WebProNews

Google's Matt Cutts dished out some basic advice to the newspaper-reading audience about how to optimize for search.

Make sure your keywords appear on your site, and do what you can to encourage others to link back to you. It's basic advice, but for print readers being introduced to SEO for the first time, these are bits of advice interested people will want to keep on hand.

Cutts told USA Today some of the little tricks that may mean the difference between a sweet flow of traffic from the dominant search engine, or being ignored by the Internet-using public.

Regulars to WebProNews probably know the basics well. But with many people engaging in small businesses, with little time to research outside the needs of their operations, the need to know about SEO could fall outside the daily to-do list.

Cutts advised people to make sure their main keywords make it into the title and description tags; modern web development software helps one fill in those blanks. The keyword meta tag, a one-time staple of being indexed, receives little weight in the engines these days.

Don't get carried away with the keywords; Cutts said two or three mentions on a page will be enough. Too much may flag a page negatively for keyword stuffing, putting one's site rank at risk.

Followers of the Matt Cutts blog know he's a fan of the WordPress platform. He recommended blogging as a good way build content and attract those important links. Writing what they know, especially the humorous, strange on-the-job things that happen, helps this greatly.