Matt McGee wrote in Search Engine Land recently that the much-anticipated Google Caffeine Update, originally tipped for rollout “after the holidays” by Google’s Matt Cutts, has been pushed back several months. My own observations of sites I manage suggest this may not be the case, and that Google, as usual, may be obfuscating the real story.

For those not in the loop, Google’s Caffeine update of their search index or indices is a major change in the way they “search and index” the web. While its implications, particularly on organic search rankings for millions of sites, will not be fully known until it does roll out completely, we do know that it’s going to be a big change.

Like many other internet marketers, I was checking my analytics very closely just after the holidays for signs of the Caffeine update. Contrary to what Matt McGee learned from Google, it’s my observation that major changes in search results are already occurring, all in a strikingly similar pattern, based on what has happened to three totally unrelated sites that I manage.

Beginning with a remarkable spike in Google traffic on the weekend of January 2-3, all three sites have received major increases in traffic, due not, as far as I can see, to changes in rankings, but to a major increase in the raw number of keywords delivering organic traffic, and that traffic has remained higher ever since (though with some fluctuating).

The three sites share no common marketing tactics, no similar “optimizing”. They are in unrelated, diverse niches.

Site A. Average monthly traffic about 125,000.

Site B. Average monthly traffic about 1,500.

Site C. Average monthly traffic about 500.

Around January 3, almost as if someone had fired a starting pistol, traffic from Google for all three sites started to rise.

Here are the numbers:

Six factors lead me to think this is a result of the Google Caffeine update. If I’m correct, the impact of Caffeine could be huge.

• The three sites are unrelated
• The pattern of increased keywords leading to increased visitors is consistent across all three sites
• All three sites began to spike within the same 24 hour period
• All three sites, prior to this event, experienced steady traffic patterns, with no unusual spikes
• All three sites have remained at or near these levels ever since
• No SEO or marketing was done on any of the sites at the time to account for the spikes

To date, these vastly-improved traffic numbers have remained high or even improved.

February versus January organic Google traffic shows:

• Site A      – 3%
• Site B   + 16%
• Site C     + 9%

Maybe it’s not Google Caffeine. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe I just got lucky.

But I don’t think so. The patterns is too clear, especially the start date. I believe this is Google Caffeine. And, as I wrote in an earlier post about Google Caffeine,  I think the impact is going to be enormous.

Google recently updated the way they crawl and index the web.  The update is called “Caffeine”.

One of the things I have noticed with the  websites I optimize, post-Caffeine, is that almost all of them are showing increased traffic, with increases ranging from 10% to 50%. I’m very proud of that. And I’m using it as an introduction to explain why we don’t offer “cheap link building,” and never will.

I guarantee you that SEO experts who offer cheap links (you’ve seen them — 500 directory links for $50, that kind of deal) haven’t seen any traffic increases post-Caffeine. In fact, anecdotally, I’ve seen SEO’s complaining on forums that their traffic has gone down.

What has Caffeine done? Caffeine has been one more step in the improvement of Google’s search results. They still have a long way to go, no question. I still see lots of garbage links pushing websites to the top of the rankings for some searches. But inexorably, Google is getting better and better at what they do, which is deliver the best quality results to people who are on the internet looking for something.

Google has a big, vested interest in continuing to battle spam in the search index and deliver good results. And who wants to go up against Google? Not me. I try to line my websites up with what Google wants and rewards, not what they are actively trying to find and dump from their index!

What does this all have to do with cheap link building?

Links are still the currency of the web, whether from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, bookmark sites, forums, or wherever. But good links, the kind that you build naturally, either with great content or great creativity, or both, are not cheap.

Bad links are cheap. Bad links, like those you get from 3 way reciprocal linking, or forum spam, or “hosted pre-sell pages” (geez, that looks a lot like a fancy term for “paid links” to me!) or 500 directory links written in barely intelligible English, are all relatively cheap. (Except for hosted pages, which are incredibly expensive).

