Since the conception of the original Google search engine back in 1996, Google has undergone many revisions and updates to their site including the change in how the search engine functions, and the additional services that integrate into Google’s listing page. Yet none of these updates really changed the main structure of the Google algorithms until the most recent upgrade to Google Caffeine.

Many web developers saw immediate changes in how their website’s presence on Google site, even though they may not have changed their own website for some time. Some listings climbed, many fell.

When Google launched Caffeine they wanted to help ‘clean up’ the web at the same time, and in the process rewarded websites that were built well, and penalized sites that weren’t so good though may have got away with it in the past.

So what are the major factors to ensure your website ranks well on Google Caffeine?

1. Website Loading Speed
If you have a fast loading website, Google will most likely reward you and give you prominence over the slower loading websites, even if those other websites may be keyworded better than yours.
Try and avoid elements of your website which may make your site ‘clunky’, such as slow loading Flash graphics or Flash Navigation, large video content on the initial pages of your website, optimize your images so they load fast, and overall keep a nice balance between text and image content so each page loads as fast as possible.

2. Overall quality of your website
Previous versions of Google, webmasters were often told to minimize keywords to just a handful of the most specific keywords. To achieve a broader search spectrum, add a few more keywords than you used to, but don’t go overboard.
Alt tag images with a few more keywords than you used to, and overall ensure the body content of your page has the correct text with the specific keywords you want to be found under.

3. Broken Links
It’s already a common element of a good search engine listing that broken links can affect your ranking, but even more so than ever with Google Caffeine. Check and recheck that your links are all working correctly, and include a 404 page which has a link to your sitemap, to avoid any dead-ends by the search engines.

4. Linking to bad neighborhoods
While it can work to your advantage to get backlinks from other websites, do your research on these sites first and make sure they are not linked to spammer sites, or your ranking will drop swiftly.
stay away from Link farms which have a bad reputation. If in doubt, check them out in Google by searching the website name and the words ‘spam review’ after it.

5. Get rid of any spam elements from your site
Google hates spam! remove anything that could be considered spam by Google, including over-use of keywords throughout a single page, hidden text, or even text that is a similar colour to the background. If you have more than one duplicate website, at least optimize it different from the original and move it to a different hosting provider so the IP address doesn’t match or Google will instantly recognize it’s the same site.

6. Review your website’s design and structure.
Make sure your website is user-friendly and easy to navigate. If it’s hard for site visitors it’s probably hard for the search engines too.
Each page title and description should be unique and relate to the content within that particular page.

7. Obtain links from social media websites and social bookmarks.
Links from social networking and bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook and even Twitter give you huge brownie points with the search engines in regards to your placement.

Work on these features above and then resubmit your website to Google and you should see a change in your ranking in as little as a few weeks.
Don’t be surprised if you drop off the search engines totally for a couple of days.
Often when resubmitting a website with some major changes Google likes to start with a fresh listing to give you maximum results…if you deserve it!

Author: Chris Bourke – Devision Design and WebSEOCoach
Chris Bourke is a web designer and developer in Australia, who also specialises in SEO and affiliate marketing.
Follow Chris on Twitter: twitter.com/webseocoach