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Google Caffeine: how will it affect the rankings
of your web pages?
Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's next algorithm
update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that
Google Caffeine will be more than Google's regular updates.
It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that
Google uses to rank web pages.
What is going to change?
Of course, Google hasn't revealed the details of Google Caffeine
yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers
and some Google employees also talked about the next index.
The following factors might play a larger role in Google's
next index:
Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might
not get high rankings on Google.
Broken links: if your website contains many broken links,
this might have a negative impact of the position of your
web pages in Google search results.
Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a
lot of links from known spammers isn't good for your rankings
in Google's current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad
neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
The over-all quality of your website: Google's new algorithm
probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of
your website. It's not enough to have one or two ranking factors
in place.
You'll probably need good optimized content, a good website
design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low
bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also
play an increased role.
Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority
etc. will still play a role in Google's new index. However,
the effect of the different factors on your rankings will
shift.
How can you adjust your web pages to Google's new Caffeine
index?
Although Google's Caffeine update hasn't been release yet,
there are some things that you can do to increase the chances
that your website will get good rankings in Google's new index:
Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that
might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect
on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes
text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking
and fully automated linking systems.
Check your website design and the navigation of your website.
Your website should have a professional look and feel. The
navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages
should easily be parseable by search engine spiders. You can
test this with the search engine spider simulator in IBP (Select
Tools > Search Engine Spider Simulator in IBP's main window).
Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links
already play a role in Google's current algorithm and that
role might increase.
Check your links. You shouldn't link to websites that look
like spammers. It's better to focus on selected quality links
instead of as many links as possible.
Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays.
If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good
position when Google's new index will be online.
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