#1. SEO will change in 2010

Old blogs seldom updated and seldom kept up will suffer and cry mercy to blogs that are updated every day – even if only updated by lesser knowledgeable people. This seems to be the iPhone Generation’s thirst for information at rapid speed. It’s unfortunate though because it does seem that older, quality information will be sacrificed at the face of “Real Time Search”.

#2. Cloud computing will really take off

Google’s new algorithm has been reported by several people to be dramatically impacted by speed. Which is one reason they’re putting out all kinds of tools to help webmasters speed up their sites. Now, no matter what you do, on a shared host your going to have slowdowns. Not having a nearby server in your area, is going to cause slowdowns… The only answer for total speed, is… The cloud.

#3.  Frequently updating old content matters more

According to a report by Mashable (known more for their social media news than their SEO news), even those slight updates like an old article with no change other than updating the death toll number on an earthquake report can quickly shoot up higher than other articles.

#4. Opt-in list matters more now than ever

As social media climaxes in 2010 being the ultimate interruption to workforces and to personal lives, email remains our old dear friend. A way to stay in touch with those with less computer skills, internet savvy skills and online Bravado. It’s also an excellent marketing tool and unshaken by Google movements and algo updates and unmoved by PPC costs.. The ultimate in online insurance. According to Pew Internet, email remains the top activity online to this day.

#5. Viral marketing campaigns

You’d better still be creating purple cows in 2010… But you should avoid the mistakes you made with the purple cows in 2009… Like not making it DEADLY easy to pass your purple cows along to friends via Facebook, Twitter and Email a friend buttons on your pages/site. Like telling the right people in the industry with popular sites, twitter accounts and facebook fan pages ABOUT your purple cow with the right language…

I could predict more – but lets leave it there for now – very interesting…

If you don’t understand something that I’ve written but desperately need assistance in some area, drop me a line. dano@answerswanted.com – I might not be available over the holidays tho.

Problogger launched a recent note on their blog combined with feedback from Twitter Users, that truly was worth repeating in every sense of the word.

It instantly made me realize what I was missing and challenged with… and what causes my day to go poorly. Yes, I’m a stats junkie and these numbers and challenges are reflected by that… So without hopefully too much frustration from Problogger, here’s the piece of his post that I’m going to re-print with the idea of “For internet marketers” instead of just “for bloggers..”

• Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
• Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
• Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
• Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
• Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
• Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
• Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
• Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
• Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
• Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
• Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
• Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
• Stop Reading Blog Tips and Start Blogging – 3 minutes an hour

His concept was how to gain 37 minutes an hour… but if anyone’s like me this is like 4 hours back from the average day… Well maybe 2 hours but still, very true and very useful!

Daniel J Deyette

For those who haven’t been paying attention or just simply can’t keep up with SEO and Google… This page should be considered one of the most comprehensive overview’s of WHAT Google Caffeine really is and what you NEED to know about it, and what you can stop worrying about if you’re thinking this is going to change all that much.

Google Caffeine Timeline – Leading up to Launch

August 10th 2009 Google invites webmaster community to see Caffiene Sandbox
August 11th 2009 Adds country & language specific feedback to Sandbox
August 12th 2009 Register describes GFS – Google file system behind Caffiene
August 14th 2009 Matt Cutts reveals the reason for Caffeine and some detail
August 26th 2009 Google goes decaf – shuts down sandbox for for upgrades
Sept 12th 2009 Rumors float around twitter of Caffine, but there isn’t any yet.
Sept 18th 2009 ReadWriteWeb says – Caffeine ranks the same 80% of the time.
November 10th 2009 Caffeine Sandbox closed from feedback completely.
November 10th 2009 Matt Cutts announces Caffeine roll out after the holidays
November 27th 2009 Caffeine Live on one data center – others sched for after holidays

That sums up where we’re at today, and – if you had time to read every article, you’d basically get the gist of why it’s called caffeine and what they’re planning to do — but i’ll spare you the reading.

