A new announcement has taken the world of SEO by storm – A new initiative by search engine leaders Google, Yahoo! and Bing to make life a little easier for webmasters who want to add rich snippets markup to their web pages. The difficulty lies in the fact that all search engines ask for data to be configured in a different way.

With the launch of schema.org, search engines offer a common set of schemas for the addition of rich snippet markup to web pages. There is absolutely no doubt about the benefits of Schema.org from the webmaster perspective, but what of the user. Can the user experience and appreciate the benefits of this new development?

The answer is – Yes they can. This can best be explained with an example.

This is an example of a rich snippet. It offers a collection of constructive information about the review of X-Men: First Class.

The benefits of Schema.org for users like you and me can be understood from this rich snippet.

A complete information package

What do you need from a movie review? You want to know if people actually liked it or not. The example gives you a clear picture in terms of the reception that the movie has received, till date. Just one look and you have all the information you need. You don’t even have to read the review. You can take an informed decision just by looking at the snippet.

Structured Information

The information on offer follows a structure. If you look at it closely, it offers you a star rating and it also offers you a percentage. The percentage tells you about the number of people who have liked the movie (figures are pertinent to the site). It also tells readers about the number of reviews available on that particular site. When you look at the snippet, you know what to expect and the amount of information about that particular topic available on the site.

Best Possible Information

The fluff is removed and you get information from the best possible sources. You know you can depend on the information that you are looking at. More importantly, the information is offered keeping in mind the different requirements of a user. So, somebody who is only looking for the ‘stars’ will get what he wants, while somebody else looking for a ‘percentage’ will get what she wants and so on and so forth.

Saves Time

We are an impatient bunch of people when it comes to searching for information on the World Wide Web. We want information that is complete and that too quickly. We want to make an informed decision on as limited information as possible. Search engines offer us just that. A look at the rich snippet and we are done. More importantly, they offer us the kind of information that tells us whether we should access the particular link or not; whether it’s going to be useful for us or not.

All this and a whole lot more is a result of Schema.org. This is just a tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of benefits that we might not even notice and take them as a natural course of events. We might not realize that our ‘search’ lives have benefitted through the collective efforts of the Search Engines and the webmasters.

What is QDF?

‘Query Deserves Freshness’ is a key component of the Google Algorithm. It gives importance to the ‘freshness quotient’. If a topic is ‘hot’, meaning it’s in the news, content related to that particular topic immediately ranks at the top of Google’s search engine rankings. That, in a nutshell is QDF.

With QDF, the amount of link backs to the content does not matter. The key focus is on the freshness of that content and whether that particular content relates to a topic that is currently a hot topic of discussion.

There has always been confusion about whether content that has attracted a large number of links over a period of time can be considered ‘quality’ content or the content that is fresh but doesn’t have a huge number of links - The QDF algorithm aims to find balance between the two sides of the debate.

When does QDF actually come into play?

This happens when Google notices that there is a spike in activity regarding a certain topic; say the blogosphere is excited about a particular development or there are various news stories regarding the same, and there are search engine queries about that particular topic – and all this happening at the same time or within the same time frame.

The QDF algorithm can best be explained with a real time example. The one name that is doing the rounds of all discussions, currently, across the real and the online world is ‘Osama Bin Laden’.  Key in Osama, Bin Laden or Osama Bin Laden on Google and have a look at the results. The latest news from various news providers will figure first, followed by links to related content based on the order of freshness.

Here is an Example:

How do you leverage the immense potential of QDF for SEO purposes?

It goes without saying that your content should be fresh. You must also make sure that that this fresh content is about a topic that is uppermost in the minds of the people at that particular point of time. It’s of paramount importance that your blogs be updated frequently and you keep a lookout for the kind of topics that are uppermost in the people’s minds at that point of time.

Making the use of Press Releases, news and even PPC with keywords related to the ‘popular query’ is going to prop your SERPs. It’s important to understand that you will need to combine various strategies to optimize the use of QDF. The aggregate of all your strategies will come into the reckoning when Google’s QDF algorithm comes into play.

Google constantly keeps improving and modifying, like no other major search engine is able to. In 2010 alone there have been as many around 10 algorithm or related changes rolled out by Google. With the frequent tweaks that Google keeps making to its algorithm, it continues to return the best results and lead the bunch of major search engines in terms of popularity and market share. Here is the inventory of the changes we saw in Google in 2010 and around.

• Answer Highlighting in search results (January 2010): Allows the users to get to the required information more quickly by seeking and bolding the likely answer to their question right in the search results.
   
• Refined Searches by Location (February 2010): “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel helps users to better refine their searches.
   
• Public Data Search Feature (March 2010): A feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data from sources.
   
• Google Announces About Inclusion of Microdata in Descriptions (March 2010): Google announces about adding Microdata support for rich snippets, a part of HTML5 specification.
   
• Google Announces Page Speed/Site Speed To Be An Official Factor For Ranking (April 2010): Google search engine ranking for the slower sites might go down.
   
• Google Updates Real-Time Search Results (April 2010): Google integrates Real-Time Search into search result pages to provide updates from a comprehensive set of sources just as the stuff happens on the web.
   
