There has been a lot of debate in recent months about how different the new Google Caffeine will be to the current Google algorithm.  Apparently, the new Google will be faster, and reach even further into the beast we know as the internet.  This means that social media channels will become more prevalent than they are currently, in Google’s search results.

This is all well and good, but how does the new Google affect my current search rankings?

Well, I’ve been told that if you’re using white hat search engine optimization methods, you won’t have too much to worry about.  But I wasn’t satisfied with that, so I went and did a bit of research and came across these two handy tools.

Choose your weapon for the battle: Google Caffeine up against the current Google

1. Split screen comparison tool

This is probably the most straight forward method of measuring the impacts of the new Google algorithm versus the old Google algorithm.  It splits the screen into two sections, one with SERPs (search engine results pages) from the old Google, and one with the SERPs from the new Google.  It’s very handy, as you can compare the results of each algorithm side by side.  I typed in the keywords “bread digital” and was pleasantly surprised to find that I ranked in the first page of the new Google, but not in the old. Thumbs up Google Caffeine

2. Keyword comparison tool

For those of you who have optimized your website (or individual pages within your site) based on specific keywords, this tool will be of interest to you.  Like the previous split screen comparison tool, this one returns results for both the old and new versions of Google on-the-fly.  The difference with this tool, is that it displays your ranking for each version of the search engine straight up, rather than returning the full set of search engine results for you to have to painstakingly search through .  As I mentioned earlier, this makes it a great tool if your sites are currently finely tuned for specific keywords and you want to validate the effects of the new Google algorithm.

If neither of these tools float your boat, you can always do your own analysis of the new Google Caffeine algorithm using the old and faithful method of opening two separate browser windows.  If this is your desired approach, here is a link to preview the new Google Caffeine – http://www2.sandbox.google.com. You will notice that the User Interface is almost identical to the old version…it is behind the scenes that the big changes have apparently taken place.

If you have any more insights about the new Google, I’d love to hear them, just leave a comment below.

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The other vital consideration you must make, to optimise your website for Google rankings, is to ensure that your content is original. Google does not take kindly to ‘duplicate content’ on the internet (in fact, Google may even penalise your website if it discovers that you are hosting content that is  already wholly or partially displayed on another website).

The question is, with billions upon billions of pages of content now forming the tangled web of information we know as the internet, where do you even start when attempting to determine if your website contains duplicate content?

I’ve recently come across a fantastic tool which can greatly assist, by the name of Copyscape.  Copyscape is an online tool which essentially runs real-time plagiarism tests on your website’s textual content. It will identify and websites who have unlawfully copied content, as well as those websites who have quoted you.

To give you an example of how Copyscape can be used – I recently undertook an experimental project, a website targetted at a holiday niche in California about Laguna Beach hotels.  Copyscape has been incredibly useful for me during the course of this project, as I have been hiring the services of professional copy-writers to write original content for my website.  Since the copy writers are located across the globe, unfortunately there is no possible way of ensuring that they are not literally copying and pasting the content they are supplying me from other websites.  But this is not a problem now that Copyscape is in the picture – all I need to do is upload the content to my site, run the URL through Copyscape’s online duplicate content checker, and any duplicate content issues will be revealed.

Search Engine Optimisation is becoming a vital long term strategy for all business who have a web presence.  The sooner you undertake the analysis of your existing website content, to check for duplicate content within your site and on external websites, the better!   Have a play with Copyscape now.

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But of course, your website cannot just rank #1 in Google for everything! To do so, would be impossible.  Rather, you need your website to rank highly for specific words or phrases that are highly relevant to the goods or services that you provide your clients.  In short, you need to target a finite set of keywords within your website/s.

Today I’ll expose a few excellent (and free!) keyword tools that will assist in your keyword research endeavours.

Top 3 Free Keyword Research Tools for Search Engine Optimisation

1. Google Keywords

This tool is actually designed to research and refine the keywords you will target in your Google Adwords search engine marketing campaign. However, this tool is of relevance to any webmaster (whether you are in involved with Adwords campaigns or not). Visit the Google Keywords home page (you may need to sign into your Google account first), enter in a short phrase or list of phrases, and you will be presented with data from Google including:

• Global monthly search volume
• Synonyms for the keywords that you entered, and
• Search Volume Trends (so that you can detect seasonal keywords as opposed to those that are constant all year round)

This is sincerely one of my favourite tools, as it can easily expose niches for you to target through it’s intuitive inclusion of similar keywords or phrases within the data.

2. KW Browse

KB Browse is ideal for use as keyword idea generator. Whereas Google Keywords is good at identifying keywords or phrases containing one or more of the keywords you entered, KWBrowse is less literal, and manages to suggest keywords that are related to your original phrase (however which don’t necessarily contain your original word or phrase).

