It’s a reaction to the ever-increasing amount of content on the web. The official Google blog explains it like this:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index.

What does this mean for potential developments in the SERPs that Caffeine will allow Google to develop? We’ve seen the inclusion of video and real time search. Is this going to lead to more complex SERPs, moving further away from Google’s original design simplicity?

By altering their SERP generation process to reflect the rate at which content is being published, Google have made it more important than ever – and easier than ever – to drive traffic to your site via updating your content.

At Moo we’re well aware of the results that can be achieved through well optimised, well written content. Caffeine isn’t going to massively revolutionise SEO; it’s a reflection of the importance that Google – and its users – place on “fresh” content. Quality and quantity aren’t mutually exclusive, and all SEO strategies need to be user-focussed; Caffeine consolidates the importance of good SEO content.

Focus on what you want to say, and work out how you’re going to say it. If you’re struggling, there’s a treasure trove of advice on numerous blogs and websites dedicated to the business of SEO copywriting. They all agree on the basics…

Keep in mind your client’s needs, identify the correct tone for your copy, and be ready to edit and redraft.

It’s at this editing and redrafting stage that you should really focus on your keywords and keyphrases. Copy that fits your client’s needs should be easy to optimise. Exact match keywords (brand name, product name, etc) should be in place already. A review will throw up opportunities to balance keyword density, removing them from areas where they seem too numerous, and fitting them in where there’s the opportunity.

The kind of long-tail keyphrases that can significantly improve your search reach may not have appeared fully formed in your copy. Some research, however, should identify related words and common queries that existing/potential visitors are combining with your keywords when they search. Alter your existing copy to include these phrases; you should be able to identify opportunities for placing them in a way that benefits your copy. Keep it balanced, with the focus on communication, but don’t be shy about using your keywords.

Remember that when you’re using keywords and keyphrases, you’re communicating with your visitors using the same language they’ve used to find you. They expect to see your client’s name, the name of their product or service, and so on. It’s an SEO copywriter’s job to repeat without seeming repetitive; it’s every copywriter’s job to engage, persuade and communicate.

The need for content strategy comes from the changing ways in which people use the web. Visitors have come to expect more from your website than a simple storefront. Which means you need to be providing content that’ll engage and inform your visitors, at the same time as being as SEO friendly as possible.

It’s time to think about quality and quantity. Regularly updated content featuring relevant information as well as relevant keywords; that’s what’s going to win you links, retain visitors, drive conversions and get return on your investment. Tailoring content for the “long-tail” keywords and phrases that reflect the language your customers use allows you to engage them in a dialogue; you’re capturing them early in their buying cycle and building your brand at the same time.

Keep supplying that kind of content and not only are you more likely to get conversions from existing visitors, you’ll also increase your search engine ranking. That’ll bring more people to your site, who’ll engage with that content and pay you back in more links and more conversions.

Content strategy and SEO are a long-term investment; dedicate enough time to them and it should result in you being able to reassess your PPC campaigns and redistribute your advertising spend. Early content strategy and SEO work can be balanced by driving traffic with PPC. The quality content on your website will persuade visitors captured via PPC towards conversion, whilst simultaneously increasing your search engine listings.

Targeting and capitalising on exact term matches with PPC whilst optimising for broader terms in your content helps you to avoid common difficulties with on-page keyword density, and makes your content more readable. The quantifiable nature of PPC traffic, plus the amount of user experience data available through Web Analytics, can be used to tweak your content strategy; it’s all work towards the same goal, conversions and listings.

A well thought through content strategy, combined with a similarly targeted PPC campaign and supported by insightful Web Analytics is a pretty dangerous combination. By employing a content strategy you’ll generate awareness by upping your profile, actively bring in more customers at an earlier stage in their buying cycle, and optimise your website for product categories and keywords. And here’s the kicker: however your visitors get to your website, whether through PPC or natural search, high quality content is persuasive content.

Simultaneously optimising your website for the search engines, improving your visitors’ user experience, and managing your brand?  Not to be sniffed at.

