Google doesn’t mind sharing how changes to their algorithm impact search engine behaviour. Really, they do have their best interests in mind: they want to be the premiere Internet search engine that everyone loves to use—and other search engines chase. In order to do that a Google Fellow recently spoke about the latest algorithm update titled ‘Google Caffeine’ and how it impacts the lives of web designers, web copywriters and ultimately businesses who use their websites to grow their business.

So what is an Algorithm?

The code and methods that give life to a search engine are referred to as an algorithm. Asearch enginealgorithm is like a big mathematical secret that only search engine brain surgeons and programmers can possibly understand. That’s fine because the huge majority of us only care about the information the search engines bring back to us when we search for stuff. An algorithm ‘update’, like Google Caffiene, is a tweak to that secret recipe intended to improve the quality of results returned to us when we do a search.

What Does Google Caffeine Do?

Sometimes when you perform a search for something on the Web it may be for information that has been in the public domain for a long time. An example might be a search for ‘what is the state flower of New South Wales’? This is a piece of information that has been on the Web for several years. It rarely is updated. So if you search for that information today, tomorrow and next week you’ll find that the results are the same. A new page may pop up on the search engine results page occasionally over several months, but certainly not on a daily basis.

On the other hand, there are events that get a lot of searches because they are hot items of the day or hour. An example might be searching for the latest results for your favourite tennis championplaying at the Australian Open. Prior to the Google Caffeine algorithm update the results you saw for this type of search wouldn’t necessarily present the most current updates on the Web.

Google Caffeine changes that now. To show you what I mean, I did a test. Being a bit of a horse racing fan I was following the news on the Breeder’s Cup championship held today in the United States.
I searched Google for the phrase ‘breeders cup’ and was presented these results:

Notice how Google returned the most recent results to me. A post from 9 minutes ago announced that Drosselmeyer (a bit of a longshot) won the Breeder’s Cup. There are a couple of other results that follow this that occurred within the same timeframe, a video and article about upsets. The 4th listing is the Breeder’s Cup website. Not unusual since it would be the authority site for the Breeder’s Cup. What is impressive is that it was knocked out of first position by the more current Drosselmeyer news clip.

How to take advantage of the Google Caffeine change?

Google search engines spiders love fresh content. Keep your website content fresh by leveraging topical news within your posts. Use Google alerts to keep on top of news that is important to you or your industry. Chances are a static website will lose ranking and traffic unless you leverage fresh posts, articles and news to keep those spiders fat and happy.

Your Next Step…
You get it, but don’t have the time to do regular content management. Ask about how we can keep your website on top of search engine results with our SEO copywriting services.

If you look at many companies in the marketplace pick a couple that stand out in your mind. Apple or Nike are two companies that come to mind. These companies have a strong brand identity. This identity consists of their logo, image, tagline, font type, color scheme, or all of these. Whatever it is that you communicate to consumers will revolve around your brand identity. A brand identity helps build a compelling, professional image that awakens consumer interest and helps you stand out from the crowd. It shares that unique something special y ou have to offer beyond what other companies provide.

Providing a Consistent Image

When it comes to building a brand identity, every part of your image must be consistent. Inconsistency can mislead your audience and detract from your business. So, your logo, print materials, advertising campaign, direct mail, tagline, slogan, and even your website, must all be consistent in look and delivery. If you do it right, you will have no trouble attracting buying traffic to your door.

Think about it. How do you think a company like Amazon.com, IBM, Apple, Nike, Cola-Cola, Google, and so many others have been able build a loyal customer following. The reason is their branding. They worked hard to create the branding necessary so that consumers will recognize them and work toward getting to their doors. Some of these companies started off in a basement or garage, selling some items at garage sells. Once they realized what consumers wanted, they began to work on their brand identity. After so many months and years of trial and error, these companies were able to succeed in getting the brand created and exposed to the world.

Growing Your Business

There is one constant that is reflected in everything successful businesses do. They develop their brand identity and put it in everything they do. They do everything possible to make sure their identity stays in the front of the eyes of consumers on a regular basis. Now, no matter how established the company may be, there may come a time to modify a company’s brand identity. This is based on changes in the market. Social trends change and images or taglines that were popular for decades become irrelevant. This is the time companies need to revisit their brand identity. By continuing to expand ones brand identity, this will help companies stay in the marketplace, and stay in the eyes of consumers.

