Google Caffeine

Caffeine doesn’t bring huge changes to the algorithm, though it will index pages faster and treat spam more severely.

Unfortunately, the exact release date wasn’t disclosed and neither the datacenter it will go live on, though it shouldn’t be too hard to figure it out. Stay put and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out !

In the future there are many chances Google will use this voting system in it’s algorithm to rank websites, but it surely won’t base on this too much, because it’s much easier to game than using older techniques.

We shall see in the future what they have in mind, it might be a totally mess and take it out, but nothing’s sure.

Here’s a snapshot:

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I talked a lot about this today with a lot of people and we didn’t manage to get to a conclusion, because if the SERP remains like this, Google’s relevancy ends today. There are many querys where all quality websites went down and new, spam, and irrelevant websites took their place.

Considering the conditions and ways Google updated it’s SERPs today, I will have to call this the “Google Shaker”, because it seems like Google introduced the SERP in a shaker and shaked it.

“Google Shaker” seems to happen much more in local searches more than on Google.com. Until now I have seen many people complaining that Google.ro, Google.ru, and Google.co.uk is totally screwed up.

I thought all day at this and researched especially on Google.ro, being the country I live in and it might be a mistake, a Halloween joke or a test, because the SERPs definitely can’t remain this way. Other way, Google’s relevancy is gone, at least in those countries and a lot of CEOs will run mad, along with us, the SEOs, because our clients will be more than angry.

I would love to get your feedback on this and maybe we can find an explanation and a solution. Did Google really changed the algorithm in such a drastic way ?

Yet he stated clearly that URLs ended in .exe or .0 were not indexed at all until a few days ago. Now it seems Google does index them but we can’t be sure it gives them full trust and doesn’t penalize them.

SEOmoz has faced this problem with their Web 2.0 Awards, that had the url “http://www.seomoz.org/web.2.0″, which finished in .0 .

So take care how you format your URL to be search engine friendly and don’t get penalized.

Have you ever faced an issue with an improper formatted URL not to be indexed by Google ?

Now it shows how much a keyword is searched, in comparison to the average searches since 2004 until the time you perform the query. For example if today the keyword ‘iPhone’ has been searched two times more than the average times it was searched daily from 2004, Google Trends will show ’2′.

Along with this, now you also have the possibility to download the trends as a CSV file. All you need is to be logged into your Google account.

via Google Blog

I will try to point the advantages and disadvantages of both traffic sources, so we figure what’s the best option. Of course all traffic is good, more or less, but let’s see what should we concentrate more on.

1. Quantity

• Social media traffic is much more easier to get and stumble can bring thousands of visitors from only a few votes on one page. Also a Digg front page is not so hard to reach, if you write quality content and it can bring tens of thousands of visitors. You only need to build strong profiles on social networks and the traffic will come, if you respect the quality guidelines.
• Search engine traffic is usually less favorable to be compared with social media, because you need to have a very well optimized website, with many quality inbound links. The content also must be good, as in social media’s case, but you also need to write it seo-friendly. Also the website needs to be old and established, with many pages and the inbound links need to come on a constant basis.
• Conclusion: Social media can bring more, easy traffic than search engines.

2. Quality

• The visitor that comes from social media usually doesn’t know what he will find on your page, especially on StumbleUpon, so the conversion is really low, because he might not like your page and close it. Also social media users are looking for news, entertainment and don’t intend to buy anything, so it’s hard to convert them into clients. All stats show that the CTR generated from social media is much lower than search engines.
• Search engine visitors are very targeted and the chance to find on your website what they are looking for is higher. The chance for those visitors to buy your product or click your ads is much higher, so monetization chances and possibilities are better.
• Conclusion: Social media doesn’t offer quality traffic and isn’t relevant, search engine traffic is better.

3. Monetization

• There aren’t many ways you can monetize social media traffic as well as search engine traffic. Due to the quantity, the better option is to use CPM ads, that pay for every impression and not for click, sale or lead.
• Search engine traffic can be monetized in a lot of ways. If you have a website targeted on products, like a review blog, you can easily place affiliate ads and get a sale commission. Also chances for the user to click on the CPC ads are much higher.
• Conclusion: social media traffic has more limited monetization options, only working good with CPM ads, while search engine traffic being better on CPC and CPA ads, that pay more.

So search engines bring visitors really interested in your website, while social networks bring visitors that will read a bit and then leave. But you have to use social media, because all traffic can be monetized in one way or another and you have to waste nothing. One more advantage of social media is you get your website noticed and this can bring readers and a lot of inbound links, that will help search engine traffic.

Name or nickname

This is a very important part, but is rarely met, because you need to be a celebrity, at least in your niche or industry to use your anme for branding. If people knows you, then using a title like some website by your name would help a lot, but if noone has heard of you, it would be useless. If people have heard of you, there is highly recommended to tell them who the website’s webmaster ( you ) is, so they visit it and maybe even subscribe.

