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

Does anyone search for local businesses via yellow pages anymore?

Sure, elderly and non technical folks do, but what percentage of users who have some form of internet are still turning to the paper pages for their search?

Even if you “hunt and peck” type your way thru a search you’ll still find yourself getting what you need online quicker than thumbing thru the phone book by hand…

Plus, the directory business is getting greedier than ever before…

Ads in their books cost more every year and offer less space to display your hours of operation, your services and other consumer info… With a dwindling readership and increasing cost… Is it still cost effective?

Comment below, are you still paying big yellow?

Ever feel like your website optimization should have a dash board just like your car? Letting you know if your going the right speed, still have lots of gas, or if the temperature is ok? I like to think of SiteYogi that way. This ingenious tool tells you a TON of things about your OFF Page optimization in one screen. It’s like an entire “Off page optimization analytics” or “SEO analysis website”.

http://www.siteyogi.com/

Perhaps that’s a bit much, but seriously… One page where all off page metrics are right there! Things like: * Pagerank * technorati * Alexa * Dmoz * Backlinks in the top 10 search engines * Keywords, Title tags,  etc.. * The indexed pages on the various search engines * Country, Author etc.. * Social bookmarking submissions * Validations * Syndications Sheah, check it out, put it on your bookmarks. I recommend getting something like primoPDF or similar and doing a file -> print -> Save as PDF of this every month and watching where things go. Or even so… Using it as a way to spy on your competitiors! And STOMP the competition. Until next time Daniel J Deyette SEO/SEM Expert.

Why I’m So Excited About "=IF(LEN(A2)=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A2)," ",""))+1)"

For those who don’t know what a "long tail" keyword is, it’s a keyword that’s
3 or 4 words or greater, a longer phrase being searched for. If you’ve been
paying attention to SEO or competitive intelligence on trying to rank for words
like "debt" then you probably already know that it’s insanely competitive to
rank for a one word search.

And now, even the 2-3 word search phrases have gotten quite competitive
If you have a new website that just started up this month and your trying
to get traffic "the easy way" my number one recommendation would be to
get more knowledgeable about finding long tail keywords.

First thing I do is perform a search on the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Then, from there export the 200+ phrases to microsoft excel and work
the magic Equation of:

=IF(LEN(A2)=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A2)," ",""))+1

This math appears complicated, but if you know that it’s simply counting the words
in the "A2" Column, then it’s pretty cool!

But wait, there’s more! I’m going to do a video on this process.. since I Know this
wasn’t the easiest thing to comprehend. More on that later.

Daniel Deyette
SEM/SEO & Copywriting Expert.
Social/Viral Media consultant
Dan’s Website

This resource is nothing short of amazing. Beyond being able to extract
the ad groups and keywords of your competitors or even other affiliates or
companies that are already profitable…There’s something even cooler here.

Just from a glance, we can all see who’s advertising on a given market or
keyword… But I did a quick scan on "car rental" with their free tool on the
site and found that I could see how many keywords each business had in
their campaigns!!!

Now, I have a team 7 staff dedicated to helping my clients succeed online.
The standard research done by our staff is never less than 1000 keywords
on average. If I see tiny campaigns or accounts running, I *know* they aren’t
capturing the entire market space.

But that’s just the begining. Competitve Intel at it’s best, check out
Keyword Spy for yourself, it’s quite impressive.

Daniel Deyette
SEM/SEO & Copywriting Expert.
Social/Viral Media consultant
AnswersWanted Inc

If you:

* Don’t have a brand that everyone knows
* Don’t have an overflowing wallet bursting at the seams
* Don’t have 2000+ Friends on Facebook & Celebrity Status

Chances are, you’ve got a new website, just starting out that doesn’t currently
get a ton of traffic, and what little traffic it does get is from your mom looking at it.

Sorry, that was probably not nice, but you get where i’m coming from.
This is a juicy traffic tip, coming your way here….

Google’s new update actually hurts small businesses who have quite relavent
products & solutions but lack the industry popularity of bigger companies.

