Search Engine Optimization NEWS

We know that many people like Reader because it makes it so easy to share interesting stuff with a wide group of friends. That’s why, over the past year, we’ve added a number of features to help you share the content you find most interesting: comments, following, people search, liking, and “send to.”

However, even with all these great features, sharing has been mostly limited to the subset of your friends who use Google Reader. While many people use Reader, we know that even more use Gmail. That’s why today, we’re thrilled to announce that with the launch of Google Buzz, the awesome items you share in Reader can also be shared with all your friends who use Gmail with Google Buzz.

A shared item in Reader (background) and Buzz (foreground)

Getting started with Google Buzz is easy. Just head over to Gmail and you’ll be able to link up your Google Reader account with just a few clicks. Then, anything you share in Reader will automatically be posted to Buzz. Comments are even shared between both products, so you can view and participate in the conversation wherever you’d prefer.

And don’t worry, you don’t have another list of friends or followers to manage. The people you follow in Reader are the same people you follow in Buzz – those you’ve already chosen to follow in Reader, plus the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.

Check out the video below, explaining everything you can do with Google Buzz!

Head to our Google help center for more details about the Buzz integration in Reader, or leave us feedback in our forum, on Twitter or even using Buzz itself.

P.S. Keep in mind that Google Buzz is rolling out gradually, it might be a few days before you get it for your account.

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.

Three heavily used services in the social media market  Twhirl, Ping.fm, and, Seesmic, are getting integrated this week in ways that will likely help all of the products.

First up, Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur just announced that the multi-posting tool Ping.fm now supports Seesmic, a video microblog service. Seesmic has a new API, which has made it possible for the Ping.fm team to allow embed a recording function for Seesmic videos within Ping.fm. It’s very simple to use the Ping.fm service now to create a Seesmic video, but the real benefit is that you can then easily post a link to the video on another micro-blog or social site, like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, or Plurk (or any combination of them), without visiting any of the sites themselves.

You can now record Seesmic videos within Ping.fm, but what I’m really looking forward to is the capability to post to Ping.fm from within Twhirl.

The AIR app Twhirl, primarily known as a Twitter client (although it also supports Seesmic and Friendfeed) is also getting related new features that should be released later this week. Taking advantage of the same Seesmic API that Ping.fm is using, the client will soon let you record Seesmic videos directly. The current version lets you watch, but not record, Seesmic vids.

Also coming to Twhirl in the upcoming release is support for Ping.fm: You’ll be able to use the client as a front-end to your Ping.fm account, which means if you like the Ping.fm service (like I do) for its capability to multi-post items to several services at once, and also like the Twhirl service for reading your microblog feeds, soon you’ll be able to take advantage of the Ping.fm functionality without actually leaving the Twhirl client.

Together, these three services make for a nice system for microbloggers, and the set-up makes it much more likely that a user of any two of the products will take up use of the third. I may just start using Seesmic, for example. I would like to see more interface and login integration between the services (you have to have accounts on all three to use them as I described), but for now, this is a very welcome improvement to them all.

News via cnet.com