Straight from google: Techniques for optimizing your website

The SEO tips and techniques featured in this article were culled from the live chat that Google’s Matt Cutts granted on YouTube.

Tip One: All hope for regaining ranking is not lost for penalized websites
A big company’s website was penalized due to excess paid links featured on their site. The company which is JC Penney did a lot of work to fix the issues and filed a formal request for another chance afterwards. Well, it may interest you that filing a formal reconsideration request was possible for the company in question because of its size. Well, a small company may go down the drain when such issue arises. Therefore, it is better to play safe by using only endorsed or safe link generation techniques.

Tip Two: Google’s Panda is being considered by Google for more language options
The target of Google’s Panda update is content farms (also known as article directories) as well as poor quality sites. Well, it is not as though these types of website are as common in multiple languages. However, Google is set to bring out the Panda update to multiple languages when the testing period is over.
Tip Three: A Ranking Signal to Look out for is Data from Blocked Sites
It is possible for people searching through Google to block sites in search result. When sufficient number of users block a particular website, this is a signal that the blocked site is of poor quality.

Tip Four: When pointing links to your own website, do not use the nofollow attribute
This rule which was rolled out by Google’s Matt Cutt also applies to links to privacy policy on your website. The nofollow attribute should be employed for external links that are not completely reliable. The reputation of a site could be dented by the site you link to.

Tip Five: Another ranking signal is going to be Google’s + 1
Presently, Google’s + 1 is the answer provided by Google to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. In no distant time, Google is likely to offer this feature to those who own websites. The feature would also become a ranking signal.

Tip Six: Your site’s IP address can be a determining factor for its ranking
If you desire to rank high on Google, your chances would be high if the site features a French IP address.

Tip Seven: Prevent duplicate content by employing the canonical tag and 301 redirects
These tools would help you keep off from duplicate content issues, especially when you have the same content in several URLs on your site.

Finally, you can use Top10 Optimizer to get direction on how to acquire SEO skills to optimize your webpages for Google ranking.