The Web site is expected to fully launch the last week of January.

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In the first weeks of January, Google began rolling out a new and more power version of their search engine, code named “Caffeine”.

Is your Web site up to snuff? Has your Web design company or developer taking into consideration the future of Google search and SEO in general? If you are using the World Wide Web as part of your business strategy or if you are trying to figure out how to incorporate a Web strategy, understanding what “Caffeine” has in store is important.

It is believed that “Caffeine” or at least the first incarnation of “Caffeine” will not be earth shattering. Don’t expect search engine ranking position (SERP) to change overnight. However, if your Web site is not on its game, expect to be shuffled out of search results quicker.

Basically the new Google will index faster, be more accurate, and be more comprehensive. This is what it means to your Web site:

• Google will be able to keep up with fresh content better. This means that you need to continually create content for your site to help maintain your relevance. This is not a new concept be is now more important than ever.
• Accuracy… That’s a scary one. Not only will Google try to match the best page to the searcher’s keywords, but they will take into consideration the searchers behavior on the results page and their behavior once they arrive at your page. This puts some power is the searchers hands. This boils down to: A keyword optimized page is not going to be enough. A sites user interface is important as well.
• Being comprehensive is a goal that Google has always strived for. “Caffeine” will allow them to do that better than ever. Themed sites or sites with a specific profile have always done well in Google search results, expect those sites to continue to do well. With more pages being indexed, your site should be comprehensive in terms of content.

In the end a good Web site with good design that is organized and well thought out and features good SEO, will continue to be a good Web site. If you have a good design/development/SEO team, you don’t have to worry too much. Otherwise, you may want to reconsider your Web strategy. Abraxas Web Design & SEO is always ready to help you fill in the gaps.

I use many Firefox plugins for many different reasons, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll stick to writing about three of the most useful for the purpose of Web design and development.

FireBug

If you use CSS, Firebug is a quick way to monitor and debug both your HTML and CSS in real-time from within Firefox. Firebug goes another step and allows you to do the same with JavaScript. Before there was Firebug, you had to hunt through your CSS to find the code that was not generating the desired result on your Web page. Once you found the code and made your edits you had to upload it to your server and hope that it fixed your problem. If it didn’t, you had to start all over again… Firebug eliminates all that trial and error. Debugging time is greatly reduced which means your chances of bringing your projects in on time and on budget is greatly increased.

Read more about Firebug at the Mozilla download page.

MeasureIt

Often times as a designer and developer, I find myself measuring design elements on the screen. Before MeasureIt, I had to look through code, rely on my memory, or make a guess. This simple little tool lets me measure any element on the screen for a quick estimate on how many pixels an element takes up. Again, I find myself saving a huge amount of time over the course of a month.

Download MeasureIt from the developers website.

Web Developer Toolbar

This Firefox plugin has so many uses that I could never cover them in one post. I can perform tasks that are important as a developer and tasks that are important to SEO. Basically it works by adding a tool bar above the browser window. A few things that this plugin will do: Disable and clear cookies for a session, quick access to code validation, browse like a robot, and so much more. This plugin will assist you with many high level tasks that your couldn’t do before or took a lot of time.

Read more about Web Developer Toolbar and all of it features at the author’s website.

These three Firefox plugins will help you design and develop better sites in less time. Don’t give up on your other browsers. I still love Internet Explorer and Chrome and you should always check your pages in all the major browsers.

Let’s get right to the good stuff.

1. Increased Budgets for SEO – Companies will focus more of their marketing budget on SEO. According to Forrester in their report on interactive marketing tactics, the top three areas where marketers feel there is the most potential over the next three years is social media, online video, and SEO. The bottom three is radio, newspaper, and yellow page ads. 2010 may prove the best year yet to be in the SEO business.
2. Binary Search Engine World – Google continues to grow its market share and Bing and Yahoo slip in the latest studies. With Bing to provide organic search results for Yahoo in the near future and the “all but” merger of the two, expect the Yahoo search engine to be marginalized. This is going to leave us with about an 80/20 split between Google and Bing with Google in the lead. This could be a good thing for SEO experts. Looking at and comparing search results from Google and Bing, Bing may be producing more relevant search results. If Bing can continue to produce high quality results 2011 may be their year. In the end search users just want to find what they are looking for in the fastest way possible.
3. Google Gonna Keep its Traffic – Traditionally Google wanted to send traffic to the most relevant web pages based on search terms. These days and the trend will continue to grow, Google is keeping more of it traffic. If you were to search “weather 37412”, Google will give you the current conditions and a 4 day forecast without ever leaving the search engine. You can get the latest baseball scores, track your shipments, and even sample music from your favorite artists. Expect more of this type of information to be available. Bing is also trending this way in much the same information.
4. Yahoo Site Explorer to Disappear – One of the best SEO tools available for free, Yahoo Site Explorer, will vacate the cloud and leave all the SEO experts who relied on it in the dust. I believe this will be a product the Binghoo phenomena. Surely other tools will emerge to take the place of good ole Site Explorer.
5. Real Time Search will Burst the Bubble – All the rage for the last few weeks is that Google is integrating real time search from Twitter. My opinion is that this is truly diabolical in the sense that these “real time results” at the top of the search results pollute the organic results on the first page. It’s akin to digging out bones from a plate of fish. If Google really wants to include these results, they are going to have to find a better way. This whole Twittergate debacle reminds me of the early days of SEO when you could be at the top of Infoseek just by submitting the freshest page. I understand that Google is testing, and I hope they see the light. I’m hoping that the introduction of Caffeine will solve this problem…

