SEO Tacoma | Google Caffeine and Local SEO

It has been a a couple months since Google rolled out their new Google Caffeine search algorithm.  The “Big G” is trying to stay way ahead of Yahoo and Bing, who for a while looked like they were going to join forces.

In reality those other search engines are so far behind Google its not even funny.  Nevertheless, Google is always improving on their search engine algorithm to make sure the stays ahead of the pack, I am sure.

Local SEO is changing.  Its still all about links, but tactics are going to have to be adapted.  Content and relevance are king.  Google loves fresh content, they like good content, and they love relevant content. Perfect all three and you have a good leg up on your SEO campaign.

Not to say that this is something totally new, but the new ‘Caffeine’ algorithm is putting an extra premium on those things.

Something else to note…

Google likes, if it is available, several times on a page for a particular search term.  It seems that they want several articles, a You Tube video, Wikipedia, 1-2 blogs, 1-2 static sites or blogs that actually sell something, and a press release from a major source usually found at the bottom.

Their logic actually makes perfect sense and from a user prospective is right on the money.

You enter a term “XYZ” into Google.

You are going to first want information about XYZ.  This is where Wikipedia comes into place.

The next course you will take is finding practical application and experiences.  This is where blogs and review sites are extremely helping.  Many blogs consist of people just talking about products they have used, what they thought about them, and rambling on about how they will or will not ever use it again.

If you are local than the rules are somewhat different.  It is hard to set up a static HTML site that sells products and get a) Google to index it and b) Google to rank it for anything valuable.  And before static HTML sites do not update often the “Big G” does not come back to the site often unless you get some nice authoritative back links pointing there.

Anyone is a fool for not making a site using WordPress these days.  WordPress is the best content management system ever created in my opinion and it indexes like crazy.

Back to Google “Caffeine,”

Here are the good points:

• Sites are indexed much quicker.

• Links seem to be counted faster.

• Fresh content can rise to the top of the SERPS quickly especially from trusted sites.  Some articles I have written on Ezine and Hubpages that were long, detailed, and thought out went right past some older sites that are PR3s and Pr4s.

Here is what I do not like from a search engine optimizer prospective:

• Rankings are more unstable as sites can rise fast but drop just as fast.
• Harder to find extremely relevant links all the time and you are dealing with other large companies who buy links no matter what they say
• Sites can drop in rankings for apparently no reason
• Domain Age has more weight than ever

We have been doing a lot of optimizing for local businesses in the Portland, Vancouver, and Tacoma area. We have had great results for local searches.  About 80-90% of our accounts are on page one or very close.  A large key is coding.

If your website is:

• built on a robust content management system such as WordPress, Drupal, or Dotnetnuke,
• have the valid xHTML coding that is spider friendly,
• significant and relevant inbound links,
• and you have at last 350 words of unique content on each page with the proper keyword density,

…you will put yourself in a good position to succeed on Google.  If you need help setting up your web presence and getting to the first page of the search engines, you can reach me at: