;)
Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google's regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.What is going to change?
Of course, Google hasn't revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google's next index:
Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn't good for your rankings in Google's current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
The over-all quality of your website: Google's new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It's not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.
You'll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.
Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google's new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.
How can you adjust your web pages to Google's new Caffeine index?
Although Google's Caffeine update hasn't been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google's new index:
Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders. You can test this with the search engine spider simulator in IBP (Select Tools > Search Engine Spider Simulator in IBP's main window).
Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google's current algorithm and that role might increase.
Check your links. You shouldn't link to websites that look like spammers. It's better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.
Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google's new index will be online.
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( 2.9 / 50 )Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of Bing's document can be found in this article.
The importance of link building
The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe link building as follows:
"Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building."
In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process:
"Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business' most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!)."
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( 3 / 35 )Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or can you get in trouble if you use paid links?
What does Google think about paid links?
Google is very clear about paid links. They don't like them. Google even has an official form that enables webmasters to report paid links to Google:
"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it.
Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."
A recent problem
A webmaster recently reported problems in Google's webmaster discussion forum:
"Today I found that my entire site has dropped out of site in search results. I have a site that received over 2,000 search visits per day and today that has stopped."
It turned out that the website has many affiliate links and other links to advertisers that looked like paid links to Google. Unfortunately, these links were not marked as paid links and Google penalized the website for having the paid links.
What does this mean for your website?
You should avoid paid links if you don't want to get in trouble with Google. If you do buy or sell links, make sure that the links contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. By using that attribute, you show that the paid link is for advertising purposes only and that you don't want to manipulate your website rankings with the link.
While Google doesn't like paid links at all, they also make clear that links are very important:
"Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating."
For that reason, you should try to get as many good links to your website as possible. The quality is more important than the quantity.
Links that point to your website are a very important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results. The links that point to your website should be from related websites and they should contain the keywords for which you want to get high rankings.
Do not manipulate the links to your website by buying links and do not join automated link systems to increase the number of links to your website. There are many ways to get good links (related websites, blogs, social bookmark sites, directories, etc.). IBP helps you to get them all.
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