Google Caffeine

Many SEO sites have been reporting that web page load times could potentially effect rankings in the future, including SEO Lair.  This news come out of various interviews with Matt Cutts from Pubcon Las Vegas.  While most SEO news hubs are going conservative and saying web page load times “might” or “potentially could” effect rankings, I’m just going to come out and say it will be included in the Google Algorithm some time in the future.  I’m saying this for multiple reasons.  The main rational is that Google and all the other search engines try to deliver two key things:  relevant results and a good user experience.  That being said, the user experience is devalued if Google sends users to web page that load slower than the user wants.  Google has also paved the way for implementing this in their US Patent Application #20050071741.  Check out my post about SEO news from pubcon for more details on this.

So we know that webpage load times will be important but how can you tweak your site for better performance?  There are a few excellent resources out there to answer this question:

• The first is the web performance best practices document from Google.  This guide provides information how to optimize your cache, miminize round trip times, mimimize request times, minimize payload times, optimizing browser rendering, and more.
• The second place to look for information on reducing webpage load times are a set of two tools from Google.  The Page Speed Tool will conduct a series of tests on your site based on best practices.  In addition the tool will assign scores for each page and give helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.
• The next tool is called Closure.  This nifty tool with take Java script code and compress it.  This tool not only removes dead code and optimizes the remaining code, but it checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript downfalls.
• The final resource I suggest using is the SEO Site Checkup tool.  The SEO Site Checkup tool reviews most elementary on-page issues but also, more importantly, checks site performance metrics.  These include the use of inline styles and Java script, nested tables, page caching, page compression, CSS images, Java script sizes, and more.

Using the tools referenced above you can increase your webpage load time.  It is important to start thinking about ways to make your site faster today.  You don’t want to be caught off guard when Google announces it as an influential factor and all your competitors already have fast loading sites.  This is an even bigger concern for E-commerce sites.

Have an opinion about this post?  Think webpage load times won’t effect rankings in the future?  Post a comment and share your thoughts!

If you are in need of some real life caffeine, check out Javita Gourmet Instant Coffee.  It is the latest herbal infused instant coffee on the market!

Google Caffeine: Speed Now For Rankings Tomorrow is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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1. Ways To Reduce Your Web Page Load Time
2. Key SEO News From Pubcon Las Vegas
3. Showing Success Outside Of Core SEO Metrics

Pubcon Las Vegas SEO

A Pubcon conference was held recently in Las Vegas and included a site review session featuring key players from Google, Microsoft, and Bing including Matt Cutts,  Derrick Wheeler, and Nathan Buggia.  While multiple sites were reviewed with the usual intermediate/advanced recommendations being pointed out, there were a few note worthy issues that came up which I’d like to highlight.

Keyword stuffed footer links are potentially harmful: The Chief of Webspam at Google pointed out that multiple uses of keywords in anchor text, particularly in the footer, can be construed as being potentially manipulative.  I always run across sites with a ton of sidebar or footer links which contain potentially spammy.  I would link to one but I don’t want to reward them with link juice .  Most of the time these sites have an extremely large footer with upwards of 10,20,30+ links.  Yahoo has also come out and previously stated that removing potentially “spammy” footer links will have a positive impact on rankings.  Additionally, some sites which are “sandboxed” or penalized because of  manipulative footer links.

Website load times can effect organic rankings: Matt made it a point to communicate that website load times can have a positive impact on rankings.  He also pointed out that sites will not be penalized for having slower load times.  The idea of website load times effecting organic rankings mirrors the engines’ desires to deliver the most relevant results as well as a good user experience.  Website load times not only effect SEO results, but can have a lasting impact on other metrics such as bounce rate.  A recent study was conducted by Akamai that outlines user opinions and behavior regarding webpage load times.  The results were very surprising.  A user in 2009 expects a site to load twice as fast it did in 2006.  Additionally, almost 50% of users surveyed expect a site to load in less than 2 secs.  Now here’s where the bounce rate factor comes into play.  40% of will bounce from a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.  Over 50% of shoppers surveyed claim fast page load times are important to their loyalty to the site.

In conclusion, avoid repetitive use of keyword anchor text in your footer and make sure your site loads in a timely manner.  It doesn’t matter if your ranking #1 for a competitive keyword, if your site take too long to load, you won’t see the desired outcome out of that visitor.  This is especially relevant to E-commerce sites.

Have “spammy” footer links worked for you?  Do you think all this hoopla about page load times is nothing but a waste of time?  Feel free to post your comments or email them via webmaster at SEO lair dot com.

Key SEO News From Pubcon Las Vegas is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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3. Ways To Reduce Your Web Page Load Time

Google's Twitter Algorithm

How will Google incorporate live twitter updates into their search algorithm?

News recently came out that Google and Bing will be featuring live twitter updates into their search results.  The big question here for SEO’s is how they will incorporate twitter into their algorithms.  In order to shed some light on the potential of Google’s Twitter Algorithm, I’ve looked at how different Twitter grader algorithms work and any additions to these that we might see go live.

