Google Caffeine Goes Live After Christmas
10/12/2009 6:10
Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's next algorithm update that is going live after the christmas 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. 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 quality one way thematic 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.
Can Page Titles Generate Traffic
27/8/2009 21:52
There is talk on many forums that meta tags are no longer regarded by search engines such as Google. Rubbish… Let take the meta title. The title that you use for your web pages. They are an important factor for the ranking algorithms of search engines and they are the first thing that web surfers see when they find your website in the search results.
So what does this mean for SEO. The title although heavily influenced by SEO should not just be a keyword strong bunch of words
Depending on which kind of traffic you want to attract, you should use different title formats on your web pages:
1. News titles (not so good for Search Engine Optimisation)
This kind of title is often used by bloggers and news article promoters. Here are some examples:
- How at risk is your identity?
- Recession causes unrest in the city
- Nominate your hero
- Jacko King of pop dies
The problem with these titles is that they are not good for search engine optimisation. These titles usually don't contain relevant keywords and they don't look very attractive in the search results.
There won't be many people who will type " Recession causes unrest in the city" in Google's search box so it's not likely that the page will get many visitors through search engines.
2. Shopping titles (good for SEO)
Shopping titles usually contain a product name that is used by web surfers. If they also contain a call to action, you can get targeted visitors with these titles. Here are some examples:
Compaq 6400 10-Inch Black Netbook - 9.5 Hour Battery Life
Compaq 6400 - Buy it now for only £249.95
Buy a Compaq 6400 with extended guarantee
Free shipping: HP Compaq 6400 - £249.95
The first shopping title is rather descriptive because it only lists the features. The other titles contain a call to action (buy now), prices and additional benefits (free shipping).
People who want to buy a Compaq 6400 probably will click on the title with the call to action while people who are looking for product information might choose the first title.
3. Information seeker titles (good for SEO)
Information seeker titles won't attract buyers but people who are looking for information about a special topic. Here are some examples:
- How to lose weight as fast as possible
- How to repair a broken stool
- 10 mistakes most parents make when choosing a school
- How to find the perfect golf course
- 10 ways to find the perfect partner
These web page titles are good because they will attract visitors over a long time period. People are always looking for "how to" articles and solutions to their problems and you will get long term, constant traffic with these pages.
Action plan: how to change your current web page titles
Good web page titles can make a huge difference in the number of visitors that your website gets. For that reason, you should check the titles of all web pages of your website now:
Make sure that the titles of your web pages are descriptive. It should be clear what to expect on the pages.
If possible, add a call to action and benefits in your web page title.
- Put the most important information at the beginning of the title. Search engines might shorten the title in the search result pages and people might not see the complete text, plus the first characters / words are more highly regarded.
- If you're not a major brand name, avoid your company name in your web page titles. People wont know who you are so use the character limit wisely
- Do not use the same title for all of your web pages. This is a mistake that many beginners make and if across many pages and keyword heavy could be construed as an attempt to fool the search engines which may result in penalties
People judge books by their covers and search results by web page titles. If you want to get as many website visitors as possible, you should develop engaging titles for all pages of your site. Build and they will come.
I will cover off page keywords and page descriptions in another post
Optimising The Conversion Rate Of Your Website
27/8/2009 21:40
Attaining the no.1 spot on Google is great achievement. It's not so great when you see that you get a lot of visitors through your high search engine ranking but only a few actual customers.
Search engine optimisation is pointless if your website does not convert visitors into customers. You'll actually lose a lot of money if you don't take the time to optimise the conversion rates of your website pages.
Why is optimising the conversion rate of your website important?
Suppose you sell a product / service for £50. If the conversion rate of your website is 1% then 1 out of 100 website visitors will buy your product or service. That means that you will sell 2 units if 200 people visit your website.
If you want to double your sales, you have to double the number of visitors that come to your website. That's usually quite difficult. So what now?
If you optimise your web pages so that you have a conversion rate of 2% then you can double your sales without getting more visitors. Increasing the conversion rate of a website is usually easier than getting more customers and obviously far more profitable.
What can you do to improve the conversion rate of your website pages?
There are several things that you can do to improve the conversion rate of your pages:
1. Drive traffic to the most relevant pages on your website.
Your website visitors should come to the most relevant pages on your website. If you advertise on Google AdWords for the search term "buy big green bottles" then your landing page should be a page about big green bottles and it should be possible to buy these bottles right on the page. The same applies for visitors that you get through your regular search engine rankings.
2. Check your website statistics for your pages with a high bounce rate.
There are many packages out there that measure this but as a starter use Google analytics, its fast and easy to set up and best of all is free.
Analyse your analytics stats to find pages on your site that have a high bounce rate. If too many people leave your website without fulfilling the desired task then you have to improve your pages and make them more relevant to the user's query. Also check your statistics to find "404 not found" and other errors.
3. Add a call to action on all of your landing pages
Every landing page should contain a call to action. Chances are that a website visitor will see only a single page of your website. That's why all pages should contain a call to action so that your website visitors know what to do. If you can link your call to action to your payment facility or contact form then this will increase conversation rates.
Don’t under estimate the results that on-page SEO can bring your business. Contact Us today for a no obligation discussion.
How Many keywords Should You Optimise
26/6/2009 7:56
Achieving top 10, even top 3 placement on Google and other leading search engines is the goal of any search engine optimisation efforts.