The biggest problem with all these spammy links is that eventually, Google may well catch up with whatever scam your SEO company is running, and pull the plug on the game. The result? Your website could disappear from Google’s index in the blink of an eye. And there is no sicker feeling for an internet marketer than staring at page 1 of Google, where just yesterday your website site sat at # 3 or #6 or # 2, wherever — and now, to see no sign of your domain name at all. Gone. Frantically, you click through pages 2 – 10 of the Google results, and the awful truth sinks in — your site hasn’t just slipped, it’s gone, baby, gone. Oh, that feeling of panic. Followed, justifiably, by despair. Your business may have just gone belly up.

All because you thought you could get that website traffic the easy way. With cheap link building.

But enough of the dark side. What’s the alternative?

The alternative is best practices link-building — link building like it should  be done. It’s very much like P.R. — only it’s all done online. Your link building needs to combine knowledge of the online world with knowledge of old-fashioned P.R.

I charge $85 an hour for my link building work (and all my other SEO work). Link building is by far the most difficult, with its unpredictability, its high rate of rejection, and the constant need to come up with new campaign ideas, and new content that is worth linking to. But in the end, it’s worth it — both for me personally, and my clients. I sleep better at night, without having nightmares about Google’s next update, and my clients, over time, build a website with an organic backlink profile that will continue to grow, and attract links, indefinitely.

I figure it takes me about 2 hours — in research time, content creation, pitching stories, and follow up — for every good link that I build. That’s about $170 a link. Sure, it sounds expensive. It’s a lot more expensive than 500 links for $50. And it’s takes longer to achieve, and is less predictable, than slapping up some hosted pages somewhere. But in the long run, the links I build will give back far more — in traffic, in website growth, and in peace of mind — than the cheap links ever will.

So I’ll keep doing it the way I have for the past 6 years. And I’m looking forward to the next Google update.

I was preparing for a conference call with a client this morning,  and got to thinking about keyword research, targeting, audience, and so forth. And one word leapt into my mind that encompasses the keyword research aspect of SEO. The word is focus.

What should you focus on during the keyword research phase of an SEO campaign? You should focus on your potential audience, or site visitor, and you should focus on identifying the correct keywords to capture those visitors.

It sounds simplistic, but it is often overlooked, and it is important to keep in mind during SEO. Stay focused.

If I am selling frozen New England clam chowder via my website, it is tempting to target a broad range of keywords. The thinking goes: if I spread the net widely, I’ll get more visitors to the site, and potentially sell more yummy clam chowder. Wrong.

Two major pitfalls await those who do not focus on the target audience and the keywords to reach them. If you target broad keywords, such as “frozen food”, “New England”, “soup”, and so forth, what happens is:

A. You are competing against millions more websites in the search results than you need to be. You are competing against New England tourism, frozen fish, and sites that provide soup recipes, just to mention a tiny fraction. This competition makes it harder, if not impossible, to rank well for much of anything.

B. Even if you do happen to rank well for some terms, the majority of your visitors will have no interest in your product. Not only is all that traffic “wasted”, it is detrimental to your longterm SEO, because the fact that most visitors to your site “bounce,” or leave the site immediately after arrival, is duly noted by the search engines, and your ranking suffers.

The answer to this dilemma? Don’t be afraid to focus. Focus on those narrow keywords that will bring truly relevant traffic to your website. Focus on clam chowder lovers, especially New England clam chowder. In this case, you can probably focus on all chowder lovers, since there may well be Manhattan clam chowder lovers ready to defect, but keep it focused. You will succeed far better in the search engines, as they will perceive your site as an authority in its niche. And your visitors are infinitely more likely to stock up on your scrumptious frozen chowder.

When it comes to keyword research, stay focused.

SEO guru Danny Sullivan has a thoughtful, and thought-provoking article over at Search Engine Land, wherein he states that “On Friday afternoon, Google made the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines, and the world largely yawned”.