One of the more popular site’s out there that will rank your Twitter profile is the Twitter Grader by the guys over at Hubspot.  Now while I wouldn’t suggest you optimize your Twitter profile for this tool, it is still useful for gauging success.  Over on their blog, Hubspot details what factors are part of their Twitter Grader’s algorithm.  Here’s a list of potential factors in the Google Twitter Algorithm:

1. Number of Followers: More followers leads to a higher Twitter Grade (all other things being equal). It is easy to game this (more on this in a later post) but never the less it is an important piece of the algorithm.

2. Power of Followers: The more followers the people following you have, the better.  This is a core part of Hubspot’s algorithm and will surely be part of the Google and Bing Twitter Algorithms as well.

3. Updates: More updates generally leads to a higher grade — within reason.  This is risky and potentially could reward twitter spam.

4. Update Recency: Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades.

5. Follower/Following Ratio: The higher this ratio, the better.  The weight of this factor decreases as the user excels in other areas of the algorithm (so, once a user gets to a high level of followers or a high level of engagement, the Follower/Following ratio counts less).

6. Engagement: The more retweets a user receives, the higher their grade.  This makes sense since the more references their are to your profile, the more powerful it potentially is. Further, the value of the engagement is higher based on who is being engaged. If a user with a very high Twitter Grade retweets, it counts more than if a spammy account with a very low grade retweets.

Of these 6 core Twitter metrics, some will be more useful than others.  I think the most important of these are engagement and power of followers.  Retweets will most likely turn into the equivalent of “inbound links” for normal sites.  Of the 6 above, update frequency will be counted the least as it will be extremely hard to control spam if this is a major factor.

Aside from these six metrics their are others that will most likely surface when Google and Bing launch their Twitter algorithms.  Two factors I would specifically like to touch on are relevancy and lists.

Relevancy: Relevancy is a huge part of Google’s current algorithm and it only makes sense that it will be included in the Twitter algorithm.  I foresee relevancy factoring in like this: What is the target profile tweeting about?  This will involve monitoring keyword density on all profiles.  Google will then look at your followers.  Is their “Tweet Density” similar to yours?  Google’s algorithm will reward people for having followers which are relevant.  If tweet a lot about SEO and have 600 followers yet 400 of those followers tweet mostly about furniture, the algorithm would reflect that.

Lists: Lists are a relatively new feature that most people don’t know what to make of.  I’m not sure how it will be incorporated, but it will be.  Here are some potential ways this could happen: A list to follower ratio.  This would record how many people following you have added you to a list.  I believe this metric has some serious value.  Another possibility could be a simple count of how many lists you’re on, however, by itself, I don’t believe that metric adds much value.

It will be interesting to see how Google’s Twitter Algorithm turns out.  I’m sure the obvious factors might change before this is truly incorporated into the engines.  If you have any opinions about which factors will be weighed more heavily than others, please post a comment!  With our minds combined, we might end up getting pretty close!

Google’s Twitter Algorithm is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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1. Creating Winning Backgrounds For Your Twitter Profile
2. Google Real Time Search Revealed

Be An SEO CHampion

Everyone wants to be the champ. In terms of professional SEO this means delivering results based on success metrics. These are usually things like SEO revenue, organic leads, etc…Whatever your SEO goals are, achieving high rankings for relevant/high converting keywords is always a supporting metric- sometimes the primary one.

The SEO champs are those who are keen to Google’s algorithm and act accordingly. With over 300 factors in Google’s Algorithm, this can be a daunting task. A good starting point is to figure out which factors are the most influential and develop your SEO strategies with those ranking factors in mind. But its not all about optimizing for the top ranking factors.

There are also plenty of actions SEO’s can take that might hinder rankings or potentially hurt a clients site. I know what your thinking…I can’t possibly reverse engineer Google’s algorithm! I don’t have time to do endless and tiring split tests! Well lucky for you I’ve compiled the top 5 most influential ranking factors as well as the top 5 practices you want to stray away from. Note that Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving. 10 minutes after this article is posted, things could change. That’s part of the fun!

Top 5 Most Influential Ranking Factors:

1. External Links with Keyword Anchor Text
2. Quality of External Links
3. Keyword Use in Title Tag (Specifically in the first phrase)
4. Diversity of Link Sources
5. Domain Authority and Trust

Top 5 Most Hurtful SEO Practices:

1. Cloaking With Deceitful Intent
2. Site Downtime and/or Inaccessibility
3. Links from Spam Link Farms
4. Hidden Text (Using Either Colors or other HTML methods)
5. Links From KNOWN Link Networks

Of course there are more influential and harmful SEO practices, however following the top 5 will put you on your way to better rankings. While this seems simple, the details of each factor is complex. Check back with SEO Lair next time for an in depth analysis of each factor. Find out what each factor is, how to see if your doing it right, and how to change if your not.

Be An SEO Champ is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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