports with speed. Very soon, advertisers would be able to access reports based on their Enhanced Campaigns’ targeting settings; reports containing rich information to help fine tune ads targeting settings and bid adjustments for improved ROI (Return On Investment).

Show and hide AdWords data via linking

The new integration allows users to show or hide data for auto-tagged AdWords accounts by linking or unlinking the account to a profile. If a user un-links an Adwords account from a profile, all historical data pertaining to the account would be hidden by rolling them up into (not set).