Freshen Up with Google Caffeine - give your SEO a jolt

Two blogs in a row talking about Google? Nope, not on the payroll, but just coincidence as Google keeps releasing new products. In this case, it’s a brand new search algorithm called “Caffeine”

In a Sydney Morning Herald article last week, Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president and head of all its engineers, was quoted as saying the changes are "huge", while 20 year search veteran Amit Singhal said Caffeine was much bigger than the hundreds of other changes the search giant makes to its algorithm every year.

So what’s the big deal?

In the past, Google, like other search engines, has indexed the web on a layered basis, some indexes get updated quickly, others at a slower rate. This has lead to some websites and online content taking quite a while to be indexed.  With caffeine, that’s all changed, the focus is on new content, with indexing sometimes taking place within minutes of new content being published, and rankings apparently favouring new content over old.

What does that mean for the average business website? Potentially, if you’re not updating your site with new content on a regular basis then your ranking is going to slip, whereas if you are changing page content regularly, adding blogs to your site and using social media such as twitter then the chances of improving your ranking are very great indeed.

As “caffeine” has only just been released it’s too early to tell exactly what the impact will be, but one thing is certain, with the majority of web searches using Google, we simply can’t afford to sit back and wait.

This change makes it more important than ever to have an easily used Content Management System controlling your website so that you can update content at anytime, from any internet connected computer. If you’re a SiteSuite customer, you already have those tools to update your website content on a regular basis. We also have a blogging module that can help to keep your site content fresh, and we can provide guidance on how to effectively use social media as part of your site optimisation strategy.

So if you need a jolt of caffeine in your business, it’s time to start updating your site right now.