Fionn Downhill – Digital Shenanigans

The SEO world is a buzz with talk about Google Caffeine, Google’s new version of its search engine and the biggest change since Google was first launched is coming soon.  In fact if rumor is correct some of Google’s data centers are already switched over.  Since it is organic SEO they (Google) don’t tell us much so we will have to keep spreading rumors and speculation until caffeine is live and we can really audit the results and go from there.
From what I can see so far large authority sites will do very well.    Caffeine results will be much more relevant and if you have been doing SEO correctly you have nothing to worry about.  The long tail provides a much more relevant set of  results therefore it stands to reason the long tail SEO strategy will do better in caffeine.  We have been telling our clients for a long time to focus on long tail for more relevant traffic.  Many businesses still hold onto the old ideal that the trophy terms are the best.   Everybody is going for the trophy terms and the swift rank therefore,  it stands to reason that widening the net to the more relvant searches makes sense.   Going after trophy words has not been the best approach for relevant traffic for a long time.  One of our clients in a very competitive space and an industry riddled with spam has done very well on relevant traffic and leads  with the long tail approach.  The site owners who have stopped chasing the trophy terms and focused on content for the long tail should do much better in caffeine.  You can read more about Google caffeine here or play around in their test sandbox to see what your results might look like post rollout.

So what can you do to prepare for Caffeine. Go to Google’s webmaster guidelines and if you are not following them start now.  Start writing great content and make sure your site is the best that it can be in your space and the rest will come.  Well its not quite that simple but its a good start.

With Google’s branding affinity and caffeine the small guy is going to have to be much more creative in organic SEO to get relevant traffic.

Today we released the Beta version of our SEO Reporting, monitoring and SEO management tool SyCara.  SyCara is the public version of the in house SEO tool we have used first as Elixir Systems and now as Elixir Interactive for the past 6 years.  The tool was developed more out of frustration with the multiple tools we had to use to do our work.  No tool available was ever quite what we needed so we built our own.   Much of the tedious work of SEO has to be automated and  SyCara is the result of our efforts to ensure we created efficiencies which we could pass onto our clients.  We have been able to offer first class Search Engine Optimization Services at an affordable price for many years now and SyCara has been a huge part of our ability to do that.  There will never be a tool that replaces tenure and expertise in the sometimes volatile world of SEO.  SyCara can however reduce the number of staff with tenure and expertise needed especially if you are a large Agency offering multiple services with SEO being just one of those.  The SEO industry has never kept up with the growing need for trained staff and automation has become a natural next step to fill the gaps.  SyCara’s unique feature is that it was developed and coded by our own search strategist who has 25 years of programming experience and 13 years of experience in organic SEO.  

We are excited to offer this product to a much wider audience and some of our patent pending features are unique in the space.  Contact me if you require further information.

So what about the name you may ask?.  The answer is random but not totally Cara is gaelic for friend and Sy is the accepted abbreviation for security.  So if I had to pretend there was major logic to the name I would say that it represents a secure friend for your SEO efforts but that sounds really corny so we will go with completely random.

I just returned from a business  trip to the UK.  It was interesting to see how the recession has affected the UK and certainly my impression from everybody I talked to particularly home owners is that they have not been as adversely affected as the US well certainly not Arizona in any case.  My home is now worth 2 and sixpence not quite what I expected after 10 years in the same place. 

Anyways on to the good stuff.  The trip started very well with a great trip in Business class out of Phoenix to Heathrow.  Terminal 5 is a tranquil place and not yet suffering from the mayhem I was used to in the other terminals.   I had a wonderful time in London and completely lucked out with the Indian summer.  Seven full days in the UK  and not a drop of rain.  Visited some great restaurants and of course Harrods food Hall which is still one of the best in the world.  I travelled to Berwick on business which is a few minutes from the Scottish border.  I had the privilege of staying in this beautiful Berwick Holiday home.  This is a fully restored and modernized country home and I was fortunate enough to stay as the guest of our friends at swiftrank.  We travelled across the border to Scotland a full 10 minute journey to have dinner one evening and ate at a simple Scottish pub called the Cross Inn a perfect example of how good home cooked food can still be the very best option.  When they first told me the salmon was farmed I looked concerned and almost did not have it thinking of the farmed salmon in the US full of red dye and waiting to poison you on every bite.  I relented and they are definitely kinder to the salmon on the farms in Scotland as it was delicious added to the homemade soup and desert it was a truly great meal.  If you are ever in Berwick I strongly recommend this great pub and restaurant.  You can see more details here on Berwick Restaurants.co.uk.

I was truly shocked at how expensive British Rail was 262 pounds round trip to the North of England for a three hour journey.  How can they justify that?.  The trains did arrive on time though and I was very pleasantly surprised to get on a train with free wi-fi and electric power so no running out of battery. Not the British Rail I remember from my old days as a British rail commuter in the UK but I digress.  I have posted a picture of me with two of my beloved nieces outside a phone box in London.  I thought these phone boxes were now part of history but was pleasantly surprised to find this one in full working order in the City of London.

I was heartbroken to hear from British Airways that effective October they will no longer allow 2 bags per person just 1 at 23 kilos.  How on earth am I going to bring back 40 lbs of chocolate and 1000 tea bags now?

They still have some red phone boxes in London