At the moment, next to having "Impressive" web 2.0 social skills, or a big
adwords budget this strategy I’m about to discuss is the ONLY way to get
traffic from Google!

My previous post "Google search queries getting longer" was a hint, but what
about the actual strategy? If you only knew that by doing a hint of keyword
research before you got started on writing the Blog posts you should already
Be writing, and the pages to your site that you should already be adding,
You’d be getting an additional 30-50% more traffic!

That’s right, long tail keywords are still untouched by brands. Long tail keywords
are more specific than the brands usually attract. They’re more indepth and,
get this, they’re also more targeted. More likely to buy.

My book UnstoppableKeywords.com dives deep into how you can easily
find those long tail keywords that would be easier to rank for.

Daniel Deyette
SEM/SEO & Copywriting Expert.
Social/Viral Media consultant
Affordable SEO

People are typing in longer searches than ever before, according to Hitwise,
a noted competition intelligence provider.

This means quite a few things though, really. It means that Google’s edge on understanding what people
want could be less effective than it was in the past. It could also mean that people are getting better at knowing exactly what they want.

Regardless, it sure points to tightening up landing pages and adding more content to the ole’ website!

Until next time

Daniel J Deyette

Mashing Data Together – How one company managed
to put cost per click,
Google estimated traffic, search
trends and number of results in Google into
one simple excel sheet. Brilliant!

Case Study – SEM Rush tool put together by Michael Goldfinch. By Dan Deyette – I’ll show you the tool, what it does and my unbiased view on the utility.

I remember when getting data out of Google and into Microsoft Excel or any other software required serious coding skills or a linux box and a 6 pack of Coke. It was a real challenge and most of us who had any kind of computer skills and wanted to harvest data from Yahoo/Google would simply copy & paste and then play with the data. Times are changing, quickly. More sites are "Mashing Data" to make their own tools, software and competitive intelligence is getting MUCH easier. So easy in fact, that SEM Rush has leveraged API’s and integrations to borrow some data from different parts of google and "Mash" them all onto one page of results for easy reading! Let’s give some examples… Say I want to know who the top websites getting traffic on the internet today are. These would be great places to advertise, try to get links from or even just study as a business model, wouldn’t you agree? I know, this report got a little "blurry" but check it out. Woudn’t it be nice to have the "seasonality" of Google Trends data on the same excel sheet with your search volume and other stats? Let’s break it down: Number of results – How many resutls appear in google for that phrase Competition – The level of advertisers in Google Pay Per Click Cost Per Click – How much it costs to bid on that keyword Average Volume – How many people per day look for it on Google Google Trends – Seasonality or even if this is a newly popular item. In case you hadn’t noticed, the wonderful thing about Google Trends is that it shows you whether your recent drop in traffic or gain is because of worldwide conditions or your rankings. It shows you how much "volume" any phrase is getting in relation to the last few years, and geographic regions. What Trends DOESNT do by itself is give you a number. An exact number, like "there were 3,000 people yesterday". It simply says, it’s way lower last month and much higher this week.. Helpful but not as helpful as an actual number. With an actual number, you can sit back and calculate things like potential ROI or conversion rates or market share potential. Having an idea of the cost per click in relation to seasonal high’s and lows and results in Google makes a lot of trending and analysis alot easier. If this tool stopped here, I’d never have posted this writeup. But trust me – It doesnt! Go play with it, the free version has TONS of features worth noting. The usages are endless. Check out SEM Rush today. You’ll be glad you did. I used to use SpyFu for all my competitive research needs, but the price is getting quite high for their tool. They want $18.95 for a 3 day membership. I used to pay $6.95 and that was alright by me. $50 per month is a bit high for something that essentially scrapes Google. SEM Rush is much more affordable. Their monthly price is similar to 3 days with SpyFu. Their tool does quite a bit more, and adds more value to your reports if you send weekly or monthly client reports or need to spice up an up coming presentation. Sincerely Daniel J Deyette