• Long Tail Algorithm Change (May 2010): Google confirms in regard to an algorithmic change made looking for the higher quality sites, Google MayDay Update, that it impacts long tail traffic.
   
• Google Caffeine, A New Search Index, Made Official (June 2010): Google brings its new indexing engine, Caffeine, into action, which was rolled out on trial in August 2009. According to Google, it provides 50% fresher results for web searches than its last index and is the largest collection of web content they have offered.
   
• Real-Time Search Feature Launched (December 2010): By clicking on "Latest Results" or selecting "Latest" from the search options menu, a full page of live tweets, blogs, news, and other web content can be scrolled right on Google.

So, these are Google’s distinct updates for this year. This is what Google is appreciated about – a desire to evolve and leverage innovation to make information access easy and timely.

Since studies have revealed higher rates of abandonment for the websites where a page takes more than 4 seconds to load, web developers have got a new benchmark to achieve in terms of page loading time. Online businesses or Ecommerce sites need to ensure a faster loading of website, or it will leave a significant number of visitors frustrated, which may include regular visitors or customers, and find their way to other websites that load faster. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners, especially small business entrepreneurs, opt for cheap website development with inexperienced professionals and lose a significant business to their competitors having faster-loading sites.

Today, it’s very important for the web development professionals to know the techniques of reducing the loading time and serving the web pages faster. Here are a few ways how they can make a site load in lesser time.

Image optimization and the use of thumbnails

Using appropriate graphic tools, it’s possible to optimize website images to best suit the online use. Web optimized images will have substantially reduced file size and hence will allow for a faster loading. These tools are capable to compress the images up to 80% without disturbing its quality. Also, if using a large image is not essential, one may consider using a thumbnail, which is a smaller representation of an image providing an option to the user to click on it and view the larger version. It’s to be understood, therefore, that if a page has thumbnails as a replacement of the full images it will load much faster.

More use of static images and reduced animation

In contrast to the animated videos or graphics, the use of static images will remarkably reduce the time a web page will take to load. The static images are lighter as compared to the Flash animation and hence can be loaded faster in the browser.

A wise use of tables

If you are using tables as the framework of your site, make sure that you use them wisely. As a web browser waits until all the items are loaded in a table before rendering the content, it will keep a user waiting too long if your entire page content is sitting between a table and a table tag. The web page content should be divided in smaller chunks of data by splitting up the content into header, middle, and footer tables. This will keep visitors interested as they will have at least something to read while the page is loading.

Even if tables are to be utilized, the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to format and style your web page content can greatly improve your website’s load time as it cuts down on the long drawn out tags and substitute them with smaller class styles.

Use of common image folder

This will eliminate the possibility of image duplication when it is such that the same image appears on a number of pages and in different sections. If a common image folder is used, the user’s browser will be able to find the images with minimum efforts, resulting into faster loading. Besides, a common file for images is also part of a good file base structure.

Have a practice of monitoring the site speed

Monitoring your website’s speed on a regular basis will help you observe if it’s happening too frequently that the server on which your website is hosted is running slow. This may give you a timely indication if it calls for upgrading the web hosting package or switching to a better host.

Set limits to the database queries

Assigning limits to the total number of queries to be allowed to a particular web page can keep the load on the hosting server in control. If the information on the index page is kept to the point with an easy navigation structure, it will help the index page to be accessed real fast.

A slow website can lead to losses in many ways. On the other hand, a faster-loading website will make better sales and conversions as visitors could access the information and services quite quickly. If the abovementioned techniques are taken into account, it’s not difficult to develop a website for better profits.

The festive season is on, and with Christmas being just a few weeks away, we are all going to get engaged into buying gifts for our dear ones. Perhaps you’ve already started to get your act together for a heavy Christmas sales. Maybe that’s how your online business is going to gift you! But what are you thinking to gift your business this Christmas? Strange, but it truly deserves! Think how your online enterprise can get a new lease of life this New Year with a fresh budget pumping in!

It’s the right time to give a new identity to your online business and create a better market value. Check out what’s best to do with your business that’s not been done for quite a while.

• Redesigning a logo/corporate identity
• Redesigning the website
• Integrating new features over competitors
• A solid marketing plan

Why is this the perfect time for rebranding, refurbishing, or out-of-the-ordinary marketing?

Round the year hardly there’s anything apart from or major to marketing and profits to build strategies for. And with the present economic climate, things often start and end at budgets. You definitely want to plan the new capital being invested for some hard-hitting strategies that could best trump the competition. This makes more sense than wasting too much of your money behind conventional marketing or promotion that everyone is going to do.

Redesigning the brand identities, refurbishing your website with new, refreshing features, or creating a solid strategic marketing plan is a bigger step probably than your rivals, which guarantees you a solid presence on the internet. When every e-business is going to try and make the most of the festive season that marks the end of the year, you can go a step ahead by getting huge things done to your business around this time and get an upper hand over your competitors in making your presence felt.

Remember you will not get a better time than this to think of rebranding or a high-end promotional campaign for your products. Google will love you more if you have a unique quality plan to make your online presence stronger, be it with PPC ads or with publishing relevant content optimized for visibility. The more you are loved by the search engines, the more your target audience is going to notice, appreciate, and consider you.

So, get your big idea a kick this Christmas with PLAVEB and make your online business fly high!