Spam affects both webmasters and web users in different ways. As a webmaster spam can become the bane of your online life taking up more and more time checking and deleting comments. This is necessary so that your website and brand do not get associated with the products, scams or views that spam articles often contain. As a website user you are forced to be more selective about which comments you read and this can also make following a thread or series of comments much harder if it is interspersed with spam. Users have different tolerance levels to the amount and kind of spam that they are willing to accept. This can also be different if the user is viewing a blog regularly or has come to the blog from a search engine looking for a specific solution to their query, as users looking for a solution are more likely to scan content and identify and ignore spam content quicker than a user that is reading all the comments since they last visited.

Ok so it is pretty much common sense that SPAM IS BAD, it eats away at administration time for the site and can negatively affect the sites brand. Users experience of the site is worse when there is spam so how can you cut it out. There a many ways on the web for cutting out spam comments the most effective way is to verify each post before allowing it to be published, but this can be very time consuming and can stop real time debates and discussions from users. You can implement a CAPTCHA ((C)ompletely (A)utomated (P)ublic (T)uring test to tell (C)omputers and (H)umans (A)part) where a word or phrase is converted to an image and distorted so that automated OCR (Optical Character Recognition) programs cannot solve them whilst humans can still read them. This approach cuts a lot of spam out but also makes the submission process more time consuming and incontinent to the most valuable users to the site, the ones are generating content for your site. Finding the best method for your site requires research and testing of the different methods that can be found on the web, but hopefully it will not be long before a solution is found that is less intrusive into the user’s experience. Our main strategies on this blog are a mathematical sum and comments are moderated by humans before they are published. What methods have you found to be most successful?

Well yesterday it seems that Google has finally rolled out another page rank update showing live stats on most of their data centres around the world. It can be estimated that the page rank is updated every 3 months but in this case it has been approximately 4 or a little over since a full update was taken out.

With the improvements over the last months in the Google webmaster tools allowing the viewing of back links not yet seen in the link:wwwmoomarketing.co.uk feature of Google. This has open doors to a more realistic view of how Google looks at a site, although to giving too much away.

Hopefully we will see more tools form Google i.e. when the next update is likely to happen, allowing web masters to set goals, but it must be said that the Page Rank does always mean that a site will appear above another we can never forgot the trusted site factor and must only use page rank as an estimate of how strong a site could be

Whilst on the subject of the toolbar PageRank, there are many and frequent discussions online about the toolbar PageRank not being of use, as it is not a true or accurate representation of what a websites actual PageRank is.

Well I have a couple of takes on this, I agree that the Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate as it is exported approximately every three months and true PageRank is constantly evolving.

However the toolbar does give a good indication to both SEOs and website owners as to how well their websites are established within the internet community and also enables website owners to monitor, albeit very loosely, the progress of their SEOs.

It seriously looks like a PageRank update is occuring as I type this message.

For instance if you have the SEO for Firefox plug in, or similar and are able to view PageRank from the Google search results, perform a search for moo marketing and repeat the search a number of times, you will notice our PageRank fluctuates from 0 to 4.

So will our site update to a PageRank of 4? We have been looking at a number of other websites such as BJL, not just ours and this is occuring for many sites.

What will you be?

Before television, newspapers were the main source of advertising then television surpassed that. With the evolution of the internet, marketing to customers when they are looking for a product became possible but most online advertising resembled newspaper ads made from text and mainly static images. As internet users increasingly accept online videos, advertising may once again see a development from text to television style adds as the predominate advertising method. For this to occur there will have to be the ability to dynamically match the videos content, users location and demographic with the advertisers core messages and products of their adverts with software combining the media to seamlessly deliver it to the user.

Existing marketing campaign methods will surely remain at the core of future marketing plans but with new channels of communication with a potentially large audience appear new methods of marketing will have to be considered.

EDIT – 25 June 2008 – The future may be affected by the new top levels domain changes proposed by ICANN as discussed in the blog ’ICANN may shake up Top Level Domains (TLDs)’ on 25/06/08

Who are these mobile web users? The research has found that 67% of the users are under thirty five years of age and 63% of the users were male.

This is really important information for those companies who are interested in marketing to this audience. Mobile search engine optimisation should soon become an integral part of many companies marketing strategies.

So there you have it, not only did Google ‘go down’ last week, this week they are outputting data with errors in. I am sure however no one will hold it against them!