I like to use KWBrowse to perform my keyword brain storming research, and then plug all of my ideas into Google Keywords (refer to Tool #1, above) to see how often the general public are searching for each of the phrases identified in KW Browse.

3. Google Wonder Wheel

This is a hidden little gem that has recently been released within the Google Search Engine itself.  Go to google.com (or your local version of Google) and perform a standard search.

Once the SERP (search engine results page) appears, click on the “Show Options” link just below the Google logo in the top left of the screen. The left column will expand.

At the bottom of the left column, select Wonder Wheel, and a fantastic little keyword application will open, allow you to plough through keywords related to your original search.  This is a great tool for brainstorming new keyword suggestions, that are based on real Google search data.

(If the above instructions aren’t your cup of tea, check out this visual demonstration of the Google Wheel in action here)

So there you have it –  three great keyword research tools for you to try right away.  If you have any more free keyword research tools that you think are worth their salt, please submit a comment.

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Well one of the first things you need to get right are your meta-tags. Meta-tags are pieces of text that are hidden in the HTML behind each page on your website.  Meta-tags are used describe the information that is on each webpage.

Meta-tags are important for several reasons.

1. Some search engines rank your web pages based on the information in your meta-tags. The more accurate and refine the meta-tags are, the more chance you have of ranking high in Google
2. The text stored within the meta-tag is used by many search engines in your search results.  Think of it as the textual “preview” of your website’s content that appears on the search results page of Google.
3. Meta-tags allow you to target certain keywords

The most common issue I see with website meta-tags, is that the meta-tags are not individually set for each individual page on the website.  I’ve seen websites and blogs with thousands of pages, each page using exactly the same meta-tags. It’s not rocket science to work out that by tweaking the meta-tags to suit the content of each of these individual webpages, your ‘reach’ in Google could be far greater.

So how do you check how Google is currently indexing your meta-tags? It’s easy, simply type go to Google.com (or your local version of Google) and type:

site:www.yoursite.com

For example, for my test blog sneakydevil.com I typed site:www.sneakydevil.com .  Here’s an example of the results that appeared for Sneaky Devil.

Sneaky Devil meta tag listing in Google

You will notice several aspects (some good, some bad) in the screenshot above that will contribute to SEO.

Firstly, the meta-tag description text  (the black ‘description’ text under each page heading)  is the same for most of the individual pages, which is not ideal at all for SEO.

Secondly, the URLs are not considered Search Engine Friendly.  If you look at the URL underneath the black description text, you will notice that the URL is not something that you could not remember easily, nor would it make sense to you if it was written on a blank piece of paper with no accompanying information. URLs must be a short, concise representation of what is contained within each page. This helps not only the search engines interpret what is contained on a webpage, but just as importantly, humans!

Thirdly, the page titles. Again a failing of many websites our there is to have the same Page Title hard-coded for every single page within the website.  The page title is represented in the above screenshot, by the large blue Title text. In this specific case, the page titles for Sneaky Devil are considered optimised, however the home page title could do with a little bit of work due to the unconventional method of writing one long string of words separated only by full stops.  Think of search engines being like your grade 4 english teach -   strict and conventional.  Google is programmed to interpret ‘natural’ language, so anything which deviates too much from your standard words and sentences may be misinterpreted by Google.

Go try out the site:www.yoursite.com command in Google now. You’ll be surprised what you find as you trawl through the results.  Stay tuned, soon I will show you how to update and fine-tune your meta-tags so that your website is one step closer to SEO bliss.

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It’s called the Google XML Sitemap Generator , and if you have a WordPress blog then YOU NEED THIS!

Why? Because this handy little plugin, which literally takes 30 seconds to install and generate a sitemap, does all the hard work for when it comes to getting your new blog posts and pages indexed by Google as quickly as humanly possible. This is a must for anyone who is interested in WordPress Search Engine Optimisation (otherwise knownin simple terms as ‘getting as many hits as possible to your blog’).

That should be 99% of you out there – the other 1%, perhaps you should take a little beach holiday and think about what it really is you want to achieve in life…

Everytime you edit or create a post, the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin updates a sitemap which sites on your server.  For example, the sitemap created for this site is here http://www.breadmilkdigital.com/sitemap.xml

All major search engines that support the XML sitemap protocol (of course, the most important one at this point in time being Google because of its dominance in the search engine marketplace) will then be notified of the sitemap update automatically courtesy of this neat plugin.

Having the Google XML Sitemap Generator is a vital way of ensuring search engines are crawling and indexing the most recent and relevant information on your WordPress blogs.  Go install it now.

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