There are a number of ways professional graphic designers can enhance your image. Typically, business owners think of using a professional graphic designer for a logo. There are several other ways a professional graphic designer enhances your business image.

Businesses with a store front need signage, brochures and business cards to hand out and displays to show their top products. Professional graphic designers offer a combination of media to include print, digital and textual.

Why Hire a Pro Graphic Designer?

If you think about what a graphic designer can do for you, you will ever wonder why you didn’t put one on your payroll. A professional graphic designer does a lot for a business. Graphic designers plan, analyze, and create materials that are visual in nature for companies to communicate their message to others. Graphic designers consider every side of the picture including cognitive, cultural, physical, and social factors.

Many companies look to a professional graphic designer as someone who comes in to their company, and creates material that has a visual appeal to them and their customers. For this to happen, they look for designers who have a track record of excellence. There was a time that a business had to use an expensive marketing company to gain access to a professional graphic designer. Today, there are plenty of artists working as freelancers. Typically, freelancers are a great value and don’t have the overhead costs carried by corporate marketing companies.

Buyer Beware

Just as you need a professional graphic designer, you also have to be careful who you choose as well. No one knows your company better than yourself. You know exactly what image you wish to portray to your customers. It is for this reason, you must look for a graphic designer who you can get along with, can learn about your company and can mesh well with what you are trying to achieve. The person has to evaluate your company and understand what you are about.

Developing a positive image is essential to making money. When you can brand yourself well, people will favor your products or services. A graphic designer bring make that a memorable image.

Currently, there is a lot going on regarding Google and the way they index pages. Since there are a lot of changes going on, it is a good idea to review the Google SEO discussions to keep up on changes. By learning more about it and how you can use it, you can have confidence in planning out your website SEO strategies. That way you won’t see huge shifts in ranking when Google changes their algorithms. It is important to learn SEO and how it relates to search engines now. By the way, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This term means that all web pages have been designed and optimized so Google can index the pages faster and put the pages of the website further to the top of search results; based on certain keywords that appear on each page of the website.

SEO and Google Search Query

To better understand SEO, you need to learn how Google Search Query works. Since Google is the leader in search traffic, we’ll start here with a discussion on SEO. The first step in the process begins when someone types in a word or phrase in the search field in Google. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content that is contained on the index servers is similar to a book index. Google parses through the index and lists website that rank highly for that keyword phrase.

Next, the query travels to the doc servers. This is when the actual web pages or documents are retrieved. Then the server creates snippets so as to provide a description for the results of the search. Once this step has been completed, the results that were retrieved are sent to your computer and displayed on your screen. All of this is done in a fraction of a second.

How to Use SEO

Now you understand SEO and how it relates to search engines. So how can you use SEO to get your page ranked to the top of search results? One tip to get you pages indexed faster is provide search engines with a sitemap. By providing them a sitemap, you are giving them a way to index your site faster as they will have a page with a bunch of links on it. Another SEO tip is to place your keyword or keyword phrase in the page title, and Meta tags. After this, make sure you have quality inbound links with anchor text using that same keyword for your web page.

Search Engine Optimization, sometime referred to as Search Engine Marketing, can seem overwhelming at first. There are new acronyms and terms to learn. You may be expert at your business or profession, but as an uninitiated player on the sidelines, it sounds like a lot of “computer voodoo.” However, once you understand the basic premise behind Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you catch on quickly to know what it’s all about.

The search engines, like Google, build an index of web pages for terms they believe are relevant to the content found on the page. When you perform a search using Google, you really are searching and index of all the web pages on the Internet. They do this because the better their results returned to the searcher, the more likely that person continues to use that search engine. Of course, there are other motivations like the paid advertisements that are found on a search results page. But that’s a topic for another day.

Each search engine results page (or SERP) includes about ten organic listings (i.e. those you don’t have to pay for) your goal is to have your page indexed on Page One for a set of terms you believe relevant to your content and business.

To do this, you simply give the search engines what they want.

So, what do search engines want?

Search engines want a number of things but here are some of the basic ingredients that are common to Google, Yahoo and Bing:

1. Quality web design and informative content.

The better your content is, the more likely the search engines are to help you promote your content through better search engine placement.

