Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Google Caffeine and Legal Marketing

SEO algorithms and Internet marketing techniques are changing as a result of Google's new web indexing system called Caffeine. A news story, blog post, or other item of user-generated content will now benefit from Google Caffeine's 50% faster, fresher results for web searches.

Searchers will find links to relevant content much sooner after publication than was possible ever before. This is Google’s competitive response, in part, to Twitter and Facebook.

Here are the implications for law firms and legal marketers:
  • Google index now is updated on a real time basis
  • Fresh web site content increases in importance
  • Sitemaps need to be updated in real-time or at least more frequently
  • Upsets the apple cart for SEO algorithms, although meta tags and inbound links remain important
  • Social media content enhances integrated web visibility
Overall, marketers need a content strategy (website-social media-SEO-etc.) across platforms to maintain high visibility.
 
Google Caffeine was launched in June, and you may notice that things like Google Alert notifications are appearing faster. Read Google's announcement here.
 
 

1 comment:

Gyi Tsakalakis said...

Margaret, no doubt about it, if you're trying to "get found" in google, you have to have a content strategy. However, legal professionals must also be mindful that their content builds their reputation in a dignified way. Too many lawyers are are getting addicted to "rankings crack" and sacrificing professionalism for visitors.