Blogger Archive

What is Caffeine and why should I care?
As the seasons change from Spring to Summer, Google has also brought forth a change to its indexing process, implementing its “Caffeine” update.

On June 8th, Google implemented the Caffeine update across the web. According to the Official Google Blog, this update “provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.”

There are many articles, blog posts and resources out there discussing the Caffeine update, but we wanted to provide a distilled version of the update and how it will impact your web sites.

Overview of Caffeine
As Caffeine is an update to the indexing infrastructure, its intent was not to modify the Google’s ranking algorithm. In the past, the crawling and indexing system of Google worked as a batch process. A set of documents (content pages, videos, images, etc.) would be crawled and then those would be processed for information (content detail, anchor text and inbound link information, etc.) and then ultimately added into the index. This again was done on a batch basis, so it was not an immediate process. With Caffeine, every time a page is crawled, it goes through the entire process pretty much immediately, and the piece is added into the index. This allows content to be added into the Google index and ultimately the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) much more quickly than in the past.

In addition, the new infrastructure allows further data to be collected about each document. With more relevant data being collected about the characteristics of the document, there’s potential for the document to rank for additional long tail keywords. Basically, Google is setting their indexing system up so that it can eventually add in additional ranking factors into their algorithm as the web continues to evolve.

What does Caffeine mean?
Fresh, new content is getting added into the SERPs more quickly. This also implies that older content will have more pieces to compete with in the search results. So although this is not viewed as a ranking update, with additional fresh content competing with existing content, rankings may fluctuate.

What can we do?
To continue performing well in the search results, within the new parameters Caffeine is putting out there, consider creating new content on a regular basis, and getting (or remaining) active in the social realm as well. If Google is highlighting fresh content, frequently creating updates, new pages, images, videos and adding them into a blog, web site or social media presence would make sense in an effort to capitalize on Caffeine.

PlattForm’s SEO team is staying on top of the situation and will report additional insight and information as it becomes available. Stay tuned.

When you think of the game Bingo, you probably don’t envision a weekly activity at PlattForm. Well for today’s fun fact of PlattForm, we’ll discuss Buzzword Bingo.

The Interactive Department has been playing weekly games of Bingo for quite some time, nearly three years in fact. It’s not the regular game of Bingo that is played though, but an alternative version entitled Buzzword Bingo.

It is set up in a similar way, but instead of playing the typical B-I-N-G-O across the top and numbers running down from the letters, the winner of the previous week’s game gets to choose the topic and make the bingo cards. This is where Buzzword Bingo comes from. Instead of playing five squares in a row or four corners, the Bingo organizer will usually come up with a letter or shape to make that has some association with the selected topic. The winner of the game will get to select the next week’s bingo subject, get to choose a candy bar, and receive a certificate.

Recent Bingo topics include:
Over-rated…
Recently Submitted Words to Webster’s Dictionary
New University of Illinois Mascots
Things I do to get my Man Card Taken Away

Visit this buzzword bingo site to build your own custom bingo game.

So the next time you are in the Interactive Department on a Thursday afternoon, if you are lucky, you may be able to join in a rousing game of Buzzword Bingo.

Additional Interesting Facts about Buzzword Bingo
Beth Neely won the first time she ever played
Keith Spisak has won 7 times
Justin McGinnis has won 6 times
Lee White has won 5 times
Erik Dahlstrom holds the record for most consecutive losses and most games played without a win – 74.

Why is linkbuilding such an integral part of any SEO campaign?

Many of the search engines use a link-based algorithm to determine search engine results. It is inherent then, that search engine performance hinges on the quantity and quality of inbound backlinks.

According to Google’s Webmaster Help Central web site, “Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.” Essentially, an inbound link counts as a vote for that web site. The more votes that you have from similar web sites (relevant sites) the better rankings you should theoretically have.

So we all now know that linkbuilding helps with search engine performance.

Are sales affected by the power of an inbound link?

According to an article found on Search Engine Land the search engines and search engine marketers are not the only ones who benefit from linkbuilding.

It is possible that sales, or to take it one step further, conversions in general, may benefit from inbound links as well. Not only can traffic increase based upon the value of the inbound link, but that highly targeted traffic may convert better.

Therein lies the answer to the original question about linkbuilding. Inbound links can affect a web site’s search engine performance and conversions if the inbound links are from targeted, relevant web sites.

How else could you use linkbuilding as an SEO tool to benefit not just your web site, but your entire online presence?

With Universal Search Google is attempting to serve up the most relevant result that is possible for any given search phrase. With the increased amount of information that will be appearing in the search engine results, having exposure in every possible medium just makes sense. Video optimization was discussed last week; this week we will discuss Google Maps.

Have you seen Google Maps listings appear in the listings on the search engine results pages? Well if you haven’t already, you will soon with the full launch of Google’s Universal Search in November. Sometimes you may see the Google Map link under a listing, while other times you may actually see the Google Map populate the search engine result page.

Let’s take a closer look at an example of each circumstance.

Google Map Link
If a web site has a Google Map listing associated with it, there will be a link to the map. If you click the plus-sign or link that appears below the web site description, it will expand and actually show the map with the location pin-pointed for you within the search engine results page. For example, in the below image, you can see that the map is showing the campus location of Bryan College in Springfield, Missouri. Similarly you can see the listing below Bryan College has a Google Map associated with it but it has not been expanded. To experience this yourself, type Bryan College in the Google search box. The third result should be for http://www.bryancollege.com. Just below the description and above the URL, you will see a plus-sign and “Map of 237 S Florence Ave, Springfield, MO 65806.” Clicking that will expand the map image.

Google Map Listing
If the search query is specific enough to include a location, a Google Map listing may populate the search results itself. For example, typing bryan college springfield, mo into the Google search box will bring up the below image. Accompanying the map is information about the listing: web site, physical address and telephone number. The very next result happens to be for Bryan College as well, and sure enough, the Google Map listing link appears under the web site description as was stated previously.

Getting Listed with Google Maps
If a web site has a physical location associated with it, and a Google Maps listing is not in place, it’s time to get one set up. The process is pretty simple and includes filling out information about the web site and submitting it to Google. Google will then verify that the address and information is correct by either sending a post card or making an automated phone call to the actual location. A verification number will then be provided. After the listing is verified, it will take 4-6 weeks before the listing becomes live on Google Maps.

It may seem like quite the process, but it is worth it. With the coming of Universal Search, showing up as much as possible in the search results is crucial to the continued success of any web site.

Stay tuned for more information about Universal Search next week.

Search engine optimization does not just include the on-site and off-site optimization strategies that may be implemented on a given web site. The structure of the code and how it is organized is also a very important piece of the SEO puzzle.

Jonathon Hochman, of SearchEngineWatch, recently spoke with Dan Crow, the product manager for Google’s Crawl Infrastucture group about clean code and how it affects the indexing of web pages.

There are only so many pages that Google can index because of bandwidth and electrical constraints, and they attempt to spread the indexing love evenly. For example, Google isn’t going to index Web sites A-G and then ignore H-Z. They must allocate their resources so that they are dispersed evenly and reasonably.

It takes more time for a search engine spider to crawl a page with excess code. If every site had very clean, concise code, the spiders could index pages faster. This clean code structure would include the externalization of JavaScript and CSS. If all sites had succinct code, the search engines would be able to index more pages.

So what exactly does this mean for us?

This proves that every piece of the web site is important for SEO and should be addressed in the strategy that is implemented accordingly. This also shows that it is easier for the search engine spiders to index pages that have clean code.