That’s a fairly strong statement, but Danny is one of the world’s top SEO experts, so it’s worth paying attention.

What’s going on here? Google, in a blog post on Friday about Personalized Search, let the world know that the personalization of search results (especially the tailoring of said results to a searcher’s previous search behavior) will in future be applied to all searchers of the Google indices, whether or not they are “logged in” via a Google account.

Previously, as I can certainly attest, if you had a Google account and you were logged in for a session, you could expect to see all kinds of personalization and other tweaks and twitches in your Google search results. Now, everyone will get the same treatment.

What kind of personalization are we talking about here? According to Google, they are trying to give users the most relevant results. Let’s say you have a search history (going back 180 days, which is the current Google holding period for your search history) of looking at sites about big cats, lions, etc. If you search on  the term “jaguar” you will probably see results about big cats first. But if your history shows you are a fast car buff, you might be looking at the latest offering from Jaguar Motors. And so on.

Danny thinks it’s all a really big deal. From the perspective of search industry watchers, it really is. And he’s right, it deserved a much bigger announcement from Google. The shift from homogenized search results to personalized, or unique search results, is a ground-shifting change in the essence of search technology.

But does the broader world really care? I doubt it. I think most people — and this is just my opinion — but I think most people are getting a little jaded by the amount of internet-related developments that are churned out in the space of a single 24 hour news cycle. Let’s be honest — it’s getting a little crazy. Hey — now you can tweet all 6,557 of your Facebook friends straight from your mobile app as you are standing outside your favorite restaurant (why is new technology always so concerned about new restaurants) and let them know (in 140 characters or less) that the  joint is offering 2-for-1 pitchers of beer between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Hooray! Chalk up another small victory for mankind in the development of civilization. Sorry Danny, but I just don’t think that many people would care about this latest development from Google. They probably think their search results are already personalized anyway.

So did Google underplay the switchover? Of course they did. They released it on a Friday afternoon, for God’s sake, which of course is an automatic acknowledgement that the announcing entity is trying to downplay something.  But does the expansion of personalized search matter that much?

Actually, I think it does, in the long run. I think it’s an important technological step, but I don’t think we will be able to see or judge all the ramifications for quite some time.  And for all the SEO types who complain and moan about the change — get with the program. This is not new. It has been coming down the pike for years. It doesn’t change the underlying golden rule of SEO — make your content worth linking to. That’s what it’s all about.

Google’s much-anticipated, major update of how it indexes and ranks websites, known as the “Caffeine” update,  is scheduled to start rolling out after the holidays — and since the holidays are just about here, now seemed like a good time to speculate on what it may bring and how to adapt.

There is no question, as this Search Engine Land article makes clear, but that it’s going to be a huge update. Reading between the lines of Google’s comments, it’s my opinion that for SEO operatives,  it could turn out to be the Mother of all Google updates, eclipsing even the notorious “Florida” update of 2003.

Why do I think this?

• This isn’t just an update. It’s the rollout of a whole new architecture of Google Search.

• As Vanessa Fox noted in her Search Engine Land article, Caffeine appears to impact Google’s “crawling, indexing and ranking” behavior. Geez. What else is there?

• Google’s spam czar Matt Cutts is on record as saying the changes are “primarily in how we index”. Okay — well, that certainly could be the whole ball game, no?

• Everything Google does these days demonstrates their unwavering determination to dominate the web. Controlling spam and reining in SEO tactics (not the same thing, btw) are just a part of this, but a significant part.

That said, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about what the update is likely to contain that will directly impact SEO, and I’ve got three predictions to make.