Google Caffeine Overview:

• What does Caffeine do? Keep you alert!
  Google’s plan is to index search at a more real-time pace. I used to tell clients 4-6 weeks before rankings would really start to develop and that may have to change much sooner. Real time results isn’t just about Twitter either, it’s about blogs now beginning to have a bit more authority than they used to have.
• What was holding them back before?
  The file system was under a heavy load, the spidering was slower and the index held less information. Hence the invention of Google’s new file system GFS2 (Google File System 2)
• What’s New in Caffeine?
  Bigger Index – Google now holds more data than in the past.
  Faster Indexing – Google now gets current events quicker than ever before.
  Ranking Update? – Slightly higher authority of sites that are being updated more often than others. Blogs get more authority, but also get held more accountable for their approved comments & spam links.. Both posted on other sites and on your own site.  Other than that 90% of rankings stay exactly the same according to Summit Media’s Report after checking over 9,000 search keywords.

What should you be doing BEFORE the holidays are over to ensure a smooth transition and continued business into the new year? Quite simple… Here’s a easy to follow checklist to help you be prepared for the Caffeine update.

• Check all comments on your blogs & websites for any approved content linking to spam websites.
• Ensure your plan in 2010 is to update content more regularly & quickly even minor edits will help.
• Look out for a potential slap if you’ve gotten text content links from other blogs that were nothing to do with your community or niche market.
• If you haven’t already, sign up for Twitter and try and get into Google News and constantly update your material.

If any of your SEO friends tell you that the big ranking change in the New Year is a response to BING’s real-time search? Tell them straight up that you know for a fact GFS2.0 file system and the next generation larger index and faster indexing has been on the horizon since before Bing’s launch.

If any of your SEO friends tell you that Matt Cutt’s warning ” …but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays.” as some kind of signal that this update is HUGE and will change EVERYONE’s rankings, they’re sadly mistaken. Fact is that Google wouldn’t be creating any friends by announcing a new algorithm during the Christmas retail season and Google does serve BOTH users and webmasters whether you choose to see it that way or not. Plus, not launching Caffeine durring the holidays is probably only 50% “doing it for the webmasters” and more like 50% because of Google’s yearly winter code freeze that happens every year anyway.. Which is why we saw so many new features launch in the last few weeks.

I hardly had the time to write this detailed post, for those who know me. But – I’m hoping to take the stress off everyone and educate those who wanna know more about this impending update.

Post your comments! I invite all conversation to this blog

Daniel J Deyette

You know, often I think we SEO folks get so tied up on links that we forget the fundamental concept behind good link building and simple rankings…

If your goal is to build an authority in your niche market, simply imagine what the top sites in your industry would look like from the outside looking in…

Imagine if you had the very best XYZ Industry Site… Who would link to it? Why? What other sites within your community would link to it?

I’m beginning to see that you can get hordes of traffic to sites as your building them up and designing simply by getting the right sites within the niche to link to you… I noticed with a few sites I’ve built up from scratch recently that what really drove their success was not the sheer volume of links, but the quality. I mean.. Yes everyone sings that song… But I mean more specifically… RELATED and TARGETTED sites… and it’s so easy to get those links in many cases….

Example… Lets pretend you designed the ultimate car transmission.

• Shifted faster
• Saved you gas
• Made the car quicker
• Lasted longer etc…

What kind of sites would link to your website about this performance gear?

• High performance car sites?
• Blogs about new and cool car parts?
• Mechanics?
• Distributors?
• Any auto show you attended?
• Consumer blogs?
• Auto journalists?
• Trade magazines?
• Car Forums?

Obviously submitting to a pile of article sites wouldn’t help you!! It’s not natural! Duh! No gear head’s gonna do that!
See, the more natural your link profile and how much it fits to that particular niche, the better off you are.. and the silly thing is… the more out of your comfort zone you get, the more you pick up the phone and the harder you work at building your business the more these things happen on their own anyway.

Building a natural link profile is easier than spam!

Until Next Time
Daniel J Deyette

Sometimes, I think quite a few people get so wrapped up in sales that they forget the value of Branding. We’re often so focused on a well performing PPC campaign, and a well oiled and lubed SEO campaign that we forget that some efforts that do not produce instant sales and subscribers can have extreme value.