But how do the search engines determine the quality of your content? Since they do this through an automated process, they had to come up with metrics that allow programs to award points to each web page on your website. Some of these points are related to what is found in the HTML of your web pages. Other points are awarded for how long people linger on your website and if they visit other pages. The longer a visit lasts then the greater the likelihood that they find the content on your pages helpful.
In other words, they found what they searched for using the search engine tool. The visitor had a positive experience and your website is awarded more points than another where people only visit a single page or stay just a few seconds.

2. Ability to easily evaluate what the main keyword phrases are to place in the index for your web pages.

Similar to the index at the end of a book, you expect the search index to present results for you to review that actually are relevant to your query. As your pages will be found when someone conducts a Web search, the search engines need to index your pages for terms (called keyword phrases) that are most relevant to your on-page content.

You can help them by ensuring that each page of your site is optimized around keyword phrases. How many keywords you should optimize for is really not known, in fact, there may not be a set number of phrases. The key is to ensure that each keyword phrase is relevant to each other.

For example, a website about arthritis in dog shouldn’t have pages and keywords devoted to how to raise your puppy. Instead, chose keyword phrases like arthritis in dogs, natural treatments for arthritis in dogs, and so on.

After choosing which keyword phrases to target, make sure to add them to your “meta page title” and “meta page description” at minimum. These are HTML components of your web page.

Also, it’s important that these keyword phrases appear somewhere on your actual page… the content that can be read by your human visitors. This helps the search engines to index your pages more easily and you will be rewarded for your work.

3. Getting as many links as possible for each page of your site.

In Internet terms, each link pointing to your site is seen as a “vote” that your page is relevant to the piece of text that is linked.

So, if you want a particular page of your site found for the keyword phrase, best Sydney plumber, you’d be wise to get as many websites as possible to link to your page using this phrase in their “anchor text.”

Anchor text is merely the words that create the clickable link. If the phrase, “best Sydney plumber,” is linked to your web page, you just earned a “vote” for that page.

The more links you can get with that term, the more likely your page will be to rank well for it.
There are numerous methods to improve the SEO of your website. The principles discussed above create the foundation for each page of your website. If your pages contain great content and the website is sound, pages are optimized for a relevant keyword phrases and are linked to from other websites, you’re on your way to improved search engine placement.

One of the first things we do when we bring on a new client is to analyze what their competition is doing as far as search engine optimization, or SEO. Competitor analysis is a huge part of SEO. If you want to be the number one listing for a keyword phrase, you have to be able to bump the current listing off that ranking.

We research the resulting web pages that show up in search results for keyword phrases that are relevant for the client’s niche. If our client owns a bar in Sydney, then we’ll go to Google and type in Sydney bar to see who pops-up on the organic listings. The organic listings are those down the middle of the page, not on the right side or very top of the results page. Then we’ll note some important facts about the top 5 listings. Here are things that are worth noting:

Domain Name

Is the page listed the top-level domain name or is it an inner page. If you look at the term Sydney bar and you find that the first listing is for www.sydneycafes.com.au/bars.html, then you know that one of this website’s internal pages is ranking as # 1. If the page listed is the very top level domain, i.e., www.sydneycafes.com.au, then the top level of the domain is ranking for #1.

It’s important to know that for a few reasons. It’s quicker to basically jump other listings and get page one results if you can grab the keyword specific domain. So if you’re looking for ranking on Sydney bar and if SydneyBar.com or .org or .net is available, you may get to the top of the search results simply by buying that domain and putting up well crafted web pages optimized for the search engines. This gives you a very strong likelihood of ranking for that term very quickly.

This is often one of the hardest things for a business owner to accept. They’d much rather have the domain named for the bar. Of course, that is often the path we have to accept. We won’t argue with a strong brand name. If they already own RockpoolBar.com with strong brand recognition, then we’ll just improve on the current website while maintaining the domain name. [However, we might must go ahead and purchase Sydneybar dot com if it is available. That is premium Web real estate.]

Domain Age

More mature websites are harder to compete with than websites that are new or under a year old. The concept here is that an established website is one that is more likely to be around in the future. If you are buying a domain, you may want to pay extra for an aged domain. The price can go up astronomically with age, so do some serious thought as to the value of that domain to your brand image or web strategies. New domains can still compete for top ranking when the website design is sound and content writer uses smart SEO strategies. If you are registering a new domain, consider spending the extra $10 to register it for 2 years instead of for one.

