On June 8, 2010, Google officially completed development of its new “Caffeine” indexing algorithm.  Many marketers were left wondering, “How does this impact me?”  Well, I’ve done a fair bit of research and here’s what I’ve come up with…

• 50% fresher results – Google actually says “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.”  So that sounds like they’re now indexing more pages than ever, which means more competition.   Not good!
• Less chance of dominating Page 1 – Now, more than ever, Site Authority plays an important part in rankings.  So if you previously had your main site, plus a Squidoo lens, plus a bunch of articles showing up on Page 1, there’s a good chance you’ll no longer have such a smattering of listings.  Chances are that some of the big players like Amazon, About, Wikipedia, etc have taken over your spots.

So what methods should a marketer use in this “new world” so that Caffeine has more love for you?

• Use old domains (obviously this is easier said than done…but if you have the chance take it…)
• Backlink inner pages too (not only the home page) – Google now sees each page as its own entity moreso than before.  So just because your home page has a ton of backlinks no longer means that link juice will automatically flow through to your inner pages.
• Regularly add fresh content (which is preferably unique).

My thoughts

I’ve noticed many, shitty, 1-page, “Made For Adsense” sites drop in rankings after the latest Caffeine updates.  My take on this?  Great!

It’s embarrassing to be an internet marketer when it seems like the vast majority of our kind serves no purpose other than to flood the interwebs with useless spam.  So if Caffeine means the public will see less of this crap and more useful search results, then I’m all for it.

There’s oceans of people that are on either side of the argument.  Some say it’s best to have lots of one-way backlinks from respected, authority sites.  Others say it’s best to be constantly adding new, unique content.

Personally I think both are useful in their own way.  But the nerd inside of me wants to figure out the “magic formula”.  Should I spend 50% of my time on each, or 80% on content and 20% on backlinks?  It’s quite the quandary.

So I’ve decided to perform a test.  The parameters and execution of the test won’t be perfect, as there’s only one of me and I’m not a robot.  But nevertheless, I’m hoping it can provide some useful insight into this problem.

Here’s what I aim to do:

• Site A (CONTENT)
  
  • Niche topic to be determined
  • A subdomain of an existing generically-named domain that I own (primary keyword subdomain name, with “A” on the end)
  • WordPress template with all SEO-related plugins activated
  • Initial content will be 2 or 3 posts, keyword-rich, appropriately tagged
  • After indexed by Google, I’ll add one new article a day for a month
  • Each article will use the keywords that I’m targeting
• Site B (BACKLINKS)
  • Same subdomain setup as Site A, but with “B” on the end
  • Same WordPress setup
  • Same initial content, but each post rewritten to be unique
  • After indexed by Google, I’ll add one high-PR backlink a day for a month
  • No new posts

Sounds like fun, eh?   Does anyone have a prediction on which site will rank higher with Google at the end of the month?