Igniting the conversation online…

Since the 1940’s, Coca-Cola and other big businesses knew the value of getting their logo and a graphic of their product on every wall, flyer and poster out there. They understood visibility = recognition & eventually sales. The more people know about something, the more it becomes socially acceptable and people become aware it exists.

How do you do that online? Especially, with a low budget?

Fact is… It’s going to take man hours, labor.. But it can be done quite affordably beyond the time it takes to do it. First thing is to consider where your target audience hangs out, what sites they visit, what questions they ask themselves each day… And what sites appear when they ask Google those questions in searches…

These sites your target audience hangs out on have comment forms (where you can make your brand, your name or your product name show up in regular conversation – NOT SPAM).

These sites have forums where you can bring up your brand/name/product in a conversation or leave it in your signature.

These communities are often wanting something they can sink their teeth into… Like wallpapers for their computers you can submit to tons of directories.. You don’t get a link, but you sure do get brand visibility.

Sites are always looking for fresh content to post on their blogs and pages. Short article snippets about relevant topics they wanna hear about.  Giving them re-usable content and letting them state who the author was and what the author is known for (IE: Product, Brand) etc…

But those aren’t the only strategies… There’s TONS of ways to get under the skin of that community and start making your presence known. What are you waiting for?

By getting your brand/name/product out there, you invite conversation.. The more conversation about you the more links build toward you automatically and without request. Thus in the end your SEO does benefit.

Dan

I know, I know old news is just so exciting isn’t it? So when I tell you that overture, Wordtracker, Google Keyword tool and others all seem to have 2 or 3+ month old data, should that really surprise you?

Not really, Google’s honest about it right in their stats showing “monthly search volume for october” right now when you search and it’s NOVEMBER!!!

Where’s november’s stats?

Well, if you wanted to, you could use Google’s Insight’s for Search and that does seem to show the RISING stats, but only shows the top 5, so if you want some more detailed data or the LONG tail phrases which show what people REALLY want, and not just the top trends… Then your simply out of luck. Google doesn’t provide this.

I Checked nichebot, and a few others, because the niche i’m looking into right now is actually SO NEW, that there’s no data in Google or any other keyword research tool I’ve looked at yet, because it only came out early November kinda range…

Being a technical electronic device, people are bound to have questions and problems with this product and in this niche just as they did with previous version of this product and there’s a need for an online resource about it, but where do you get that research??

There’s no “Twitter” Of keyword research yet… But is there?

Introducing 7Search’s keyword research tool. Thru quite a bit of testing, it’s proven to show me active volume of searches that ARE happening in the last two weeks. I dunno if it’s a fluke or not, but getting long tail phrases AS they happen lets you write blog posts about what people care about TODAY!!! and not one or two months ago!

Note, I see that it says these searches are from October, but thru testing — But there are some search volumes showing for certain features & options that weren’t available in October… So their tool even though it SAYS october is showing newer searches.

Boy is that ever useful!

Daniel J Deyette

The old myth has been circulating around the internet for over 8 years, and I even believed it, thinking if a client had a brand new domain, with very little link popularity or even zero that there was no way to expect any kind of organic Google traffic early in the game…

PPC being your only option to getting some testing & search traffic up and going until we did a pile of link building and general press before you got traffic…

Last week, Google proved me wrong. Thanks Google!

Domain Created on: 18-Nov-09
Links built on the 20th (about 8 ~ 10 directories submitted)

Yes, within 10 business days, the site received about 20 hits via very specific searches. No, no waterfall or firehose of traffic by anyone’s stretch of the imagination, but still! Within 6 days, it started ranking in organic searches for search terms… Many clients have wanted the domain to show up for it’s own NAME within 2 weeks and that doesn’t happen, this one not only does that but also gets searches for it’s content!

Proof there are still niche markets to be had out there. Keep hunting, because treasure troves are still out there. No, 10 searchers is nothing to get excited about, but I will say that this market I’m referring to is huge, so when it DOES start ranking for the terms we’re aiming for we’re in for a BIG bonus.

