Marc McDermott

Of Google Caffeine and small business SEO

Posted on 22. Aug, 2009 by Marc McDermott in SEO

For those who haven’t already heard, Google is currently working on beta stages of their new search algorithm, Caffeine.  P relaunch user testing can be conducted here.

So what does this mean for the small business SEO campaign?  Not much more than we ethical, white hat SEO’s already know to be honest.  A few big changes I see coming are:

• More ranking weight for social networking sites.
• Back link thematic quality truly surpassing quantity.
• Direct correlations between analytic data and rankings.

I believe social networking sites, especially Twitter, will start to become a heavier factor in Google’s SERPS.  Facebook has been offering vanity urls for a few months now, and may also play a large role in rankings.  It is important to snatch up your small business vanity URL on these major social networking sites as soon as possible.

Back links.  While it has always been an SEO 101 best practice to create relevant and thematic links to your site, I don’t think the full wrath of this has come to fruition until now.  Caffeine will dive even deeper into the links pointing to a site, analyzing their relevant strength more and more.  Gone are the days where simple blog commenting on high PR blogs will suffice for a successful link building campaign.

What I’ve always hoped would become a large part of Google algorithm is on-page visitor analytics.  As smart as Google is, they certainly cannot rank every website on the web in the most appropriate fashion.  Rather they need to rely on the millions of users who use Google everyday.  A site ranking #1 for a highly competitive phrase with a bounce rate of 90% will no longer bask in the glory of first page rankings.  I strongly believe average page views, time on site, bounce rates, etc will have a significant impact on rankings.

As indicated by Google, the average Google user will not notice any difference in UI, nor will they notice major differences in the SERPS.  SEO’s should not be worry or scared of Caffeine, as it is merely Google looking to enhance their current search ranking algorithm.  Stick to your white hate principles, and good things will come.