Caffeine launches after Christmas – How will this affect your SEO?
Yesterday Matt Cutts announced on his blog that the long awaited roll out of caffeine will happen shortly. They will begin by going live at one data centre (or ‘center’ if you’re across the pond!) only, and the full roll out will be after ‘the holidays’ (which I take to mean after Christmas).
Google have been kind enough to wait until after the busiest time of the year for many businesses. This makes me think that the search experience will change more than Matt Cutts lets on. He says “Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays.”
So, how can you make sure your listings aren’t going to be a casualty of this roll out?
Well, I would say, go back to basics, make sure the coding of your site is clean, lean and, well… mean. Make sure you offer useful, relevant copy to your potential visitors. Give something back to your online community by participating in social media and social networking, use forums to benefit others (not spam them), even start a blog if you haven’t already.
Unfortunately Google weren’t quite kind enough to leave the caffeine sandbox live so we have no way of testing if any alterations we’ve made to sites in preparation for this roll out have been effective. Like everything else in SEO, it’s just going to have to be a waiting game.