Honorable mention: Google Caffeine – It’s a little too early to see how Caffeine will affect SEO, so I have left it out of the top 5. Early results are that search engine ranking position (SERP) will not be affected by Google’s new technology in a tangible way. This technology is expected to increase Google speed in both finding content and displaying pages. Time will tell how it really affects SEO, but let’s hope that it sorts out those absurd Twitter tweets.

There are plenty other things happening in the world of SEO that will affect how web pages get ranked and how we use SEO in general, but these are a fair representation of the 5 trends that will be most apparent. If there is one thing that you can count on in SEO, it’s that nothing ever stays the same.

Mike Collins & Associates (MCA) came to us asking for a new Web design that would both help them build on their current client base and be used as a resource for their existing clients. MCA’s previous design was done in-house and based on templates. They wanted to go beyond the original design with a more compelling look.

After meeting with the “stakeholders”, we began thinking about the Web design that MCA needed. Today we have a total of three mockups that we have presented. The first mockup is a very clean, straight forward design that focuses on information. The second mockup again straight forward and clean but put more emphasis and graphics and animation to draw the user to the information. The third mockup is a combination of the first two. These mockups were rendered with Adobe Photoshop.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the strategy of attaining higher search engine ranking position (commonly called SERPs). It’s obvious that most Internet users use the search engines to search for a solution to a problem, whether that problem is finding the best digital camera or finding a local florist. Knowing this, shouldn’t your website be positioned in the search engines so that you can take advantage of Internet users searching for the products and services that you offer whether those services are intended for a local, national, or global market.

While it is obvious to most of us that Internet users use search engines, it is not always obvious to Web design companies how to help their clients harness the power of search engines. When hiring a Web design company you should be aware of their capabilities and ask for proof. If you do not understand exactly what SEO and cannot ask the right questions, you should research the subject via your favorite search engine. As with any important purchase  or marketing decision you should be informed.

A few things you should be aware of when querying a Web design company:

• SEO begins with the structure of the website. Search engines expect certain things to be in place.
• Search engines have a hard time reading Adobe Flash. This means that if your site is very Flash heavy or if your content contained in Flash, search engines will not understand the breadth of your website and not rank it well.
• Search engines do not follow JavaScript links. This means that if you have a menu system that relies heavily on JavaScript, the search engines will ignore those links.
• Search engines read text. If the content of your website is contained in graphics or anything other than text, the search engines will not understand your message which can negatively effect your SERPs.
• SEO is more than just optimizing your website, there are many offsite variables that can effect your SERPs.

These are just some quick things that you should know so that you can ask the right questions of any prospective Web design company or developer. You should do a bit of your own research. You don’t have to become an expert, just know a few basics that will help guide a very important aspect of your company — your website.

Disclaimer: Chattanooga Search Marketing Blog features SEO and Web Design tips for the benefit of our readers and clients in order for them to understand what we do and help them with their own SEO projects. As with any SEO technique, these techniques and tips are based on our experience and are our best opinions. Our opinion may change and this tip may still exist.

It has been a little while since I started this series of articles. I expect that everyone is waiting on pins and needles to learn more. After I bashed PageRank in the previous installment; you are wondering why you should read this. Honestly, PageRank isn’t going to help you much with SERPs.

Here’s what it will do for you: PageRank is Google’s way of measuring how important your Web site (actually Web page) is to the overall World Wide Web. If you have a PageRank of 10, then you must be very important. If you have 0 PageRank, then you aren’t important at all. Most Web site home pages have a PageRank of 3 or lower. Depending on what your PageRank is that is how Google treats you – but not in SERPs.

Here it is boys and girls: The higher your PageRank is the more often the Google Spider will visit you. Not only that, Google will allow you to have more pages that are linked to that page in their index. That’s it. That’s the whole purpose of PageRank.

If you have a large Web site, it is important that you have a high PageRank so that more of your pages can be found by searchers with the Google search engine. If you are creating fresh content all the time, like with your blog, it’s important to have high PageRank so that your new posts will quickly be indexed.

