SEO for Google and the Caffeine Update

SEO is 'Search Engine Optimization', and I'm going to delve into the very bowels of this beast, in the hopes to better explain some new and important optimization techniques, used to conquer Google. Google for the time being, is the largest search engine, receiving the largest amount of search queries.

SEO link juice,

You may have heard of this term used before in either the forums or perhaps in another article, but do you really understand how it works? Well just in case lets take a moment to get a brief overview of the situation. SEO optimization can be done on site, or off site. Where link juice, SEO, or PR comes into play, is off site. SEO is directly affected by those incoming links. Each link passed to your site is a vote for your site on Google, the higher the page that made the votes PR is, the bigger consideration that vote is given.

Why would Google do such a thing?

Votes based on PR and inbound links prevent spammers from dominating Google with fly by night services, and help promote more active traffic. Well that is until they realized all they needed to do was throw a bunch of spammy comments all over the message boards of prominent sites on the Internet. That's where Caffeine comes in.

Current and past Google ranking metrics.

Googles first phase,
This is taken directly from the perpetual traffic report, which you will find in the resources section. I recommend anyone who has not read the report hurry up and do so while it's still available free. Google Caffeine is an update to Googles search algorithms. Google started out simply searching for keywords in a document, and the document on the Internet which was found to have the most matching keywords would be placed highest in search results.

Googles second phase,
Next there was an update and PR, Page Rank, or link juice, began to come into play. It was during this time black hatters began spamming mass message boards, in the interest of generating links back to their sites. Shortly after this Google decided to go back to content driven results, and the keyword spamming gained in prominence once more.

Googles third phase,
This left Google with one alternative, and that's where Caffeine really comes into play. The Google Caffeine update relies upon information from your website analytics to determine it's worth, quickly knocking pages which do not have traffic out of the search engines.

If 4 million people a day are seeing your site, but not clicking on it. Google takes that as a community vote against your site, and concludes it must be spam. Once this occurs you will slowly, but surely be knocked off the listings. Unless you can drive traffic to your site.

Furthermore, spammy tactics blackhatters once used will no longer be as effective, because using the analytics information Google receives from, themselves, their search engine, and third party sites, they can determine if you actually have traffic coming through your links or not. Without this traffic element, you will be sandboxed for link spam!

How does Caffeine work?

Google Caffeine queries your web page for content first and foremost, then takes into account page rank as a bonus factor. The third part of this cycle is that Google then monitors your web page once it has achieved its search position. Google uses this information to determine if people are clicking on it, and how long they might stay. People quickly returning to the search engine results page will lead to Google concluding your page is spam. The final factor is how much overall traffic your page is getting, in comparison to the inbound links Google sees.

What does this all mean for me?

If you want to make it into organic search engine results on Google today, you will need to get the word out about your site as soon as possible. No longer can you simply leave it up to some one else to do the work for you. In order to achieve high rankings in competitive search results you need all three of these, 'links', 'traffic', and 'content'.

Methods you can use to generate traffic and create popularity for your website, or "article".

Twitter,
One of the best methods available for both generating traffic and links is Twitter. Twitter lists will often be backed up on the Internet to a web page once this has been done they create links back to your site these links generate Page Rank as well as traffic.

Face Book,
Facebook links may not generate much in terms of Page Rank, but they will help you get some traffic into your website and build popularity.

Ad sense,
I know this is one of the worst, and potentially most expensive solutions. However, it does work, and the results will show right away, as Google wants to encourage you to use this service. Simply throw a few keywords out there generate a bit of traffic and call it good.

Purchased traffic,
Google frowns upon purchasing traffic, traffic exchanges and other options of this nature. However it can be an effective means to the end that you build up popularity in search results.

Methods you can use to create links.

Social bookmarking,
There are many sites which allow you to make publicly available bookmarks to any site you want. These sites are a great way to build some back links, but be careful because those that include voting mechanisms Google will monitor to determine your results. Google then takes this into consideration as to how popular your site really is.

Twitter,
I know I already went over this but I cannot stress enough just how much popularity and exposure you can get from Twitter. As mentioned earlier Twitter lists are often backed up to web pages which Google can then crawl to find back links to your site.

Commenting,
Be sure that the comments you leave are, 'in good taste', 'left on relevant pages', and 'are relevant to whatever is on that page'. This means you certainly don't want to go around using spammy blackhatter tactics, such as posting on every ones message board or comment section "Great site, love it you rock". Anything you post should add to the discussion on these websites, or it may be removed.

Finally content is king.

You may hear this phrase often on marketing web pages traffic exchanges and basically all over the Internet, and that is because it's the absolute truth about your marketing campaigns. Whether your marketing the article itself or the web page that article points to. Your content has to show it's worth, almost immediately to both your consumer, and the search engines.

In order to keep people on your site and promote growth, you need content that demands people to link to it. You need useful content that everyone wants to link back to. Content people will link in order to, 'help their customers', 'convey a story', or 'provide relative information'.

Once you have gotten your placement, you don't want to settle for page two or three. Less then 1% of all the search engine traffic goes passed page one. To help benefit your site, the people who come to it need to know there is great information there. They need to be hooked and come back.

This is one of the biggest reasons that creative writing doesn't do exceptionally well on the Internet, people come to the Internet searching for help, advice, technical documents, and purchases. They want that information fast, and Google is only doing what it needs to, to stay in the market as a top provider for that informative market.

Resources,

Perpetual Traffic Report,