Just wanted to clear that myth up because truth is the more content we post and the more links we build the more that will really come into play in the next few days.

I won’t post the topic or niche though because this client deserves a fresh chance at the market before anyone else jumps in…

But still, you should know it’s possible!

Until next time
Daniel J Deyette

So, with the widespread publicity around Google’s Chrome OS one might start asking themselves, why not go ahead and get into it the second it’s ready? Before you start thinking that this could solve your PC computing problems for good and that this is your next big move away from Windows & Mac operating systems and into the cloud computing world where data backups aren’t neccesary… Consider the Google track record for customer data and security…

Consider when A bank forced the suspension and deletion of a Gmail user’s account and all his emails.
(Imagine if that was your "email" program on Chrome OS)

Or when one of the writers on Lifehacker’s Wife had their Gmail account hacked and started sending out weird emails to her list…. (Imagine if that was your Chrome OS)

Or when one of the Twitter employees had their Google Docs account hacked , giving them access to her notes, spreadsheets, calendars and other documents the company relied on…

Cloud computing is a dream everyone shares, but it’s also a big nightmare waiting to happen. Google and others are saying you wouldn’t rely on this for your full time computing needs but a great thing for netbooks, but often I think the tasks we do on our netbooks and other gadgets are sometimes the most sensitive tasks we ever do!

Paying bills, buying things, logging into accounts remotely to check up on things, accessing our work VPN.. Many things you wouldn’t realy want to trust Google Chrome to help you do… If you really do everything online, that’s great… But I would suspect that Chrome OS might not be your best friend for all things "internet".

Consider Google’s track record for helping users with their "Free" services , and at what cost… I mean, when even Twitter’s Google Docs get hacked, who’s safe?

Well, Despite my worst fears, it finally arrived. I haven’t had much time to throughly test it, yet so I can’t say much… What I *will* say is despite the battery cover being a pain in the butt to operate that this thing is very slick, the keyboard is more than adequate and the web browser is actually very impressive.

What shocked me was this blog loaded perfectly fine, where on my old one it woudln’t load the CSS but I could read the articles… It works brilliantly.

The trackpad definitely takes some getting used to, so that’ll be an odd adjustment… I’ll report later on battery life, picture quality and other things.

I made numerous reports on various sites complaining , and complaining and complaining some more that I had not received it, I ordered it on a tuesday, and 3 weeks later it finally got here… THAT i’m not impressed with. I phoned Yesterday (Thursday) and said that if it wasn’t on it’s way I was going to cancel it. I didn’t need to be bothered and emotionally upset by how long it was taking that badly, I could wait until they worked the bugs out of the silly thing.

I go by Dano77 on most places, and Thumbtyper on some bberry forums.

Ryan Healy truly is someone I find hard *not* to respect. The guy gives free copy writing tips and interesting advice on his blog, and despite the chance his freelance clients might complain, often discusses the intricacies of the client/freelancer relationship that many of us would be afraid to discuss.

I’ve been freelancing now for about 2.5 years and I know myself that the *last* thing I would do is post what’s going on in my challenges in their accounts even if I didn’t mention a client name.. Just the thought of them reading something like that on my blog sends chills down my spine.

– Anyway –

I too suffered major skin problems when I was a kid… And this lesson Ryan speaks of is so paramount to all levels of business, copywriting and everything in between that it shakes the foundations of how you should write on your blog, website, twitter, facebook, fax campaigns, direct mail, print, tv, radio.. I can see it applying to everything!

See – If you did do that initial market research I’m always talking about, then you’d easily begin to see what challenges, pains, jealousy, frustration, anger, pride, fear or other emotions that you SHARE with your customers that you totally understand…

And as Ryan Explains… That – builds trust.

Trust is probably one of the hardest things to get.. Online or offline in a new relationship or when you first meet someone (we’re talking prospects & customers here..) and any extra tool in the toolbox is brilliant!!!!

Until Next Time!
Daniel J Deyette