Digging Through the Noise Surrounding Caffeine and Mayday
Anyone who has a site or two that was affected by the new Mayday algorithm change is surely looking for answers. All the search changes were part of the reason I Almost Quit last month, to focus more on local business. I have a few busy sites of my own sites that are down slightly in traffic, and finding answers is important to me also! :-)
First… Matt Cutts Video. (I posted this link last week, but in case you missed)
And Now for Some of The Noise!
What I am finding in my daily scan of authority sites and recaps from SMX Advanced 2010:
Caffeine = The Way the Information is Stored, Retrieved and Displayed. (Nothing to do with ranking)
Mayday = A Search Quality (Not Spam team) Algorithm Change, Handling the way Sites are Ranked in Search Result Pages (Nothing to do with Caffeine)
Now for some Keynotes…
- The Changes are 100% Algorithm -- aka -- Don’t fight it… Deal with it
- Navigation Matters (Best content within 2 clicks of homepage)
- URL Structure Matters (Think Hierarchy and clear to understand!)
- Bounce Rate (Although Denied by Matt Cutts) is More Important than you think! Use Webmaster tools and Analytics to correct high bounce rates. (A high bounce rate is anything above 0%)
- Sites like Mahalo, eHow, LiveStrong, etc… well… you try to find them in SERP’s! (Demand Media must be fuming!)
- Matt Cutts says that Paid Links can now be found Automatically! (FUD?)
- Speed… How Fast is Your Site? Make it Faster!
- W3c Validation Not Factored into Site Ranking Better (But errors do slow down load time, see previous tip)
Small Changes May Have Big Effects!
(Disclaimer: I am using the word “May” in this because Google tells nobody what may have caused the issue… Everything I personally do is just a test!)
I have been testing on one particular site of my own that has dropped some the organic search traffic… and doing EVERYTHING I can do myself, to affect the change.
- I moved to a different dedicated server to speed it up! Decreased page load time from ~4 seconds to ~1 second!
- Going through Analytics from Last few Months to identify previous TOP Pages, and MAKING SURE they are easy to find ands within 2 clicks of any page!
- Going through ALL of those popular pages, to reduce bounce rate!
More to come on whether it makes a difference or not, but as you can see… the changes I am making are focused on the USER, not the search engine!
What Have You Found? Anything?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Google Caffeine Update in Full Swing?
- Google Makes Caffeine Official
- Digging Out of The Google Supplemental Index
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Mark,
I’ve been going back through my analytics to identify keyword combinations that I used to receive traffic on, to look for an opportunity to produce new, relevant content pages around those keywords.
I’ve also been hearing rumblings about the ever increasing importance of links since the MayDay update.
I think all this translates to more work on our end to try to regain the lost traffic. But I think the historical analytics can give you good insight on where those opportunities are.
@Greg – For myself – I am focusing on making the visitors that ARE being sent, happier.
- In analytics, find the highest “referral <> bounce” pages, and look at them to reduce bounce rates. (1 click = 100% bounce = bad)
For me.. I am starting at the highest volume… if a page gets 200 clicks and has a 70% bounce, its my first priority.
- Optimizing page for the keywords driving traffic
- Optimizing layout for further clicks ONsite
- If its an offer page, moving the offer to a second tier page, and noindexing it. Then funneling the visitors to the new offer page, versus offsite.
Theres a lot to it right now… but have a pretty indepth psot started that will post next week.
ANY results you find are welcome also! And… GOOD links definitely make life better!
Mark
Gah!
So much to think about.
It’s hard to know which way to turn.
I pity the people who have 100′s of sites!
@Tao – Not that bad really Tao… just some adjustments for user experience.
In the end… its all a good thing anyhow! :-)
Sorry for the caps but, INSTALL A CACHE PLUGIN ON YOUR WORDPRESS SITES!
Use WP-Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. I immediately saw my traffic go up after installing these. Even sites that didn’t seem to take a hit are getting more traffic.
@Mark S – Yeah man! Makes a big difference! I have been able to get just about every site on a shared host down to the -2 second load time range…
Not sure traffic is up due to it, but its a nice change for visitors.
It says here: “Mayday attempts to make long-tail searches relevant, while Caffeine tries to look into each online document…Ohye compares Caffeine update to having the ability to wash just a single shirt in a full load of laundry. Caffeine can increase document freshness by at least 50%, she says.” Here’s the page: http://makalay.net/google-tells-webmasters-to-prioritize-content
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