Before we get on to the tricky subject of syndication, lets talk about fresh, origional content. Since the launch of Caffiene, Google, which is really the only search engine that matters these days, has been transformed. Before the launch of Caffeine Google results were dominated by pages that had been in existence for ages, meaning that if you were looking for an up to date answer to a question, you had to go to the advanced results to find it, and even then it was a couple of months out of date. Now Google indexes fresh content almost instantly which means that any new content on your site can start generating traffic instantly.

Unfortunately, there is only so much traffic your site can generate on its own, and so in order to boost traffic we need to source it from other websites. This is done by syndicating the content you have created, and the first way to do this is by using RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is exactly what it is. Most Blogs already have RSS installed which means you don’t have to do anything apart from add content to it. However, although your blog may allow for syndication that does not mean that everyone is going to instantly come to your site and use it. You have to promote the fact that you have a blog that has syndicated content on it, and you can do that at any of the directories listed below:

The second way that you can syndicate your content is by adding it to article directories, this is a little more complicated as many article sites have very strict guidelines and so this will need to be described in a future article.

The most important thing to understand about syndicating content is that it has to be entertaining, relevant, informative and above all unique.

download: This is a test mandate (1.28MB) added: 12/01/2011 clicks: 0 description: this is a test mandate to see if it works

Will Google caffeine effect your site?

Google’s most recent update has ensured that if you update your site you don’t have to wait four weeks for the spiders to re-index it before seeing the benefits. Whilst this has huge benefits for anyone who updates their site sporadically, and is especially helpful to new sites and extensions to existing sites, how does it effect your rankings?

Well, in the first instance you would have to say favorably, because updating your page will have an immediate effect.I can see this having benefits when you want people to see current offers or events. However, from a rankings point of view this has a few downsides. For instance, previously you could do an update and once your pages were updated, maybe a couple of weeks after the update, you would see a boost in rankings that would last for a few weeks minimum. However, now you will see your rankings improve immediately but the long term sustainability of those rankings will be affected because all your competitors are having their sites re-indexed in double quick time as well.

The answer is obvious, make sure you update your site regularly. It’s easy to say, but not so easy to put into practice. The best way to do this is to allocate a couple of hours each week to updating your content, adding a blog entry, video or news story. Make sure that this time is permanently logged in your diary and don’t be tempted to move it or delete it just because more urgent things come up.Matt Cutts announces Caffeine

The other day I found my daughters mobile phone languishing at the bottom of a draw, unloved and out of credit. The only time she uses it is when she’s out on her own and may need picking up at some stage. Why is this? Because now we have Facebook, and more recently Twitter. Email seems to have gone the same way for the Y generation who don’t have time to wait for a reply to a text message or heaven forbid, pick up the phone. Now, if I want to know what’s on my daughters’ mind I can check her Facebook status, or Twitter feed.

So, how is this going to affect small businesses going forward? Who knows but one thing is for sure. You have an open invitation to join the party so what are you waiting for.Before you get started the first thing to decide is in what capacity you will be using Social Media. As a business, an individual or both. Social media, however technical it may seem now, is very personal and can be a valuable tool in connecting with your potential customers.

If you have decided that your Twitter feed is going to be purely business then make sure your tweets aren’t personal and if you are going to get personal then make sure that you’re ready to share your thoughts with the world. Its not as easy as it looks.For more helpful advice check out http://mashable.com/

What do I think? well it depends on who you are. To some businesses, social media is simply a waste of time. For instance, I have a client who is a solicitor specialising in road traffic offenses. His clients come looking for him on Google normally within hours of getting arrested. I can’t imagine any one of them would have bothered looking him up before hand, just in case.

However, I have hotel, coffee shops, boutique online stores that have customers that depend on their customers spreading the word and coming back to buy again. For these businesses social media is the most important new marketing tool of the last ten years.

The following video describes why?

This will be music to the ears of optimisers across the world who have been worried recently about the changes Google have been making to ensure that results are more personalised. Over the last few years I have seen my results become heavily biased by my previous search history, making the tracking of my seo work very difficult.

I have recently spent some time following a few more people on Twitter and the strangest thing happened. The more people I followed the more people followed me. Now, I’m not saying that’s the only thing I needed to do. I added my website, and blog so that people could see I wasn’t a spammer and I only chose to follow people who had relevant experience or businesses who I thought I could learn from. However, I couldn’t help thinking that this was just a little bit to easy.

My question is this. Is it time to abandon any attempt to get your website ranked and instead use links in social media applications such twitter, facebook, linkedin, digg, delicious, and PRweb, who lets be honest have a much better chance of getting ranked on the search engines, and ultimately get your message across faster and to more people?

There is definately an argument that says the next time you have time to update you site, you may be better off adding a few hundred new people to your “I’m following” list. It seems reciprocity is all the rage.

Why? Well there’s a variety of reasons, but mostly it’s time, and the fact that most people don’t know how to.

Content Management Systems are supposed to make it easy to keep your website up to date but to be honest they don’t provide either of the two most vital things required. One being time, and two being inspiration.

So, what can you do when you know that every day that goes by your little site is slowly falling down the search engine rankings because you can’t think of what to update it with.

Well, here are a few ideas.

1. Talk about someone else. Find something that’s really bugged you recently, that appalling bloke from The British Nazzi Party, The England football/cricket/rugby team, shop assistants, Mcdonalds’ incredibly inconsistent coffee, Saturday night television, why you can’t find anything on Google these days, and I could go on. And have a rant! OK its better if its relevant but its a start.

2. Do a top ten things that…….

3. Do a how to….

4. Write a review about something you bought

5. Get someone else to write something. There are plenty of people out there who are excellent blog ghost writers.

Whatever you do don’t give up, your website is not going away and its your front window.

Well now Google has come up with custom alerts. This is an excellent new feature that allows you to set specific events that once triggered send you an email and alert you to the fact. So, if your CTR drop below 3% you get an email or if your average position drops below 5 then again you can set an alert. 

Very useful.

Anyway, I finally managed to get my wonder toy working again and have been having great fun exploring all the new stuff on the 3.0 platform.

This morning I was spending a few minutes browsing the net before getting up and came across an excellent article which I thought I would share.

How to use the best 40 features of your Iphone 3.0

It does exactly what it says on the tin, enjoy.

Now, I’ve don’t hear too many people saying “Gosh I wish we had a different search engine to Google” but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that, up until now, all search engines have done pretty much the same thing and Google did it the best. But Microsoft have decided that the best defence is a good offence as their recent advertising on You Tube testifies.

Has Google had it their own way for far too long? I don’t know, but I know that Microsoft will have done their homework before embarking on a project of this magnitude and if they didn’t feel that there were chinks in the Google armour they wouldn’t be in the game.

From a search engine optimisation view point its still too early to say but I am smiling as I’m getting good listings for my own clients already:

“Drink Driving Solicitor” – Sweetmans Solicitors – Page one.

Not bad for a site thats only 6 months old.