The true function of search engine optimization parallels an old adage, that the cream will always rise to the top. If your brand equity is solid, then you will naturally be among the top of index results. In the world of interactive marketing, that starts will delivering a fresh website that mixes creative design and flash applications. You must also have quality copywriting. Good copywriting not only tags at your emotions. Ingenuity is also established by clearly highlighting your corporate accomplishments with a bundle of images. Your site architecture must be linear and make navigable sense to the user, who always can move on to another option.

It could be from their smartphone, tablet, or game console. You could have a memorable logo and sound commentary, but a potential customer must be able to solve their problem regardless of channel. If not, then that picture told to friends is worth more than a thousand words. In lost earnings.

Good brand images that search engines love take time to cultivate before they can be impenetrable. Think of any leading sneaker company, such as Adidas. They could survive a website that ranks poorly on the search index because of their long history of providing quality goods in the athletic apparel marketplace.  Adidas are recognized on every continent in every town.  If they tried, however, to pitch Adidas as a brand with two stripes, you get crickets.

In conclusion, search engine optimization is only as good as the value your firm provides to visitors. The keywords help to paint the picture strokes for a website. Advertisers need to keep this in mind for 2011.

It will be interesting to see how this affects search engine campaigns in the future, as new content is added to the search engine results pages at a much faster rate. Website owners typically rely on a steady flow of routine traffic with a Search Engine Results Page position. Google Caffeine may threaten that organic movement. Ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than in the past. Content that you and your competitors create will have a faster impact on the results index. Nevertheless, the objective of any marketer is to deliver optimal value to your audience. In time, the optimization will catch up to speed.

Marketers will need to implement a targeted content strategy to ensure they are updating their sites frequently with relevant information. Programmers also need to build clean and clear sites that allow for this new content to be easily found and indexed. The code will need to be sharp, otherwise your keywords could become conflated or even dated next to rivals.

Google Caffeine will also have some effects on SEO methodology. Our own Prasad Sistla and Asif Anwar, two of our top SEOs, share their thoughts on the key points to pay attention to.

Page Load Time: Incorporating speed means that page load times are going to be an even bigger factor than in the past. While a low page load time is typically two seconds, it is more crucial with Google’s Caffeine jolt. This means that flash objects, videos, content, and so forth will need strong optimization for expedient loading.

Keywords and Phrases: Keyword relevancy is now a premium, meaning that your SEO campaign requires even more attention. This will be a challenge for some SEO professionals, but in these cases, the best ones will make adjustments and continue to thrive.

Social Buzz: Caffeine will really benefit social media and news results for general search inquiry. We also believe that more specific keyword searches will return more website results and advertising shelf space. It will benefit webmasters and SEO specialists in all phases of content to maximize traffic.

Content/Site Updates: Caffeine places further priority on regular content creation and site updates. This means that old, static sites sitting at the top of SERPs will need to produce fresh content to maintain their top standing. Sites that blog regularly and make regular adjustments will benefit.

Ads: PPC management will become more important as well. Caffeine prioritizes organic search results rather than paid advertisements. Thus, the advertisements used are even more important. The necessity for a strong page load time greatly affects your PPC management and Quality Score for AdWords.

Sitemaps: Sitemaps and navigation should be restructured to have deeper pages with fewer clicks and at good positions. Spiders will index the web faster and deeper, without going onto clumsy, discombobulated sites.

Avg Time on Site: Google Caffeine will factor in the amount of time that users spend on sites. Again, sites that have good content and great user experience will rise to the top. This is really Google’s ultimate goal, to deliver the best possible results and improve the user’s experience.

Caffeine’s indexing could also benefit e-commerce sites that have quality products. Since results will be updated on a constant basis, the quality of traffic should improve, leading to more click-throughs and ultimately sales. Try Caffeine for yourself here to see the difference:

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

By using broad match, your ads are exposed to many search queries with minimal setup time. The problem is, you may not actually want to show up for all of those broad matches.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Say I run a local bike shop and sell high-end road bikes. My shop doesn’t sell used or refurbished bikes, only brand new, top-of-the line models. I start a PPC campaign on Google and bid on the broad matched term, “road bikes”. Seems like a no-brainer, right? The problem is that if someone searches for “used road bikes”, my ad appears. My ad could also appear is someone searches, “cheap bikes”, which also doesn’t fit my business. Not only am I getting charged if that person clicks on my ad, but I’m making a bad impression on a potential future customer by driving them to a site that doesn’t have what they were looking for.

As basic as matching types are, many companies do not know how to use them properly. Just Google “used road bikes” and see how many of the Sponsored Links don’t actually click through to a page dealing with used road bikes.

But broad match isn’t all bad. It has it’s place. Let’s use that same bike shop example. If the name of my store is Blueliner Bikes, I would setup “Blueliner Bikes” as a broad match term because I want people to see my ad even if they misspell the store’s name or forget exactly what it’s called. Maybe they type in “Blueline Bikes” or “Bikes by Blueliner”. With broad match, my ad would be eligible to show for both of those searches.

If you are using broad match for some, most, or even all of your keywords in Google, be sure to use the Search Query Performance report. This will show you all of the keywords that triggered your ad. If there is something showing up that isn’t driving conversions or isn’t in line with your business, add that keyword as a negative match. This will keep it from triggering your ads again.