You can also use your nickname, but it’s the same case as with the name.

Design and logo

A website that looks bad or like many others won’t attract the reader. But a unique one, with good-looking design and less ads will surely make him to visit it again or subscribe. Of course, if he finds things of his interests and the content is well written.

The design must be unique, easy to navigate, preferably web 2.0 style and compatible with all browsers. A brand can be created with a unique, good looking, reliable and high quality offering website. If you can offer this, then your job is easier now.

Promotion

The promotion is part of the branding, is how you choose to be branded. This depends on the way it is done ( banners, text links ) and the text or banners you use. Depending on this, the logo and website design, you can help people to easily remember you and visit you again. And with promotion, people could even visit you 2-3 days later after they see the ads, if you offer them something to help them remember your link or website name. This can vary from something funny to a generic domain, you should improvize, depending on your website.

Waiting for your comments on this

To be continued…

Choosing a good hosting plan

The hosting you use is important for your website, because you need it to have a very high uptime, close to 100% and to load quickly. There are lots of hosting providers, but some do overselling, which could create problems, other have high pricing and some, usually lower priced, lack quality.

Also, you should pick a hosting with many features and especially the ones you need and you think you may later need. The most important and mostly used are cPanel, Fantastico, PHP, MySQL, CGI, Perl and .htaccess editing permissions.

Personally, i use more web hosts for variety and because i want to see which one is better, but also, i don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. Until now, the best one that i have used is Hostgator, offering enough disk space and bandwidth, a lot of features and great uptime.

The domain name

The domain name is a part of your website branding and you have to choose wisely and search a lot, as nowadays there are only a few good domains left to register. If you have an online shop that sells pink ladies sandals you shouldn’t get pinkladiessandalsshop.com, but something brandable and shorter, like pinkdals.com ( this is only an example that came into my mind on the moment ).

You should never get a TLD ( top level domain or extension ) other than .com or your country’s ccTLD, at least not from the beginning or if not buing it along with the .com or ccTLD, if you are sure you may be successful from the beginning.

The domain is very important, as many users may visit somedomain.net or somedomain.org and when trying to visit it again will go to somedomain.com, as this is the usual one and this way you may lose valuable visitors.

When buying the domain name you have to be careful where from do you buy and choose a reliable registrar, like Godaddy. I have had a lot of trouble with cheaper registrars, that lost acreditation. Registerfly is the best example.

Building your website or blog

This part requires imagination and research. You have to think about building a website or blog that will work, will be visited and liked by people, so they subscribe and return to it. Or you can build it on some niche that you like and it is a pleasure for you to do it, this will help you a lot.

If you want to find a good niche, with less competitors, you have to do some keyword research, hire someone to do it or use some tools. After finding a niche to rely on and some keywords to start optimizing your website on, you need to start building it. You have to choose between a CMS, for a preinstalled website with a complete administration system, a blogging software ( i recommend WordPress ) or to create it yourself, depending on what you want to do.

Optimizing your website

I will go through two ways of optimization, the visual one, that the usual visitor will see and the search engine one, that will place you better in search engines results.

The first one contains in choosing a good-looking theme, building one or buying. The method doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that it must attract the visitor and convince him to return ( but this depends on content, too ). If you choose to get a custom design, it’s better, because you will be unique at this part and different from the others.

Then, you have to wisely structure your website, for easy navigation and easy-to-reach-and-read content. The website must not contain many ads that will stop the user from reading the content or navigating and must have readable content, with usual fonts and big sized.

A logo would be great for your website, to make it more unique and create a brand, but we will get to that part later.

You definitely need unique content, written by you or a reliable content writer, both for search engines and the usual readers. You need to use CSS and have a code as clean as possible, for faster loading, browser compatibility and to be search engine friendly.

Use headers for the title of your articles, a relevant title for every page, not the same for all. Don’t put many external links on it and take care who you link too, because linking to spam or blackhat websites will lower your search engine rankings.

Try to get as many links from other websites to you, mostly from relevant ones.

More in a future lesson. I’m waiting for your comments on this.

Yahoo has released a good PPC, that, at some points, seems to be even better than Google’s Adsense and Microsoft could surely use it, along with their search engine to improve theirs.

But it is hardly believable that Microsoft will completely buy Yahoo, it is much more believable that it will buy a big part of their stocks. Still, it will gain a big part of the search engine industry, thought, not enough to defeat Google.

I would personally prefer Microsoft not buy Yahoo, as there it will be a duopol. Microsoft should better employ qualified people, capable to improve their softwares, so it can compete with the others, as it has reputation and only needs quality.

We shall see what happens.

Here are screenshots that prove the fact:

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