Matt Cutts of Google, widely considered to be the best when it comes in dealing with SEO problems, faced three particular questions affiliated with the concept.
The first one was 301 redirects and it’s effects on PageRank, as many consider that it aids the user in preserving valuable PageRank, more than what normal links offer. Cutts differed with the general viewpoint of the audience, as according to him, both of them is quite similar in their nature, and it’s to the user on making their rightful choice as it depends on their respective wants and purpose.
Backlinks were the next topic of discussion and the question that were on every one’s mind was how is it possible for a site with inferior quality backlinks to be in a higher rank than usual for a particular range of keywords. Cutts came with a solution that there may be some cases where the algorithm cannot manage to collect everything. Also the links which was viewed by a user may not be the site’s exact picture. In other words, a good number of backlinks exist in that site, which helped in generating a fake cover to show that it was full of SEO spam.
The session ended with the discussion of selling of links by a particular site. Matt came to the rescue of such users, and he said that such the links will fail to garner trust and such websites gets penalized heavily, and a good proportion of the PageRank gets reduced in the process.