Google Caffeine?

On the role of real-time search results in the search engine industry, Google has long realized that it falls short in terms of real-time search and has been busy! In recent months Google was working on a secret project: a complete renovation of the architecture in Google’s web search.

If you want to watch the videos:

…. and

Google Caffeine: Under the Cover

Google spokesperson Matt Cutts explains that Google Caffeine changes “under the cover” event. On Google’s user interface will change nothing. Caffeine Google’s search results are largely similar. The big difference is that new content much faster will appear in the top 10 Google Caffeine. This will ultimately lead to faster, more accurate and complete information in Google’s search results.

Real-time search

“Google is certainly faster Caffeine. New content will be indexed twice as fast. Google is rolling out some new adjustments to their sandbox. Performance, speed, reliability, accuracy, Relevancy and other parameters are some features that are being improved.

Here are some questions and answers, discussed on Matt Cutts Blog:

Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?

A: If you search on URL you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.

Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?

A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.

Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?

A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.

Q: How do I give Google feedback?

A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.

Conclusion #1

Business owners need to heavily promote & manage social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,Linkedin, and others. It also means photo sharing sites such as Picasa Web Albums & Flicker are important. It also means means blogs & local search sites such as yelp and citysearch are important….

Bottom Line folks Social Media is here to stay and your business needs to be in front of people looking for you…..

Conclusion #2

Business owners need Quality Content. Why? When you are signed into your Google account (many business owners are always signed in) Google is showing results from Social Circles in the result! How crazy is that. That means if we get all of our clients to follow us on Twitter, or all interested business owners to connect with us on Linkedin, or people follow us on YouTube.com.

THIS MEANS WHEN WE PUBLISH NEW CONTENT THEY SEE THAT CONTENT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS.

What a great way to target your target market. Google is practically telling everyone with this new addition that CONTENT is the new LINK VALUE online!

It may or may not surprise you that more searches for businesses occur online than through the Yellow Pages. Many businesses have already abandoned the Yellow Pages for being expensive and not yielding results. There are increasing numbers of people who say, If you’re not on the Internet, I’m not interested. Look for this to continue to increase at an exponential rate.

Marketing yourself is a public service. This means letting people know how you can be of service to them. Your Internet presence allows people looking for someone to help them solve whatever problem they are in. If you have no internet presence, many people will not find you and determine if you may be of service to them. Marketing is making your presence known. It is NOT a hard sell, trying to ram anything down anyone’s throat. Advertising is presenting yourself mostly to people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. This is why most print advertising does not yield clients. Internet advertising is presenting yourself at a time when your prospect is searching for what it is you have.

Google your name and business zip code. Do you find yourself on the first page of the results? You may already be listed in sites of which you are unaware. Next, Google your specialties (one at a time) and your business zip code. If you have a number of listings, especially for your specialties, Congratulations. Even if you already have a steady stream of referrals, an Internet presence will only strengthen your position.

An Internet presence can be started (or expanded) for a lot less than you think. Getting yourself on free and paid listing sites. Generally, start with the free listing. One client found their free getfaves.com listing showing on the first page of Google search within one week. Begin with seeing if your professional organization has listings. These are often free.

Find the listing sites for Google business. This will also get you listed on Google maps, which show at the top of Google searches. Also do this for Yahoo and Bing business. Find other business listing sites by Googling free business listing sites, etc.

Create a website

A website is probably the single most important thing that you can do to expand your marketing efforts. It will greatly increase your presence and legitimacy beyond having your profile listed in different places. One can quickly create a simple site. You will want to present information that will speak to those clients you would most like to see. This will attract your Ideal client much more than if you describe yourself as a caring person who provides a safe place, etc. Conventional wisdom is that your content is 80% about the client and 20% about yourself.

Don’t wait until you have a perfect site planned. Better to get a functional site up, asap. Websites are dynamic entities. You will want to refine, probably add, and sometimes delete what you began with. How you write gives others a sense of who and what you are. Be sure to include a head shot photo of yourself with a big smile.

Begin with your DSL provider and see what they offer. Google free websites. Look for templates that you like, flexibility, expandability, etc. Many of the free sites will also let you expand your site, more, for a monthly fee. Most options will cost between $5 and $10 a month.