1. Rewriting of dynamic urls to appear static will no longer just be discouraged. The new algorithm will penalize the ranking of sites that do it. Over a year ago, Google officially said “if you’re using URL rewriting, you could be doing harm rather than good.” And they went on to say “providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.” In other words, folks, they basically said “don’t do it”.  The SEO community got their collective knickers in a twist over this, and continue to rant about it. But I submit that the SEO community is miffed simply because url rewriting is something they have been doing for a long time, and it has become institutionalized. And like any institution, they like to hang on to the status quo. SEO’s got caught napping when it transpired that sculpting page rank wasn’t actually working, and hadn’t been for nearly a year — and no-one noticed. Don’t get caught napping on this issue. Why do I think Google will slam url rewriting in Caffeine? That’s easy — it’s a twofer. URL rewriting is interfering with how Google likes to crawl and index, and they can attack the problem by doing more than just discouraging it. They can penalize it. Last September’s announcement was just the warning shot. Caffeine will see the battle joined. Second, URL rewriting is an SEO tactic, and they can plug that little loophole at the same time. A classic two-for-one, and it fits the spirit of what the Caffeine update is all about (”Crawling, indexing and ranking”).

2. Blog comments, even those that are not “no-followed”, will lose whatever remaining SEO juice they have. Blog comments are such a glaring example of spam, and a major pollutant of the web, that it’s hard to imagine why Google hasn’t been more clear already that a link found in a blog comment will pass no juice or “signal” of any value.  I expect this to become very clear in the Caffeine update.

3. Crappy directories will get their final comeuppance. I know, crappy directories (you all know what I mean) aren’t supposed to give much SEO boost already. But you know what? They still do, to some extent, if a site gets enough links from them. I don’t think Google sees them as more than a minor irritant, but what the heck, if they’re doing a major update anyway — why not send a signal? So I anticipate some boat rocking in this area — maybe even some penalties for sites that exceed a certain portion of their links from that particular corner of the SEO underworld.

So, those are my three holiday predictions for what’s coming down the ‘pike with Caffeine. Love to hear what others are expecting, or what you think about my prognostications. Overall, I think and hope that Caffeine will do good things both for users and for SEO. What’s good for users is good, long-term, for the SEO industry. The interests of users and the industry are not misaligned. If anything, they should be on the same page. In 2010, maybe they will be a bit more so.

Your title and title tag are two of the most important elements of any blog post. They let the search engines know what the post is about. This is where you want to put your best keywords. But how do you know which are your best keywords, especially for a newsworthy topic?

Time to check out Google Insights, an amazing tool that lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.

I was writing an article about swine flu today, and visited Google Insights to find out whether people are searching on the phrase “swine flu,” or “H1N1″ or similar variant. I plugged in the phrase “swine flu,” and set the filters to show me how it was being searched on the web (as opposed to image, or video search), in the United States, in the last 30 days. Here’s what I learned:

As you can see, the term “swine flu”, despite the best efforts of the pork industry, is being searched on far more often than searches that include H1N1. And though you don’t see it in this table, I also found out that the top three states searching for info on swine flu are Alaska, West Virginia, and Mississippi.

So I have my answer to my question of which keyword to use in my newsworthy blog post or article: “swine flu”. Google Insights is both incredibly useful, and a lot of fun to play around with.

If you use Google Adwords or one of the other major pay-per-click programs, don’t throw money away paying for useless visitors to your site.  If you use “Broad Match” or “Phrase Match” as a keyword matching option, make sure you know what kind of searchers these options are sending you, versus “Exact Match” where you know exactly what the searcher is looking for (an exact match to your keywords).

Let’s say your online store sells baby products. Let’s say you think you are bidding on searchers who are looking for “Baby Outfits”. If you use the Broad Match keyword matching option, for the phrase “Baby Outfits,”  you might be paying for visitors to your site who are looking for the following things:

• how to make baby outfits
• cheap baby outfits
• baby outfit patterns
• baby outfit stores in Reno
• baby gorilla Halloween outfits
• outfits selling those baby cheese things

You get the picture. Broad match can be really broad. Yes, you can add Negative Keywords to your list to block words like “cheap.” But can you really block all the possible permutations that people might be looking for? Probably not. And you may not want to pay for most of these people to come visit your site. They’re never going to buy anything from you.

