How Google Caffeine changed the way small business websites should be built

Google Caffeine and Website SEO

One of the things I am ask many times about, from friends, family and clients is how I am able to get first page rankings for so many websites, for so many different keywords, in a relatively short period of time.  Up until now, I have guarded this “secret” as it has been one of my formulas for successful search engine optimization and local search optimization for my clients.  But since you found this page, out of the millions out there on SEO strategies, I will share my knowledge with you on the subject.

What is Google Caffeine

In order to understand how to get your website to rank, first understanding what Google Caffeine is and how search engines (in particular Google) index their results pages is important.  Below is a short video from Matt Cutts, Google Engineer that explains how Google finds your website, and ultimately how they place it on their search engine.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs]

Now that we understand how search engines work, next step is to understand what Google Caffeine is, and understanding what this is, ultimately should change the way anyone builds a website and performs SEO on that site.

Back in June of 2010, Google announced that they were changing the way they were indexing websites.  The old method entailed them finding a website, and crawling the entire site (or what could be found) in one session, then deciding where each page should be placed within their index.  Fast-forward to current, and Google realizes that the amount of information available on the web was unfathomable (along with some perceived competition from a search engine called Bing).  So what does Google do?  They change they way they index, so they can deliver fresher, more up-to-date information more rapidly to their end users.

With the amount of information out there from websites, blogs, videos, social media and everything else, this has changed the way that Google looks at any website.

How to leverage Google Caffeine and your Small Business Website

Now this is all well and good, but the question still remains: How does a small business take advantage of Google Caffeine for their website to gain more customers?  And the answer is pretty simple.  Since June of 2010, I have met with close to 200 small businesses, and not one of them knew about this change.  So, below I will explain in 4 simple steps how to leverage Google Caffeine for your business website:

Build Your Website The Right Way

In my experience, when talking to small business owners, there still seems to be a hang-up on websites being built in the format of: Home, About, Services, Contact Us etc. etc.  That is the wrong way to build your website these days.  Google Caffeine does not index your website that way, your customers don’t search “About your company”, so a website built this way will do little to help you and your rankings.

Instead, think about, or better yet write down every service, product and problem you solve for your customers.  Get detailed in this exercise.  After your done…guess what you have started, an outline of individual pages for your business website.  Don’t worry if you have 30, 40 or even 50 pages outlined, because as I will cover in a future article, website content is king for search engine results.

Choose the right keywords to target with each page

Now that you have your list of future pages, pick your top 10 most important, and really think about what your best prospect would be searching on-line (keywords & keyword strings) and write these down.  I recommend not trying to target more that 5-8 keywords per page.  If you get to broad, or to many, the chances of you coming up on the first page of the  SERP’s drops.  Below I have given you an example of a Transmission Shop, and their Hummer Transmission Repair page.

Service Offered: Hummer Repair for Transmissions, Clutch, Transfer Cases, Differentials, 4X4 service

Keywords: Hummer repair, Hummer transmissions, transmission repair Hummer, hummer clutch repair, Hummer Transfer Cases, Hummer 4X4 repair

Compelling Page Titles and Page Descriptions

Now that we have our pages, services, and important keywords, we need to come up with a compelling reason for people to click on our website on the SERP’s.  This is where compelling page titles and page descriptions come into play.  Page titles are hyperlinked in blue on the SERP and page descriptions are the 2-3 lines of text below that.

When choosing your page title and page description, it is important to use the keywords you have deemed important in both fields, while still making it readable and enticing.  In the above case, we deemed “Hummer”, “Transmissions”, “Clutch”, “Differentials”, “4X4”, “Transfer Cases”, “Repair”, “Rebuild”, “Daytona Beach”, “Orlando”, and “Florida” as important keywords.

With Google Caffeine, if your don’t tell Google what the page is about in precise terms, the chances for you ranking for those keywords will be much tougher.

Content Is King

Now that we have the structure down, its time to get down to business.  Create content that directly supports the keywords and prospects you have decided to target with your page.  Include pictures with alt text associated with the keywords you have chosen.  Include your keywords in heading tags on the page.  Also include variations on the keywords, product or service variations…and most importantly…the areas your customers come from.

Once you have done the above exercises for each of your pages on your website, submit to Google, and wait for the traffic to come in.

Search Engine Optimization & Website Services

Visit our case studies page on Transmission Shop Advertising to see real life results using the above process.

Thanks to Precision Transmission Center in Daytona Beach for being the Guinea Pig in my Google Caffeine experiments.

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