Matt Cutts from Google was interviewed in Las Vagas at the PubCon show recently and he pointed out a number of changes that are going to be happening in Google in the new year.
He talked about the user experience gaining in priority and that a move towards personalisation is very important. Meaning that the website content for searches must be geared towards the users and not just writing for search engines. Google basically will look at the content and examine it to see if it reads well or is just a string of key phrases thrown into a paragraph.
Localisation was touched on again by Matt pointing out that Geo Targeting your search results will become more to the front in 2009. Basically depending where you are will show results for your geographical location.
On the question on is “Page Rank Dead?” he pointed out again that basically Yes they are moving away from displaying sites with a high page rank and giving priority to sites with good website content. He also said that they are going to be looking more at companies that use “White Hat Solutions” and “Black Hat Solutions“. These are methods of creating web pages that fool a search engine into showing it first, like loading it with H1 tags in displaying content or “Keyword Stuffing” pages with key phrases what people might use, but when you actually sit down to read the page it’s crap. Just a load of phrases and no “Real Content” to understand what that page is about.
So to all our clients, get your thinking cap on and start coming up with good web copy and starting writing for your audience.
