Yesterday, USA Today published an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts about how webmasters can optimize their sites for Google. In the article, Matt provides five tips on improving visibility. They are:

Figure out what people are searching for and put those search phrases on the page.
Ensure that your title tag, at the minimum, is not generic. (The article also mentions meta description tags so that the search will return a descriptive snippet in the SERPs.)
Get other sites to link back to you, because the more authoritative links you have, the more popular you are.
Create a blog and post often so that you have a regular flow of content.
Use free tools available to you. Google’s Webmaster Central Tools is one. Google Local is another.

In the article, Matt also advises against keyword stuffing and says that sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can give bloggers the right inspiration to get started with their blog. And Matt adds as a final note that you don’t have to advertise to get to the top of the SERPs.

This is definitely a good primer to some basic SEO for those who read USA Today and have no clue about search engine optimization. However, one member notes as a disclaimer that it would have been helpful if the writer of the article mentioned that there’s no guarantee that you’ll rank on the top after following all of these tactics. It helps, but you still may not be on page 1.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld