Search Engine Optimization NEWS

By now most of you have heard at least some mentions of Google’s upcoming algorithm update. Nicknamed Caffeine, Google has been brewing this update for many months and expects to serve it up late this January. Google engineer and Quality Control Team leader Matt Cutts has described the Caffeine update as being the largest and most fundamental change to the Google system since its Big Daddy update of 2005.

Caffeine: Threat or Opportunity?

When algorithms change, rankings change. It’s as simple as that. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing: search engine optimization is a zero sum game…there are exactly ten results that will always show up in the top ten. So, one site’s loss is another site’s gain. What can you do to make sure you are on the beneficiary side of this update? First and foremost, you must understand the essential elements of Caffeine.

Caffeine Ingredients?

What is Caffeine? How will it affect search results? How does link building fit into the mix? What can you do to prepare for Caffeine? While we are not sitting in the Google kitchen, we have been shown a preview of what is cooking.

First and foremost, the name provides significant insight. Why Caffeine? The new update focuses on speed and sharper focus. Fewer search results served up faster. To do this, Google is completely rewriting their indexing system to crawl faster, index more efficiently, and serve up fewer results much more quickly. Content freshness will (finally) start to play the more important role it deserves; old outdated and stale content will be more readily expunged. Our explorations into Caffeine results have shown a reduction in the result set of anywhere from 30-70%!

The Role of Links

Links are still the key differentiator to move the needle forward once you have some initial traction in the search engine results. Unlike some past algorithmic update shakeups, Caffeine is not targeted to changing the criteria of links and other off-page factors. Rather, the on-page factors of a site are the variables in play.

Successful SEO is still very much the same in the post-Caffeine world. Only more so. In order for links to be most effective, they must be directed towards pages on sites which are quick to load, efficient in their coding, architected to facilitate a flatter crawl structure, and featuring a high percentage of unique target relevant content. To this last point, be assured that if your site has volumes of pages that contain repurposed content or largely redundant templated content, Caffeine will definitely not be your friend.

Effects on Social Media Marketing

SEO firm Submit-Site.com expects a huge surge in the use of Social Media Marketing strategies as an effective Internet Marketing platform. Based primarily on Google Caffeine ‘Real Time’ search results. Irbtrax also expects many Internet dependent businesses will be quickly turning their attention toward becoming Social Media Marketing savvy, creating a tremendous growth opportunity for Social Media experts to apply their trade.

Social Media SEO benefits within Google Caffeine include but are not limited to:

• Ability to make ‘Real Time’ announcements
• Funneling new visitors to a website or Blog
• Helping create backlinks using a different ‘channel’
• Wider Internet visibility and enhanced Branding techniques

Too Much Caffeine Got You Nervous?

Caffeine is fundamentally a big change for Google, and invariably you will see fluctuation (positive and negative) in your organic search rankings. This fluctuation will be driven by the extent to which your site is more or less compliant to the aforementioned factors vs. your competitor sites. Understanding why rankings for you and your competition change in the upcoming weeks is the key first step to ensure your reactions and responses are appropriate and effective.

Stay tuned for more posts on the impending Caffeine debacle.

Last month, Google started to display real-time results on the search engine result pages.

How do real-time results look like?

The real-time result box is displayed for search terms that are currently discussed on social network sites. To provide real-time results, Google started partnerships with Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and Twitter:

How to get in Google’s real-time results

Google hasn’t revealed how the real-time results are chosen but there are some things that seem to have an effect. If you want to see your tweets in Google’s real-time results, you should consider the following:

1. Google analyzes the text used in the blog post, tweet, etc. to determine the quality of the post. If a post looks like spam, it won’t be chosen for the real-time results.
2. Google seems to create profiles of users that are re-tweeted more often than other users. If a Twitter user has many high-authority followers, it’s more likely that the tweets will appear in the real-time results.
3. Google wants to identify spammers by the quality of their followers and the quality of their messages.

The collected information will be used to calculate an “Update Rank” for each contributing user.

How much time should you invest to get in Google’s real-time results?

The problem with Google’s real-time results is that they do not appear for all search terms and that each result is quickly replaced by another result.

For that reason, you cannot get lasting results in Google’s real-time results. It is much better to invest your time in getting listed in Google’s regular search results. A listing in Google’s regular top 10 results will bring many more targeted visitors to your website than a listing in the real-time results.

Google’s real-time results are a nice addition to Google’s portfolio. However, they are also problematic. Will high authority posters sell links in their tweets? How will Google find out if a posted message is true? For example, Google real-time results recently reported the death of actress Natalie Portman although the story was not true.

Add they keywords for which you want to be found in a natural way to your social media posts. Do not try to cheat the system. Try to get in Google’s results regular top 10 results and offer something interesting on your website so that other people talk and tweet about your website.

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google’s regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

What is going to change?

Of course, Google hasn’t revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google’s next index:

• Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
• Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
• Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn’t good for your rankings in Google’s current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
• The over-all quality of your website: Google’s new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It’s not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.You’ll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google’s new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google’s new Caffeine index?

Although Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google’s new index:

• Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
• Check your website design and the navigation of your website.Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders.
• Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
• Check your links. You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google’s new index will be online.