Google Caffeine
Will “Caffeine” from Google Be Good For You?
We’ve all heard and seen the hackneyed phrase “Content is King”. Hackneyed, yes but very true as well. If what you are offering doesn’t have sufficient good content, will people stay long enough to read it? We don't think so.
Caffeine is the name of Google’s new search engine which they say, will bring us search results that are faster, more accurate, and will deal better with updating new information more rapidly from Social Media services such as Facebook and Twitter.
As you may already know search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process through which we work to place your website higher in the page rankings. Google has been a major player in the SEO arena, and much to our annoyance, constantly changing their rules (algorithms) so that (as they say) their page rankings remain as accurate as possible.
They have now changed the entire infrastructure in this version of their website indexing system and promise the largest collection of web content they’ve ever had plus content that is 50% fresher than what they have provided in the past.
In exchange, Caffeine demands that website owners become much more proactive, e.g. making sure that all meta and alt tags, meta descriptions are correct, improving keywords and text, updating content regularly and bringing up to scratch site loading speed, picture sizes and programming code, etc.
While we provide these services, there are many things you can do yourself for your website, like writing articles or blogs, press releases for those exciting things you’re doing, Tweets and posts to Facebook, etc. – you write them and we’ll put them onto the website.
If, however you don’t have the time or the inclination to do what is necessary to keep Google and the other search engines happy, we’d be delighted to sit down with you and discuss a strategy to keep your content fresh and your page rank where it should be. Email us now - info@redhotwebhosting.co.uk
With Caffeine, it is now a matter of change or fall seriously behind in your page ranking!
Think Of It This Way
The on-line equivalent of your business being located on the busiest shopping street in the world is your website appearing within the top 10 (on the first page of the major search engines) for the most used keywords in your niche. Since search engines and directories account for 85% - 95% of all traffic to websites, Caffeine is no idle change.
How do Searches Actually Work?
When you type in your search terms, you don’t actually search the entire world wide web, instead the search is of the web pages Google has indexed. Indexing happens by “spiders” (software) searching web pages and following links on those pages to other pages, following links on those pages and so on, ad infinitum. Pretty soon you have an incredible number of pages spidered and put into the index (data base) which Google uses as the basis for its searches.
To narrow down the results so they more closely match what you’re looking for, the software asks over 200 questions of the data base, questions like:
• How many times do the keywords show up on the page?
• Are there synonyms for the search terms?
• Is it a quality website or a spam site?
• What is the site’s page rank? And so on.
From all this information, a ranking of the most relevant websites is determined and the results of your search appear on your computer screen. All this takes less than one half of one second!
So why has Google tweaked and updated its system
and launched this new edition of its box of tricks?
They’ve done it because there is so much new content on the web, although it’s not just the amount but also the complexity of the new content e.g. images, video, real time updates, news, etc. that they have to deal with. And, we users expect more! We want the latest and most relevant content, NOW. We don’t want to wait for weeks for Google to analyze the entire web and update the layers of their index.
Therefore Caffeine analyzes smaller portions of the web and continuously updates the pages Google indexes. So as they find new content on pages or find new pages, they are added to the index immediately.
The changes that Caffeine brings with it will affect every website.
The primary changes revealed so far, that you really need to know about, are:
• The speed at which your site loads will now have a significant impact on your page ranking. Large graphics and certain types of programing code will have to be changed or removed.
• Content is king – now, even more so. Content includes not just text but blogs, comments on blogs, articles, updates, the use of the right keywords, meta and alt tags and meta descriptions, etc. throughout your site. (Although meta and alt tags as well as meta descriptions are part of the structure of the website they are not static. Just as keywords change with new content, so must meta tags and descriptions. Pictures should have alt tags and of course as they change so must the alt tags.) More about blogs in future correspondence.
Also, content HAS TO BE CHANGED AND/OR UPDATED REGULARLY. If your site remains the same month after month, spiders will just bypass or may disregard your site all together and your site will fall in the rankings.
• Links – incoming, out-going, authority/quality - links are more important than ever. To Google, links are a sign of the relevance and quality of your content and the popularity of your website.
Accumulating links is no longer a luxury but a real tool to improve your site’s infrastructure and your standing with Google and other search engines.
• Activity on your site is the other major change that will have a huge impact.
Activity doesn’t just mean traffic coming to the site, it also includes posting blogs and articles, getting comments on both, changing pictures, changing pages and their content by adding new products and their descriptions or new information, getting RSS subscriptions, submitting articles with links to articles directories and other sites which use them, etc., etc.
Through the various tools at its disposal, Google can now measure the human, as opposed to automated activity, on a particular website and activity has to be relatively regular to affect where your site is placed in their searches. Fantastic content and hundreds of links are not enough, there has to be regular human activity too.
In this online ‘combat of the websites’, we are not talking about drinking
decaf, we are talking about using Caffeine in the most
imaginative and effective ways we can.
After all that is what real SEO is all about!
We have a range of SEO options with price breaks that can be spread over several months or
choose the one-off options – whatever suits you best.
Don’t wait, contact us today to discuss a new strategy
for your ‘Caffeine break’.
Google Caffeine - Search Engine Update - Caffeine & SEO
what it is likely to mean to you and your website.