Should you be concerned about your PageRank? Not really, honestly. If you are doing other things to promote your Web site, working on your content, etc. your rankings will follow whether or not you have high PageRank.

Here are a few things that you can do to improve your Pagerank (I won’t go into “nofollow” and “dofollow“ here):

• List your site with important directories like Dmoz a.k.a. Open Directory Project.
• Participate on blogs other than your own.
• Contribute to forums…I’m sure you know something about something.
• Build a nice Web site with plenty of good content to encourage other sites to link back to you.
• Hire a legitimate SEO company that understands PageRank and how to build it.

It’s really not that hard, but it does take work. If you try to take shortcuts, it inevitably will come back to haunt you and all your hard work will be for naught.

One finale note on PageRank: PageRank is just that, a rank for a page. Every page on your Web site can have a different PageRank. When I refer to PageRank for a site, what I really mean is the PageRank for your home page or the first page on your Web site.

The art and science of SEO is ever evolving, we have ongoing R&D projects so that we can measure and test our techniques. This particular project is drawing to a close after eight months with some really promising results in a competitive, yet new keyword space. We went head to head with well established and corporate sites with tons of money to through around. We spent zero dollars other than our time to achieve results that are very respectable.

To view some of the results as screen captures, head over to: SEO Eight Month R&D Project

As most “real” experts in the SEO business know, we are constantly fighting false information, and companies offering less than desirable SEO techniques. Just as buying anything, the informed buyer is a better buyer. That’s the goal for this article, to inform the buyer.

The main things to watch out for are:

• The SEO Amateur: This is someone who doesn’t really know much about SEO, but will tell you otherwise to get your business. At the end of the day, you end up with  bad results and wasted time and money.
• The Submission Scam: If someone offers to submit your web site to thousands of search engine and directories, they are about to take your money smiling.
• The Keyword Scam: The informed business owner can avoid this one, but you have to be on your toes. A true SEO expert, will always perform research and share that research with you to help determine the best tactics.
• Avoid Google Hell: SEO experts offering banned and spammy techniques can get your web site sent to Google hell and will never return. You are not Odysseus.

To read the complete article head over to Selecting a Web Design Firm and SEO Expert in Chattanooga.

Disclaimer: Chattanooga Search Marketing Blog features SEO tips for the benefit of our readers and clients in order for them to understand what we do and help them with their own SEO projects. As with any SEO technique, these techniques and tips are based on our experience and are our best opinions. Our opinion may change and this tip may still exist.

In the previous article I introduced some of the common myths about Google PageRank. There are many myths, but the three that I listed are the most common and are somewhat tied together. The reason for discounting the myths is simple. It’s important to work on other aspects of your website and not to just grieve over PageRank night and day.

Let’s get right to it with the first myth, websites must have a high PageRank to get high rankings in Google or SERPs. We’ll call organic search rankings SERP or search engine ranking position.  As an example I did a couple of searches with Google to test my theory. The first term that I used was “best ipod”. Someone trying to figure out which iPod to buy as a gift might search this. I imagine that this would be a pretty hot search term to have a page one ranking with if you are selling iPods. My results are as follows: The page with the number one ranking has a PageRank of 1. The page with the number two rank has a PageRank of 2. The page with the number three rank has a PageRank of 3.

I did another search for “buy lcd tv”. LCD TV’s are a hot consumer product and I would think that having a high SERP for the term would be highly desirable for someone selling LCD TVs. The pages that are ranked number one and two in Google for this term has a PageRank of 3. The page that is ranked number three has a PageRank of 4.

With just doing a few searches for some high traffic non generic search terms we can see that maybe not having the highest PageRank will be the end of the world when it comes to achieving high SERP.

The second myth, websites with high PageRank get the most traffic from Google, is tied to the first myth in the sense that if the myth were true, the sites with the best PageRank would capture all the good, organic traffic because they have high SERPs. As we saw, the higher your PageRank is doesn’t necessarily have an impact on your ranking. Think about it like this. If PageRank was that big of a factor, CNN (PageRank 10) would get all the traffic and the only way to sell anything would be to have a link from a CNN article.

The most important aspect of SEO is achieving a high PageRank for a website is doomed based on discounting the first two. A high PageRank does come with bragging rights. If you are really trying to impress your friends and fellow webmasters, bang away achieving that 6+ PageRank.

Having said that with a bit of fire, don’t give up on PageRank. There are some important reasons to work on improving your PageRank. In Part 3 of this article I’ll tell you why PageRank is important and we’ll get down to figuring out how to improve it.

Subscribe to the Chattanooga Search Marketing Blog RSS feed so that you get Part 3 of this article without having to remember to come back.