In Google Adwords, here’s how to check which search terms are sending visitors to your site. Go to your Ad Group dashboard. Click the “Keywords” tab. Then click the button called “See Search Terms”. Voila: set the time period you want to review, and you can see exactly what terms you have been paying for, including Broad Match and Phrase Match. It may be an eye-opener.

Google is king of search, so when there is something as powerful as Google Maps (aka Google Local) it makes sense that not only do you want your local business listing to be in there, you want it to be optimized properly so it is most effective in getting traffic to your site.

Your listing in Google Maps (Google Local) is free. That’s right — it’s free. Google doesn’t charge you a dime. And setting up your listing correctly, so it brings you the most traffic, while tricky, is something we can do for you.

Recent client stats on Google Maps (last 30 days) — and remember, the clients paid zero for these clicks to their sites:

Client A:    3,041 impressions (views); 141 actions taken; 126 clicks to the client website.

Client B:    1,901 impressions; 140 actions; 93 clicks to client website.

Client C:    1,251 impressions; 75 actions; 53 clicks to client website.

(”actions” also include clicks for “directions” and clicks for “more info” on Google Maps).

Source: Google Local Business Center, 9/2/09.

Remember, these clicks are local potential customers — since they are searching on Google Local, it’s automatic that they are in your local area.

Is your website optimized for Google Local Maps?

(If it isn’t, contact us).

Do these 3 things to get your business found 3 different ways on search engines:

1. Get a website.  Don’t believe any company that tells you you don’t need a website. You do. It’s the basic building block of your online presence. A website is far more than just the equivalent of a listing at some place like Merchant Circle, or Yelp, or whatever. A website allows you to fully control your message to your prospective customer. It allows you to spell out in detail what your product or service is, and how it is better than the competition. You can include any features you want on your site: text, images, forms, audio, video, games, news, RSS feeds, FAQ’s, etc, etc. The secret sauce — a large asset like a website gives you a multitude of ways to get found in the search engines. A multitude. Because today (who knows where it may be in the future) content is still king when it comes to SEO and search engine ranking success. If you don’t have a website, you need to get one. And you need it done right.

2. Build your online presence out from your website. Imagine your website is the central hub of your internet marketing. You build out from there, making sure to cross link, interlink, and cross-reference all your online properties. What do I mean? For example, add a Twitter account. On your Twitter page, you provide a link back to your website. From your website, you link to your Twitter page. Keep your Twitter page updated — remember, content is king. And Tweets, even at 140 characters, are real content.

Then add a Facebook page. As a business, you can set up a special Facebook page called — well, it’s just called a Facebook Page. But it’s intended specifically for small businesses. And guess what? If you build your Facebook page properly from step one (ie before you even name the page) it can often get found as a stand-alone result in the search engines! Imagine that. You might own a landscaping business in Hometown, Ohio. And when potential customers search for “Landscaping Services, Hometown, Ohio” your business could actually have the #1 and #2 results on the search page: one result for your site, one for your Facebook page (which of course, links back to your site).

3. Do you blog? If not, then it is time to do so, if you are serious about getting your business found on the internet. Remember, content is king. And if content is king, blogging creates fresh content, the kind that those greedy search engines like the best. And here is where you can get your third listing, simultaneously, in the search engines. Again, the searched phrase is “Landscaping Services, Hometown, Ohio.” Only this time, you get the top 3 results for your business! #1 for your website, # 2 for your Facebook page, and # 3 for your latest, cutting edge (ouch) post on lawn care in Hometown, Ohio. Even if you don’t get the top 3 spots, you may well get 3 spots on the first page, or 3 out of 10. With results like that, a searcher is almost certain to click through to your site, and start reading about how your company is the best one to provide the service they need.

Think about search engines as hungry monsters. The content you create on the internet is fodder for the search engine monster. Feed it what it likes to eat, feed it frequently, and it will love you back.