Google Page Rank

One other thing to take note of when you’re doing competitor analysis is the Google Page Rank. Page Rank is a calculation, based on incoming links, of Google’s estimation of the importance of a page. It is expressed on a scale of 0-10 in the toolbar, with ten being more important.

On Page SEO

Take a look at your competitor’s on page SEO. On page SEO includes things like meta tags, url relationship to keywords, header tags (H1, H2, H3…) and the keyword density. Take note of their weaknesses and make them your strengths.

Evaluate In-bound Links

You can use the Yahoo Site Explorer to see what links are pointing to the competitor’s high ranking page. Avoid attracting links from unrelated websites, or worse, links from adult-type websites (unless, you have an adult-type website.)

The best way to get quality in-bound links is not to pay for links. The best way is to create unique, compelling content that attracts links. This is a win/win because not only will great content attract links pointing to your website, but also visitors.

You can offer articles to website owners. Contact the owner and ask if they would be open to posting a unique article that includes a link back to your top-level domain or internal page. Usually, a website owner is open to posting quality, unique material. All you need to do is make it available to them.

When you set up your business, you probably did things to make sure that what you offered stood out from the competition. Whether you’re selling products or services it’s very likely that yours isn’t the only game in town. So you had to find ways to be different from the rest of the crowd. That gave you a bit of an edge over the competition.

When products or services don’t have anything unique to offer, then the only differentiator is price. Needless to say, attracting sales by lowering prices becomes self-defeating. When you have a brand, it consistently represents your company’s uniqueness to consumers.

A brand is a promise. You build your brand by living up to your promise every time someone comes in contact with your name, your goods, or your business. No matter how customers interact with your business; whether it’s a business card, letterhead, signage or your appearance, your brand image is consistent.

Your brand is the promise your customers can believe in.

Brands create consumer trust and an emotional connection to your business. Your brand is building relationships with consumers 24 hours a day.

What Brands Do

Brands create consumer trust and emotional attachments. As a result, they foster relationships between consumers and products which withstand price wars or occasional lapses in product or service excellence.

Great brands are trusted, even loved. People remember your brand and the characteristics that it represents. Whether you’re selling computers, denim jeans, or French fries, people who are aware of your brand have a connection to the characteristics your brand promises. These are things they consider long before making a purchase.

Brands Change the Selling Process into a Service Process

Since consumers believe in your brand and its promise, your sales force can spend more time making sure they understand what customers want. Instead of having to sell a new customer on why they should buy your product or service, the customer is already aware of your brand promise. Without a recognizable brand, you have to build a case for the reason why someone should buy from you with each and every sale.

In the world of Internet commerce, your brand pre-sells visitors to your online shop or website. When you are selling or advertising online, you have a world of competition. It’s ever more critical you have a solid brand statement in place so you stand out from a Web-full of competing services and products.

Are you a no-name business?

How do you envision your business? Do you think that vision jives with the consumer’s? Selling a no-name item takes time and patience. Sometimes small businesses overlook putting a line in their budget for branding. Or the owner has the notion that his business isn’t grandiose enough for a brand.

If you are selling retail products you spend all your time promoting the virtues of your products. It’s nearly impossible to sell online without a brand. After all, you’re competing on a global basis. Without a brand you become a commodity. Your stuff is just the same as all the others.

Want proof? Take the Nike “swoosh” symbol off the tennis shoe and what do you have? A sneaker. Do you think a superstar athlete will eagerly agree to a no-name sneaker company sponsorship?

Branding stamps a promise onto your services or products. As news of your brands spreads, consumers buy into your brand because they find it lives up to the promised virtues. If people feel that your products are just the same as everyone else’s, they just grab the most convenient or least expensive one available. Here are some advantages you’ll have over the competition with branding.

• People are willing to pay more for things that deliver on their promise.
• People are loyal to brands and will purchase often without promotions or coupons.
• Retailers put branded products out in front of the consumer.
• New offerings launch faster, with less expense because the brand has already paved the way for new products.
• Owners make more consistent decisions because the mission, vision and values provide the framework for the brand. They don’t want to break that promise with an inconsistent decision.
• Businesses with brands are far more easy to sell than those other no-name companies.

New businesses are starting up at a faster rate than ever before in history. That may be in part due to so many disenfranchised (downsized) employees. People with tons of experience and skills are starting up small businesses left and right. They either get into the marketplace with an established brand by purchasing a franchise or they build up a brand name in a hurry to get in front of the buying community. That brand becomes their reputation that people remember.

