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If you haven’t heard, Google is expected to rollout its latest search engine algorithm, Caffeine, just after the holidays. Google hopes the new algorithm will provide better, more accurate and relevant search results for users. But for many of us (website owners and search engine optimization providers) this can be scary stuff.

What’s New with Caffeine

Based on testing done by some other people, rumor has it you can expect Google Caffeine to be:

• Faster - Google nearly doubled the speed in which its search results are generated
• More Accurate – The new search seems to put more emphasis on keywords
• Timely – Search results seem to change faster with new articles
• Bigger – Larger index, turning up more results for each search

So what does this mean for your site?

From an SEO stand point there may be a few things you can do to make sure Caffeine doesn’t take off with out you.

• Keywords – Since more emphasis seems to be placed on keywords, get your title tags, description tags and copy chop full of them and make sure you’re using the right ones to accurately describe your products of services.
• Load Time – Reduce your site’s and pages’ load times. People get frustrated when they have to wait for a page to load with will often click back or close out of the search all together. It is believed that the new “faster” Google will rank faster loading pages higher than ones with long load times.
• Content – Update you site regularly with new, original content. Google wants to be accurate and up to date so sites with fresh and relevant content are likely to be ranked higher than sites that haven’t been updated in a long time.
• Quality Links – Link building will still be important, but the emphasis will be on high quality links that are also relevant to your site. Any old high quality link will no longer do. This goes for both inbound and outbound links.

All these changes are really just to improve search results. And isn’t that what everyone really wants – faster, more accurate and relevant results? So don’t be afraid - grab a cup o’ joe and get ready for some Caffeine!

If you are currently using Google Adwords, you may be interested to hear that Google just made some improvements to its quality score algorithm. In case you are not entirely sure, Google Adwords quality score is a major determinant in how much an advertiser ranks and pays for their keywords relative to competitors. Google’s quality score is based on several factors including but not limited to:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR)
2. Relevance of keywords in relation to its Ad Group
3. Quality of your landing pages
4. Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
5. Relevance of the keyword/ad to the search query

Essentially, the new quality score adds several new components to increase the relevancy of Google’s search and content network results:

1. Real-time calculation of relevancy of keywords/ad to search queries
2. Keywords will no longer given “inactive” status
3. First page bids will replace minimum bids

Probably the most notable variable above is the real time calculation of keywords and ads because campaign optimization enhancements will have an immediate effect within Google’s network. As the landscape of PPC advertisers is highly dynamic, changing ad text and keywords will likely occur more frequently as competitors will want to continually want higher positions and strive for a lower cost per click. In addition, “first page bids” will enable advertisers to see how much it will cost to receive first page exposure without too much guessing with max bids.

There are a lot of mixed opinions on how the above will benefit an advertiser. Over at the Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal has a humorous ending to his post in that he claims these new changes will immediately translate into more revenue for Google. I have to say that although I agree with that statement, I believe that there are many positive outcomes for SEMs that keep a watchful eye on their PPC campaigns. Moreover, I look at these changes as weeding out lesser experienced campaign managers or do it yourselfers that don’t understand the importance of a well structured and organized Adwords account, one of the most critical components in setting up a PPC campaign in my opinion.

In any regards, if you haven’t read about these recent changes and are a Google Adwords advertiser, I would take a moment to familiarize yourself with these recent enhancements.