Google’s Matt Cutts had some interesting comments this week on the question “is ranking dead?” in an excellent interview with Mike McDonald from WebProNews, which vindicated our entire approach to SEO here at Green Media.

“I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be,” said Cutts. “The fact is the smart SEOs (search engine optimisation companies) are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversions, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase,’” he added.

These sentiments echo precisely what we’ve been saying here at Green Media for a long time now. We mentioned the problems with purely ranking-orientated SEO in a blog entry back in July 2007, when discussing our own approach to search. As we pointed out way back then, it should always be about conversions and ROI - something that’s only now being acknowledged by the wider SEO industry and those at the very top of Google.

If you’re still using an SEO company that is preoccupied with getting “1st page rankings” over all other considerations, then you’re wasting your time and budget. SEO, like any other type of business marketing, simply needs to be accountable - and there’s no value whatsoever in boasting about a 1st page result on a term that absolutely no-one is searching for, no matter how it’s dressed up or shouted about. When your SEO is delivering massive ROI and genuine business benefits across targeted markets, then you’ve really got something to boast about.

Maile Ohye followed up her outbound links article on Google’s Webmaster Blog last week with a succinct explanation on the value of good quality incoming links, and the importance of a well thought-out strategy. It’s another good example of how Google is opening up about its processes, and it also backs up what we’ve said about inbound links for a while now.

Another thing we’ve said over and over on Green Notes is that there’s no secret with this anymore. The whole point of a search engine is to enhance the user’s experience, so if you’re doing something that goes against this then you’re likely to be damaging your SEO potential.

Google Webmaster Blog’s Maile Ohye posted a really useful article this week on the subject of outgoing links on your website. It answers some common questions and worries about adding links, and explains how they can provide a reputation-boosting effect to your site.

The importance of incoming links is well-documented, as are the various processes to follow when developing a link building strategy - but outbound links haven’t been so clear-cut, until now.

Ultimately, like everything else relating to SEO and websites, outbound link strategies revolve around providing the user with the best experience possible - and employing a healthy dose of plain old common sense.

Take a look - here.

In a post on his blog last week, Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality, revealed that the company was ready to start opening up on information that was previously kept highly secret, in an attempt to clarify certain elements of how it works. This came as welcome news to SEO companies everywhere, but perhaps some are expecting too much and in doing so are losing sight of the fundamentals that have been available from the outset.

Google is famous for being extremely guarded on how its algorithms and ranking systems work. As Manber explains in his article, the company has ploughed one thousand “programmer years” into developing the processes, and that’s not something that any corporation is overly willing to open up to competitors and the public. While the protective stance is understandable, it has directly led to frenzied speculation that makes up a good proportion of the SEO market today. The internet is full of companies that spend their time - and their client’s budgets - trying to fathom the inner workings of the Google system in order to manipulate search results in their favour. There’s an entire team of technicians at Google who are solely responsible for identifying and stamping out these activities, but it still goes on to an enormous extent.

While it will undoubtedly be interesting to see exactly what Google reveals in the coming months, it’s worth bearing in mind that the most relevant SEO fact has been freely available from day one - and that is that user experience is the single most important issue. It was at the start, and it still is today. It’s likely to be the case as long as search exists in its current form. If the user experience is lacking in quality then people will drift towards alternative search methods, and that’s something that Google simply can’t allow to happen.

What does this all mean for your website and its own SEO? Well, always put the user first. Create an easily understandable layout and design. Write content for humans, not search engine robots. Clearly define titles and tags in a descriptive and straight-forward way. Link in and out with other relevant websites. In short, always remember that your website is meant for your users, so everything on there should work for them. When your users are happy, the search engines are happy, and Google’s revelations - whatever they turn out to be - aren’t likely to change this.