Matt Cutts answers questions on SEO, Google and future of internet search

Wired recently posted there interview with Google Guy Matt Cutts. In the interview he answered questions on search engine optimization, Google, future of search, social media marketing and search engine optimization. Below it the complete interview:

WIRED NEWS: Does SEO (search engine optimization) work?
MATT CUTTS: It does to some degree. Think of it this way: When you put a resume forward, you want it to be as clean as possible. If the resume is sloppy, you’re not going to get interviewed for the job. SEO is sort of like tweaking your resume . . . It’s helpful if you just think about which words people would use to search for your content. If you’re writing something about Mount Everest, for example, people are probably going to look for ‘How high is Mount Everest?’ . . . If done responsibly, [SEO] can be a great thing.

WN: Where do you see search in two to five years?
MC: There will be a lot more people storing data in a cloud . . . My laptop, for example, has been shutting down randomly lately, so I don’t trust it with data. I don’t know what’s going on there. Storing your data in a cloud will be a big trend in the future.

[Cloud computing refers to shared computing resources, so data is stored on a virtual platform, rather than on an individual hard drive.]

Personalization is also really interesting to me. So if you search for ‘diamond,’ [the search engine will know] if you’re looking for jewelry or baseball.

WN: What about social search?
MC: Social search is interesting, but it would require so much work . . . With personalization, the user to give up some information, but then [the search engine] just sits back, watches you and helps. That’s pretty interesting.

WN: Will you ever roll out for-fee webmaster tools?
MC: I doubt it. I’m not going to preclude it, but the more information we give webmasters, the better it is for them, the better it is for Google.

WN: On video search, is there a bias toward YouTube videos?
MC: I’ve asked around about this issue and the people I’ve spoken with strongly deny it. We are actively trying to promote diversity and we take that as a high-order goal.

WN: If you were to start a web-based business tomorrow, what key things would you do?
MC: First, I would create great content. That’s a fantastic way to get a head start. Then you need to promote it — that can be done free using webmaster tools. Third, tweak snippets. [Snippets are brief descriptions of web pages that appear in certain search results.] Changing meta description tags can increase your traffic. Fourth, tweak your text. Look at existing search logs to see how people find you now. It’s the easiest way to increase your conversions.

WN: What’s going on with Google bombs — are you still seeing them?
MC: They’re relatively rare and don’t really do much harm. They’re more like pranks. Our main concern was that people might think [the link bombs] represent [Google's] opinions. I wouldn’t claim that our fix is 100 percent perfect, but we don’t see many.

Courtesy : Wired.com