Last month, Google rolled out a major upgrade to their indexing system, called Google Caffeine. This has a direct impact on every business, because it places greater emphasis on booming trends like blogging and social media. We’ll skip the technical mumbo-jumbo and break down the important details for you:
- Previously, Google may have only visited your site once or twice a month (particularly for small sales/marketing sites). Sites tended to have static content, only changing periodically.
- Today, blogs, social media, content management systems and RSS feeds have turned the web into a live, interactive discussion that is constantly changing. Scanning websites for updates every couple of weeks no longer made sense. Imagine if Google only checked CNN.com for new content once a week – their news stories could be days old before they showed up on Google!
- Now, with Caffeine, Google reads hundreds of thousands of pages per second. New pages on your site could show up in Google searches in a matter of minutes, rather than days or weeks.
- Caffeine is placing greater emphasis on new content – news stories, blog posts, even social media information – and is pushing older content to page two of search results and beyond.
Caffeine and Search Engine Optimization
Okay, cool, now Google comes to websites more often. So what? How does this apply to me?
- In our society, Recent = Relevant. If your website doesn’t have any new content, it’s losing relevance every day. Google is making it easier for searchers to filter and display ONLY content created today, or yesterday, or this week (see right). No new content? You’re off your customer’s radar.
- With this upgrade, Google is acknowledging the importance of Social Media for the web. New content is searchable instantly on Twitter or Facebook, but may only take a couple of minutes to appear on Google. You can also search Google for Social results, ignoring all “traditional” websites (again, see right).
All the experts seem to agree – recent, relevant, new content is now more important than ever. Google stated that “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches” – this can only happen if less-fresh (non-fresher? Staler?) content becomes more difficult to find. If you want to be found, you need to start talking on your website, and keep talking. Here are some things to consider:
- Start blogging! Blogging is the single easiest way to keep your site fresh, and is critical for every aspect of effective web presence management. If you don’t have a blog, it’s going to be an uphill battle to develop new content. If you don’t have one, contact us and we can help you install a blog.
- Keep blogging! Buying a gym membership doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get in shape, and installing a blog doesn’t automatically mean your site will have fresh content. Develop a schedule and stick with it. If you post something relevant and interesting once a week, it’ll do wonders for your site’s ranking and traffic.
- Utilize Social Media. Once you begin generating quality content, you’re going to want to share it with people. Social media helps you spread the word about all the awesome things you’re doing. It can also help inspire you with ideas for new blog posts. No business can survive in a vacuum – learn from others and share the things you find most interesting!
- Use a Content Management System. These days, there are thousands of applications that you can install to make your website as easy to update as a Word document. Log in, pick a page, and start editing. Click “Publish,” and your changes are live for the world to see. Can’t do that? Maybe you should consider upgrading your website.
Google Caffeine is just the most recent step toward a totally real-time web. Website content with an SEO keyword strategy must become part of every business’s marketing plan. Simply throwing a few pages up on a server and leaving them there isn’t going to cut it anymore.
How are you keeping up with Caffeine?