Brand development costs vary greatly depending on how big a reputation you need to build. If your target audience is local, say in Adelaide, your brand development and exposure costs are a lot less than a business selling across Australia or into foreign markets. Just remember, a well defined brand really levels the playing field when it comes to consumer buying decisions.

Flash is entirely banned on all of Apple’s mobile platforms (iPhones, iPods and iPads) for several reasons. Check them out below.

Apple wants a more open source – Instead of using Flash, Apple has chosen HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, which are all open standards. Aside from the capability to replace Flash video players, HTML5 allows web developers to produce sophisticated graphics and animation, which perform better without requiring plug-ins that awfully slow browser down.

Flash is huge and heavy – Viewing Flash content consumes a high CPU percentage and slows down the loading time of a web page. Very particular about positive customer experience, Apple wants smooth and intuitive performance, not jumpy and slow.

Flash is buggy, unstable and insecure – Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, mentions that Flash is the primary reason Macs crash, and that it has a terrible security record, as per Symantec. Adobe hasn’t done much to fix these issues for many years now. Apple doesn’t want to risk the stability and security of its mobile devices by ruling out Flash.

Flash quickly depletes battery juice – A video running on a Flash player only gives 5-hours of battery life. But watching it with an H.264 decoder (an industry standard that Apple, Google (YouTube) and other companies use), offers 10-hours of play time. If websites adopt H.264 format on their videos, they can totally forego Flash.

Flash is unfit for touch-screen devices – Flash was created for PCs using mouse, not for touch-screen devices using fingers. Used by several Flash-based websites, there’s no concept of “rollovers” on Apple’s multi-touch interface.

Apple wants apps specifically built for its platform, and not imported from Flash – Adobe wants developers to use Flash in creating apps for multiple platforms. Apple is concerned that it can result to shoddy apps and overall poor performance, which is unacceptable.

Though Apple can quickly utilize Flash anytime they wish, they have obtained so much success already without Flash on any of their devices. As such, it’s very unlikely that they will ever support it and sacrifice user experience in the process.

Web 2.0, what does it mean? You’ve probably heard it by now, but still clueless of its significance. Web 2.0, pronounced as “web two point oh,” started as a name of a conference introduced by Tim O’Reilly back in 2004.

Web 2.0 soon became a buzzword describing the 2nd generation World Wide Web that is more interactive and centered on the functionality for users to connect and share information online. It also refers to a group of new Internet tools and technologies that encourages open communication and sharing of information. These new tools consist of, but not limited to blogs, social networking apps and tools, wikis, and RSS. Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, Blogger, are some of the many websites that fall under the category of Web 2.0.

Simply put, Web 2.0 is the evolution of the Internet to become a massive resource for information creation, collaboration, and dissemination. Now, why is it particularly significant to professional marketers? Because marketing is synonymous to word-of-mouth (WOM), establishing brand, and communicating your message.

And if you’ve been an active follower in the blogging world lately, you most have already the heard about the controversial, pay per blog or blogging for payment. However, before Web 2.0 platform, having to pay someone to blog about one’s products/services would utterly be impossible. Thanks to Web 2.0, sharing ideas, and building relationships with like-minded communities is now made easy and hassle-free.

Also, the viral quality of Web 2.0 is highly contagious. Just check out StumbeUpon or Digg and you’ll realize why it’s infectious. To become a successful marketer in this setting, you need to learn and understand the impact of viral marketing—as well as managing your marketing messages—and sometimes even creating hype around your products/services.

A number of top brands have been using that approach for many years. For example, Nike offers free sneakers to the best athlete in various schools; Gatorade gives samples to athletes, etc. Web 2.0 works pretty much the same, but only done online. So, on top of traditional “feet-on-the-street” marketing, there are now countless online tools and networks that are ready to spread your word.

Building a Strategy

The most efficient way to take advantage of these new techniques is to really understand their importance. Start by visualizing your desired result, and then use the tools available. For instance, you want to discuss how people think about a specific subject, then why not write a blog post about it or do an interview through a podcast.

You should handle Web 2.0 with similar strategies you use when building your traditional marketing plan. Regardless of the medium, use the same basic marketing rules you currently do. Of course, an integrated plan is very much recommendable to further boost your marketing efforts!