If you have already invested time in researching the best keywords for your website then you will have a list as long as your arm of words / phrases you wish to rank highly for.
With this in mind, how many keywords should your website target? Perhaps I should rephrase. How many keywords should each of your webs pages target?
Answer:
#1
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You should not try to optimise one webpage for one than one keyword / phrase. The phrase can of course consist of multiple words but a different phrase will require a different page. |
Why? Well it’s much better for ranking purposes if a web page is highly relevant to one keyword than somewhat relevant to many search terms. If you concentrate on one keyword per page then it is much more likely that your web page will get a top listing on Google for that keyword / phrase.
You will get the best possible results if you optimise different pages of your website for different but related keywords.
How to optimise a web page for your chosen keyword
When you optimise a web page for a keyword, it's important that the right elements of your web page contain the keyword in the right frequency. In the old days simply hitting the optimum % of keyword density used to do the trick. Not any more. The only true way of measuring keyword density levels is to evaluate your top 10 competitors for that exact phrase and evaluate how much / how little they use the keyword phrase within the core elements of the website content, i.e. meta data, h1 tags, inbound links, outbound links, the content itself.. and the list goes on.
The keyword competitor analysis is a task the SEO-Authority do as part of an SEO Audit & Analysis Report, or please contact us for more information
Single keywords Vs keyword phrases
You should always aim to optimise your web pages for a very targeted keyword that consists of many words. A keyword that consists of many words is called "key phrase". This has several advantages:
1. It's much easier to get top 10 rankings for targeted key phrases because the competition is not as fierce as the competition for single word key words.
2. Key phrases attract much more targeted website visitors. People who search for "Football" might be interested in magazines, clubs or even the players. People who search for "Buy Cheap football kits" are looking for inexpensive football kits and they are ready to buy. There is little reward in optimising your website for keywords that don’t result in orders to your basket. What it will result in is a high bounce rate of traffic from your site.
3. By optimising your web page for a key phrase, you automatically optimise your web page for the parts of that key phrase. For example, your web page will automatically be optimised for "football kits", "football" and other keywords if you optimise your page for "Buy Cheap football kits"
Optimise one web page for one keyword and introduce and optimise as many webpage’s as necessary. More is defiantly better!
If many pages of your website have been optimised for many related keywords then your website will look relevant to the topic of your keywords (in the example: "football"). If search engines think that your website is relevant to a special topic then it will be easier to get high rankings for the individual keywords.
17/6/2009 7:55
Our very own Jon Smith (Co-Director of the SEO-Authority) has kindly agreed to offer a sneak preview into his new book which will go on public sale on the 1st July titled:
Dominate Your Market With Twitter:
Tweet your way to business success
To avoid infringements of publisher rights (Publisher: Infinite Ideas) we can give you exclusive quotes from the book that will give you some insight into Jons Twitter research and findings, but to get the full story, yes you guessed it, you will have to buy it.
This blog post isn't about plugging the book as much as possible (did I mention its available in all good book shops) it's simply extracting some of the key points relating to SEO Strategy.
We all know the importance of back links and authority ones at that, however Twitter isn’t great for providing such links but that doesn’t mean it cant help with your SEO efforts:
Jon states:
“A <nofollow> tag is an instruction to the search engines not to follow a link to its destination and to essentially ignore it. Twitter could be a great tool for generating thousands if not millions of links, because every time you post a web address in your Tweet this could be a valuable backlink to your website... in fact lots of people are including their URLs in their Tweets for that express reason – however, what they don’t realise is that Twitter is adding a <nofollow> tag to those links essentially nullifying them from an SEO perspective.” (JS)
He goes on to explain:
“Why? Well, if links within Tweets were taken into account by search engines, spammers would immediately try to take advantage of it and flood Twitter with useless links and spam. For that reason Twitter is adding the <nofollow> tag to ensure the party isn’t ruined by spammers and abuse of the system” (JS)
So should you even bother with Twitter links?
Very much so, regardless of the <nofollow> tag, the search engine web bots may not be able to follow them but humans certainly can. Additionally if you have something informative to Tweet to your Followers then include it, after all quality content as with websites will attract a natural flow of targeted traffic.
Jon does point out that:
“Although links posted within Tweets are not relevant for search engines… Don’t forget that you are able to add a link within your profile to your website – the web page you point to on your profile does not have a <nofollow> tag so it will indeed assist with your search engines rankings.” (JS)
Twitter Trends
Twitter is a great way to visualize trends and observe what are latest hot topics. SEO is very much related to keywords and Twitter is a great mechanism for tracking those keywords and in real-time conversations, so back links are not the be all and end all of SEO.
Jon writes:
“So, instead you can focus your attention on Twitter to see what is becoming interesting, which keywords users are using in order to create relevant articles or content. Therefore Twitter is a great way to both anticipate and to monitor interesting subjects, and to ensure that you are first to know what is already or is becoming important.” (JS)
Tip: Check out some of the TAG cloud tools such as Tweetscoop which present visual depictions of a sites content to help you quickly identify those trends.
Finally Jon talks about Twitter and SERP’s
“Twitter posts and accounts appear on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), especially if you have linked to them from other sites (like your blog or your website etc.)"
"Using Twitter regularly and including relevant keywords in your Tweets will increase your Twitter account visibility on search results, whether or not the search engine user is a Twitter user. This is a great way to drive that traffic to your website.” (JS)
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To find out more about this book and other publications from the Author Jon Smith please visit our Publications Page
