Recently Rebecca Kelley, from 10e20, did a nice interview with Matt Cutts on widgetbait and any current social media headaches challenging Google in 2009.
I did an article a while back that shared a part of an interview between Matt Cutts and Eric Enge, where Matt highly endorsed Social Media Marketing as a quality link building method.
Matt Cutts: Whenever you pay money to a social media consultant to try to show up on Digg, you are not paying for links. You are funding some creativity; you are sponsoring your page for some creativity.
It’s not like you held a gun to anyone and said “Okay, you have to link to me”. The people who link to the site are linking because it’s something compelling instead. So, there is still some editorial choice there.
It was nice to see that Google’s feelings on social media have not changed, as in the interview with Rebecca, Matt didn’t even have to be asked before mentioning that ‘good social media with high quality content is certainly a good way to go viral’ and get links.
He goes on to say that Google ‘hasn’t really had any problems with social media as you normally have good stuff that then gets editorial votes (aka links) which is what you want’
Of course nothing beats actually hearing Matt say it himself, so here is the interview from 10e20 with Matt Cutts:
Great article and further proof that Matt consistently "gets it". Social media marketing seems to combine the best of just about everything. As in nature, the natural order of the universe, though at time wildly chaotic, strives for balance. As does the "universe" of the internet yes?
thanks, Brent – great quote – retweeted – but due to the 140 character constraint could not link here, sorry about that. 🙁
http://twitter.com/annasebestyen
Not really surprising. I think Google understands that we are trying to market our sites in as many different ways as possible. Their challenge is deciphering the legitimate social phenomena from the manufactured social phenomena.
Those who know what they're doing can really mask what they are doing and make it virtually impossible for Google to spot. But there are so few of those (that really KNOW what they are doing) that I doubt Googles SERPs are corrupted too much except in very specific niches.