Create a blog

Some will start a blog, rather than a website. Generally, a website is more versatile and should be your first priority. A blog will probably serve you best, the more specific it is, i.e., focuses on a niche, etc. Two popular sites to start a blog are blogspot.com and wordpress.com. If you do a blog, aim to write at least twice a month.

Social media

The use of social media is exploding and will continue to grow. It is a way of connecting with friends and colleagues, as well as others finding us. Businesses are increasingly finding ways to market via social media.

One of the most popular websites is YouTube.com. While it is primarily used for entertainment, more and more it is used for education and marketing. An example is the video on our main page, Social Media for your Business. These videos can also be put on your website(s), as we did. Video has largely been underutilized by businesses.

Facebook.com has become another of the most popular websites. Some use it to keep in touch with friends and others use it for marketing. Use it for on or the other. If you want to use it for both purposes, use a personal email account for a Profile and a business email for a business Page.

Biznik.com is a business site, primarily for entrepreneurs. It is a way to network, especially with other businesses.

Twitter.com is a source that you can announce publishing a paper, changes to your website, good books and articles, workshops that you might offer, etc. Many offer free things like recordings, articles, etc. It is another way to network with other professionals. It’s popularity is exploding.

Like most things, the more you invest in being involved with social media, the more you will benefit. If you are active, you can minimally expect some increase in website/blog traffic. This may or may not equate to client referrals.

Writing articles

Another way to develop a presence is to write self-help and other articles. A very popular site to submit articles is ezinearticles.com. You can also submit to some of the listing and social media sites. When you write, distribute your writings in as many ways as you can. Post them on your website and blog. Have copies in your office waiting room. Fax copies, as is relevant with other fax communications.

Outside of the content, writings give others at least a glimpse of yourself. This is an opportunity to get to know, like, and trust you. The more that happens, the more people will come to you to help them achieve solutions.

Put your website address and contact information on everything

Make sure your address is on your business cards, stationary, fax sheets, etc. Just the fact that you have a website adds to your credibility, regardless if the receiver has the interest in checking it out. Create a signature file at the bottom of your email accounts. Minimally, include your web address, blog, etc. under your name, business address, business phone. Consider putting other information there, such as free offers, signing up for your news letter, etc. If you are going to start a group, give a talk, etc., consider including that information, while it is relevant, i.e., remove that information after it occurred.

In conclusion, you can’t do all of these things in a single day. However, you can complete Some of these things Today. Keep reasonable expectations. When you do these things, it isn’t likely that you will have 10 people call you in the first week. You will find that new clients will increasingly say, I found you on the Internet. Marketing is a dynamic process. Generally, our efforts are cumulative.

This is not the end of marketing. You will probably want to expand into other low cost strategies, including purchasing a domain name for your website, using one or several paid listing services, etc. Continue to educate yourself about marketing and new avenues. Good luck and good marketing.

Bulbwired.com does all this and more as a done for you package, come and register for one out our information packed Webinars to see how we can help your business.

Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part.  We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week.  The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!

Recently a major hole has been seen in Google’s technology, social media sites like Digg, Reddit and Twitter have seemed to patch; real time search.  The design of Google’s index isn’t designed for immediate delivery of information when news breaks.  The following article was an eye opener, from SEOmoz about the course of action on the web on one of the largest stories of the year:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-bad-day-for-search-engines-how-news-of-michael-jacksons-death-traveled-across-the-web

Google didn’t index this for a whole 3 hrs and 17 minutes; this being after it was widely available to the web through social media.  The effect was so dramatic that Google actually considered it to be spam upon first analysis.

The problem currently for Google is; it basically operates with 2 types of content it needs to display.

1.  The slow web

The slow web is what populates most of what we see in Google and filters in information somewhat slowly.  Most cases it is estimated that this index is refreshed at a slower rate and new content is added or subtracted based on the basis of importance and originality usually as assessed by incoming links.  Don’t expect this to fulfill the needs of real time search addicts and the “instant gratification” seekers.

2.  The fast web

The fast web is more for things like blog search and is designed to handle much faster display of information and populates new information very rapidly.  Look at your own search, try “Internet Marketing” and you can see how Google displays more recent information placed in its index.

