A recent article on Search Engine Land, discussed Google’s assertion that the length of a domain registration doesn’t matter to a Websites rank as some people think.

Search Engine Land quotes three Google employees, one being Matt Cutts, they all downplay the effect of registration length on ranks but none of them definitively say that it doesn’t affect the rankings.

Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration:

A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time .

But let’s look at some more evidence. Earlier this year, Danny spoke with Google’s Matt Cutts about a variety of domain/link/SEO issues. In light of the claims from domain registrars that longer domain registrations are good for SEO, Danny specifically asked “Does Domain Registration Length Matter?” Matt’s reply:

To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling.

/…/

So we have, essentially, three recent Google statements about the length of a domain registration and its impact on search rankings. None of them specifically say, “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

Ultimately, the full SEO power given to the registration length of a domain probably doesn’t affect the rankings that much. But does it hurt to register a domain for longer? I don’t think so. Regardless of the SEO juice, I feel that it is important to have your domain registered for multiple years, especially if it’s your main domain.

Goldstein Media owns quite a few domains, some we’re using for testing landing micro-sites,. other domains were bought for an idea that went by the wayside. For the domains that we’re experimenting with, we usually register for only 1 year. The more important domains, ones dealing with our brand and such, we have them registered for 4-5 years. The main reasoning behind the longer registration is less for SEO than for the fact that we don’t want to risk losing our identity online.

Below is the video done by Matt Cutts for the Webmaster Center channel on Youtube:

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, gave a talk at Wordcamp San Francisco this past May (5/30/09). He points out the do’s and don’ts for keeping a blog.

Check out his video below:

Newly, bald (he lost a bet with his team), Matt Cutts, Google’s search front man talked with WebProNew’s Mike Mcdonald about the Caffine Update. Caffeine is the code name for Google’s newest update to the seach giant’s search platform. Cutts says that they are doing their best to improve search without disrupting the existing rankings in Google. He does say that there is always a chance of things changing though.

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the news hyper update to Google. Post your thoughts below in the comments.

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Google’s Matt Cutts answered a great question today on the search giant’s Webmaster help YouTube Channel.

The question was: “How does someone begin to SEO their site on a small budget in an overwhelmed industry such as real estate?”

One of the key points Cutts pointed out was to make your site different from all the rest. Make it useful and memorable and that will help your rankings. Check out the video below.

Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive have an interesting view point on the NOFOLLOW attribute on blogs and sites. He says that if the site has large readership you should still try to guest post on that site regardless if there is link-juice-love going to your site or not.

He explains:

Here’s Matt Cutts’ view on NOFOLLOW back in February on the Webmaster Tools YouTube channel:

And finally here is a video done at SMX Advanced in Seattle with Matt Cutts’ on the devaluing of the NOFOLLOW attribute:

What are you thoughts on the NOFOLLOW attribute and its impact? Post your comments below.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains on the latest Webmaster Help Video that Yahoo, Best of the Web, other Web directories with an editorial process are not considered paid links. This is because they have guidelines that need to be met and will reject low quality submissions if they don’t meet the right criteria.

This is very helpful and makes sense because both BOTW and Yahoo Directory are actually useful to users as well as Google and the search engines. One thing that always gets me is how Cutts says that you don’t have to worry about going overboard on SEO to rank high, just provide great content. This in some ways is true. Great content should out-weigh Optimized sites, but in actuality it doesn’t always happen that way. I know Cutts really can’t say otherwise, but it just gets a little annoying that he keeps saying make great content and everything else will fall in place, when he knows full well that often that isn’t the case.

Here’s the video. I’d love to hear what you think of this and what you think about Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web.

On their WebmasterHelp Channel, Google’s Matt Cutts explained a way to get links back to your site (linkbait) without nefarious, devious actions on your part. He gives an example of a site that combines Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Twitter. It’s an interesting example of how one can linkbait without going to the darkside.

Watch the video below. I’d like to hear what you’re thoughts are on linkbaiting the Whitehat way, discuss in the comments.

Matt Cutts made a presentation at Wordcamp San Francisco entitled “Straight from Google. What you need to know.” He hasn’t posted the video of his presentation but his slides are available and very informative.

Check out his slides below: