'Get to grips with SEO'

24th June 2008

A top engineer at Google has revealed his top five tips for those looking to boost their search engine optimisation.

Speaking to USA Today, Matt Cutts said that businesses should focus on inserting relevant keywords likely to be used as search terms by potential customers into their websites.

However, they should refrain from putting high numbers of these keywords into their sites as Google is likely to pick up on this practice and remove the website from its index.

Mr Cutts also advised firms to fill in title and description HTML tags and create a blog, as well as post content likely to be of interest to customers.

"If I'm a plumber in Iowa, I may want to write about some of the strange things that happen to me on the job, or the five most common ways to fix a toilet. That kind of content can get really popular and it's a great way to get links," he said.

Recent search market figures from comScore, Hitwise and Nielsen Online have suggested that Google is still the top search engine of choice for web users in the US.