Notice links coming up here from sites anywhere from 24 minutes to 1 day ago when selecting “recent results” in the search engine.  Note that this is significantly different than the “regular results” for the term “Internet Marketing”.

So what does this mean for you and why do I now care about social media?

What this incident shows is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Reddit are not going anywhere but rather search engines will have to find methods to either replicate this type of service OR cater to them.  In situations like this how will Google model this information and become the landing page for all things search.  Will Twitter content be in Google?  Will Digg stories populate Google News? Will Google crawl sites like Digg to find the hot content and then list that?

If controlling the Web for your brand or niche is important then you need stay ahead of the curve with things like social media.  If you are the first in sites like Twitter for your niche you already have an advantage. You want to succeed in Twitter or sites like it you need to be in there and conversing with others.  Build your network and others will follow you.

Google will no doubt evolve and evolve quickly, maybe it’ their Wave product, we’ll see! These “recent results” can handle suffice for the time being, however, a modification in usability needs to be considered to highlight “the fast web” results if Google wants to compete with sites like Twitter to provide this “instant gratification” need.

Google is not flawed as, Google is safe by design.  Twitter is somewhat reckless with information that is not screened. If Google is using sites like this to find information you, as an Internet Marketer need to be there.  Just like Digg I can imagine that Google will use Twitter popular terms to find directions to populate their results.

We live, we learn, we evolve. Stay ahead of the curve.  Immediate Gratification will rule!

Posted by: David Scoville, June 25, 2009 in SEO.com

It’s great to have so many wonderful tools to build sturdy marketing campaigns and evaluate the results, but they should never detract our attention on our end-user, the customer. Here is a bit of advice that was common knowledge before the internet, but is often forgotten now: Know your target market.

It sounds like obvious advice, but many online marketers fail to grasp this principle. They’re too often consumed with mass amounts of data produced from keyword generators and analytics. Business owners often fail in getting down to the level of their customers. I’m talking about asking questions of your target market. (Selecting your target market is a huge task in itself. I’ll cover that in a later post).
A great place to learn about your target market is in your own immediate and extended family. Is any member of your family in your target market? Below is an interesting and fun test that you can do to improve your SEO and capture the interest in your target market. In effect it is a way to create a simple focus group from your family. Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide introduced the Mom Test to improve conversion and usability for website users. For help in explanation, I’ll pretend we’re running a website, selling shoes to women in the baby boomer generation. One obvious market audience member in my family would be mom. For this specific example, I’m naming my test after mom as well.

My “MOM” Search Test

First, I would sit Mom down at the computer and invite her to look for some shoes that she’d like to buy. Here is the key to the test: be quiet and watch closely to see what she does:

• What search engine does she use?
• What keywords does she use to search?
• How does she navigate the SERP (Search engine result page)? Does she simply choose the #1 result?
• How quickly does she bounce back to the SERP?
• What other searches does she perform?
• Does she click on any of the paid-search ads?
• I’d then ask her to check out her favorite social site for a few minutes (yes, mom does have a Facebook account). Does she click on any of the ads there? What groups is she apart of?

Of course, because this is only one person, you can’t generalize your entire marketing strategy from this test alone. However, the point of this test is to help you find some interesting information that you never realized about your target market. It may spark some ideas that you would want to further research. It can even confirm that you are on the right path.

For this example test, I’d personally, find a few more moms and repeat the test if possible. I’d then go to my keyword tools and analytics reports to make better SEO predictions.

So next time you start keyword research, first try a test like this. You will receive insights that will make your keyword research and other SEO efforts much more valuable and knowledge-based.

A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improving their performance. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so that it can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEO campaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or first results page of search engines.

Internet search engines, such as Google, maintain a very large database of Web pages and available files. To do this, they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. This software automatically and continuously surfs and hunts content in the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved and indexed according to text content, giving more weight to titles and paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the web from page to page, to index the relevant content of the Internet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers, some programs are able to identify default tags and keep a library of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.

When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which is automatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scans the saved index and creates a list of web pages that is most appropriate to what the user is searching for.

SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis, smart code, good content literature, link popularity study and website organization to place the subject web page as high as possible in the list of search results in search engines. Web pages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to get the most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings for web businesses and pages with sponsor links.

Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pages according to the number of Internet sites linked to them. Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links. Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators or agents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the main source of income of search engines. “Organic” search results are the lists of actual results from the engines index and are directly related to the keyword typed in the request.
One of the more effective techniques of SEO is the creation of a well-organized site map in a website. Since the site’s main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.

Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shown as tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.

A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.

Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.

In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.

There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.

Link Popularity is one of key area to increase your site page ranking and search ranking. Incoming links are just like votes in election for your website however there is point as we have to emphases on quality links rather quantity. Valuable links are like 100 of poor links equals to 1 quality link. In this article, I would like to explain how differentiate quality links and how to get them which will effect and improve and strengthen your website ranking.

Mistakes in Link Building
It is never too late to focus on the right direction to get qualified incoming links. Here is few mistakes those may follow by SEOs, Link Builder or website owner and webmasters.

1- Focus on Quantity than Quality: It is the quality of incoming links that will bring your website at 1st page so always you should look for qualified incoming links rather quantity.
2- Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links: Link exchange or reciprocal links should be avoided.
3- Ignorance of Check and Balance for Links: If you don’t check and balance your listings periodically, you may lose your hard gain incoming links
4- Purchase Bulk Links: Search engines become very intelligent these days, you can’t make them fool by purchasing bulk links, because search engine check your incoming links frequency as well with time
5- Paid Links: Paid links can be very healthy but if they are used as a part of the strategy, if you have no idea of how many paid links you are going to have, that can upset your link building campaign.

Do You Have Categorized and Simplified Database?
In link building campaign, your database is your key to success; it is the backbone of your overall link building strategy. If you have a poor database, which is not categorized and simplified, you can’t be comfortable from your link building strategy.

Try to have categorized and simplified database, make a master database with following mentioned fields.

Important Fields for Master Database for any Link Building Campaign
1. URL
2. Direct Link (Direct Link of Submission or Registration)
3. Industry Type (Show Biz, Construction, Telecommunication…)
4. Link Type (One Way, Reciprocal, Paid)
5. Link Style (Anchor link, Title Hyper Link, URL Link, Vote Link)
6. Link Period (1 Year or Life time)
7. PageRank (1, 2, 3…10)
8. Title Limit (Characters Limit)
9. Description Limit (Characters Limit)
10. Keywords Limit (Characters Limit)

Insertion & Update Your Master Database!
Your master database (structure) is ready, now You need to make it valuable by inserting data to it, it requires an on-going updates. Don’t let anything go away as it can be used for your current asa for new projects

Does anyone else find it  surprising that so many site owners are reluctant to provide outgoing links on their website. Somehow they have come to believe that providing relevant outgoing links from their site can be harmful to their results in the search engines.

When you send your visitors to a relevant resource, this is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.

Relevant sites does NOT mean competitive sites.

Definitions of Relevant on the Web:

Having a bearing on or connection with the subject at issue; “the scientist corresponds with colleagues in order to learn about matters relevant to her own research” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Evidence or information that has enough value to prove something significant to a case.http://www.attorneykennugent.com/library/r.html

If you write an article and would like to provide evidence of what you are saying, you should provide your resources within the article. Those MUST be credible resources. For example, if I write an article about website credibility, the site I point to in order to back up what I am saying must be an EXPERT on the topic, such as the Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility. This method (used properly) gives your pages MORE value, not less. It also adds to the relevance of your page to the topic.

Incoming and outgoing links are not just about making pages filled with links. It is something that can be blended into your website in multiple ways, as it pertains to the specific page.

Think about the common interests of your target visitors and you will have no trouble deciding if a link is relevant to your site.

J Walker from GNC Web Creations
http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/

Wolfram Alpha is a search service being released this month that some feel is a Google killer. The jury is still out, however,it does hint at the possible future direction of search services. Wolfram Alpha hasn’t been launched as of yet. The major difference between Wolfram Alpha and existing search services is that it answers questions, as opposed to returning a list of pages.

Last weekend, Wolfram Alpha, unveiled a new “computational knowledge engine” based on the work of Stephen Wolfram. Some have dubbed Alpha a “Google killer,” but, in reality, it is very different from the standard search engines that we are all familiar with today.

Here is a public demo Wolfram gave earlier this week.