SEO Consultant & Specialist in Australia

Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Now that Google Caffeine has finally rolled out (new algorithm & new interface) webmasters and seo professionals around the world have mixed feelings about the new Google. Some doesn’t like it because they have lost a lot of traffic, some are rejoicing because they have gained more traffic and some just doesn’t care at all, they are just trying to get used to the new interface ( I have blogged about it here)

But overall it is not really that bad. Why? Because webmasters, online business owners with legitimate websites, that have performed ethical SEO have been rewarded for their hard works and efforts. That’s where the saying “make a website for users not for search engine” applies. Based on my observation, Google have taken out a lot of value to backlinks that were acheived unethically (hello cheap/free blog comments). They have also penalized websites that were made for ranking manipulation, specially those with duplicate contents or worse, those who belong to the duplicate content autoblog networks.

So, if your experience with the latest Google Caffeine update is not a very pleasant one, dont blame Google… Re-think your strategy, maybe the fault is in you. Another reason might be that your competitions have done a tremendous ethical link building campaign and you’ve got left behind. Always remember to do the right thing and patience is a virtue. You cant get stable ranking overnight, it takes a lot of time, effort, proper planning and execution. Google Caffeine is now watching.. Good luck!

Note: Some of the clients that I have who have benefited from the Google Update are from the finance sector like penny stocks and another one is from the marketing section like mailing lists

Google has updated all its Datacenters yesterday rolling out Caffeine datasets results, until now these results are still strong and showing up! Is this a sign that Google has finally done it? Perhaps…

Normally, Google rolls out Caffeine datasets to 1 or 2 datacenters and it stays there for about 5 hours or so for testing purposes, this usually stirs excitement in the Webmaster community but that excitement turned into disappointment when Google pulled out those caffeine datasets results… I’ve learned from this lesson, I used to be one of the webmasters who celebrate but after seeing this over and over again in the past 3 months, I knew it was just a test and Google was just teasing us.

But yesterday, it was a completely different story, I could probably say this might be it, what almost every webmasters are waiting for. Google has rolled out caffeine datasets to all its datacenters and it hasn’t change in the last 24 hours, it is still changing slightly but in a caffeine way, they are slowly inserting caffeine results. As I have posted in one of the Webmaster forums, Google is rolling out caffeine slowly, I quoted:

Yep they are everywhere guys, but it is being rollout slowly.. For example

6 hours ago:
keyword #1: 7th place
keyword #2: 8th place
keyword #3: 96th place

3 hours ago:
keyword #1: 2nd place
keyword #2: 8th place
keyword #3: 96th place

1 hour ago:
keyword #1: 2nd place
keyword #2: 2nd place
keyword #3: 15th place

these are real result changes.. it doesnt happen all at once, its rolling out slowly from my observation

Whatever this is, it is looking pretty good, especially to those who have performed legit whitehat SEO to their own site and to their client’s websites. I will give it till the end of the week till I come up with my own official thoughts about this update, but so far so good, everything is pointing towards caffeine. I will keep you all posted.

Since Google is working towards a major search algorithm overhaul codename “caffeine” they are also working in improving the physical looks of their homepage. Late last year they have mentioned that they will slowly roll this new look out to some members in the beginning of 2010 and I think I am feeling it now. I can see the new homepage looks using Firefox just tonight, but it won’t show up when I use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome which is strange.

Click on the image above for a larger view and you will easily noticed the difference.

• New texture of the Google logo
• The main structure of the homepage
• The side menus with icons
• and more..

I am currently doing an SEO experiment to see how quick the travel landing pages I made will be indexed by Google. These landing pages contains unique articles about vacation rentals. Out of 20 landing pages which I have done 3 days ago, only 2 of then are indexed and cached in Google. I want all of them or at least most of them to be indexed so I have created backlinks of these vacation rental landing pages to 3 of my travel websites.

The first travel site I’ve used is Surfer Tour, it is a travel site that provide reviews of some of the best beaches in the world, from Australia to Mexico. The other one is called Final Destination, its a site that gives tourist information about the different cities of Europe. Surfer tour’s last cached in Google was in the 13th of February whilst Final Destination’s last cache was last 10th of February. I am hoping that this blog post experiment will pave way for these travel sites to get indexed and the crawlers will run past the landing pages links within these sites. I am hoping final destination will get re-indexed first.

I have been weighing my options, of which SEO tool should I pay or subscribe so I can get more accurate and deeper information results of a website. My 2 favourite tools are WebCEO and Advanced Web Ranking. I have installed both in my computer and have been trying them out. WebCEO has a nice Free version where most of the functionality are available to use but with limited amount of variables (backlinks, index pages etc). It’s the one I really prefer amongst the 2. AWR is also good, but there is only a 30 day trial of any of the 3 plans. It is more flexible and has a little more features than WebCEO. I just don’t like its interface, its not as neat as WebCEO. Prices for both are very similar, within the $99-$399 range.

Then one time I came across SEOMoz’s website and started using all the online SEO tools they have. I am surprised how good those tools are, especially the new one that they have called OpenSiteExplorer. So without hesitation I have subcribed at once to the Pro account which cost me $79.00/month. So far so good I am ripping the benefits of the Pro account, it allows me to analyze in more detail and depth my client’s sites and their competitions sites. It let me see the factors I couldn’t see before using those first 2 tools I have mentioned and using the manual way (ex: site:website.com in google and others). I am still in the middle of exploring  every feature of the SEOMoz Pro tool and so far everything is looking great and my investment is well worth. I will probably still get either WebCEO or AWR to complement this and to give me all the information I need in ranking my client’s sites and outranking their competitions. I recommend this tool to all SEO Professionals out there who want’s to be ahead in the SEO Industry. But remember, these tools are only complementary, you still need to come up with an SEO strategy after analyzing all the data you’ve got from these tools.

Note: Right now I am doing an experiment if this vacation rental landing page will get index really quick