No we are not talking about the Caffeine that fuels so many offices and comes in cups of lovely warm coffee, instead this is Googles latest change to there algorithm, the program that helps them rank websites on the internet and allows them to pull the correct results from the data base when you search for a term.

Caffeine, which is new technology that improves the indexing infrastructure is according to Matt Cutts of Google due to go live some time after the holidays, I have consulted my American to English dictionary and I believe this means in January.

Matt Cutts comments that this is so web developers can enjoy there holidays with out worrying about what effect the changes will have on their sites, although from the initial testing we have seen a well optomised and site with content that adds value to the internet as a whole will benefit rather than suffer when these changes take full effect.

The changes are designed to give a better experience to the user of Google and so if you have a search engine optimisation plan that is not spammy and that adds value to both your site and the whole of the web then you should be looking forward to the introduction of Caffeine.

Asking if it is best to spend more on Pay Per Click (PPC) or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a little like asking if you would like cake or ice cream, it normally depends on the circumstances at the time.

Pay Per Click is a great way of getting an instant boost for your company, getting the traffic in through the doors when the site is new so that you can test to see how popular the products or services you are selling are going to be, using relatively mall amounts of just a few hundred pounds you will be able to gage if people are interested in what you are promoting.

Once you know they are interested you can begin your marketing in full force, increasing your Pay Per Click budget and bringing in SEO for the site, Search Engine Optimisation is a longer term strategy than the PPC, but it does have the advantage of continuing to run even when you have stopped paying for it, although if it is stopped prematurely in a competitive market you can see the good positions drop quickly.

You are a little limited with the terms you can promote for with PPC as budget is always a concern, but with SEO you can promote for as many phrases as you like and you will find you are being found for phrases you did not even know were of interest to your visitors.

Rather than using PPC or SEO you should be using a combination of the two so that they complement each other as you move your marketing efforts forward, testing new markets with the PPC and promoting your site into the profitable niches using SEO.

Welcome back, yesterday we looked at why Google does not hate your website it is just that they do not understand what the site is about as you have not provided them with enough information or peer approval in the form of quality links.

The increase in quality links combined with targeting the correct keywords and what you will learn today will; give you a firm footing on the clime up the search engine rankings.

So our next topic is

Use of keywords on the site

When you have your keywords for your site you have to use them so the search engines know what your pages are about.

You should try and use just 1 or 2 phrases for each page on your website, make the keywords relevant to the information on that page.

The keywords or phrases should be used in the title of the page, the description and the meta keywords tags, you should use appropriate alt text on any images, try to describe the picture in the alt text, the internal links should also contain the keywords so the search engines can see what each page is about.

You should have text on the page for the search engines to go through, it is also good for your visitors as you need to describe what the products or services are that your website is discussing, 300 + words is normally good but in that text you need to use your keywords, not too often as it will sound false and your visitors will not understand what you are trying to say.

Flash based site design

Flash can look great on a site and many people use this however the search engines can have problems searching through these sites as they are made of images and there is no text for the spiders to pick up on, avoid using too much flash and ensure you have text for your visitors that is not part of an image.

There are many other issues that cause the search engines to not rank a site but generally if you follow the simple guidelines here you should find the love returning from the search engines.