On 8 June, Google announced the completion of its new search engine indexing system called Google Caffeine. Over the past 2 weeks, I have been doing all kinds of research and site analysis, to find out what is the SEO impact of this new Google Caffeine, what does it mean to internet marketers like us and how it affects our search engine rankings.

It turns out that the impact is HUGE, but it’s within my expectation.

First, let’s look at what Google says:

“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.”

Hm…. 50% fresher results!!! That means before Google Caffeine, tons of webpages were not indexed by Google. If you still think Google will index all your webpages, think again.

With 50% more results, what do you think will happen?

Yes, more competition!

But that’s not all. (More bad news coming…..)

After all the analyses, I only have one conclusion about the new Google Caffeine system. That is, Google Caffeine gives A LOT more weight to Site Authority!!!

Let’s do a case study to show you what I mean. In March, I showed you a screenshot of how I dominated Google’s first page with 9 out of 10 results. To refresh your memory, check out this screenshot again: http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/dominating-googles-first-page-see-what-i-mean-here/

Let’s do a search for the same keyword and see what is happening now (see screenshot below):

The first result belongs to a member of our link building system, who submitted articles to our network to get hundreds of backlinks to his webpage. And that gets him to the first position.

The 2nd and 3rd results are the articles this member has submitted and published. (In March, his article dominated 9 results out of 10, but now, only 2 results left.)

So what happened to the rest of the results? Who has replaced them?

As I said, in the new Google Caffeine system, Site Authority plays a VERY important part. The rest of the results are taken by Big Boys like Amazon.com, About.com, Ezinearticles.com and Investopedia.com.Something worth noting is these big boys manage to grab the first page even though the title of their webpages do not match the search term fully. This shows how much extra weight Google Caffeine is giving to Site Authority.

In fact, this is what I generally notice for those search terms that I’ve lost. They are now dominated by authority sites, even though the webpage itself has no backlink at all.

Some of you may ask, “So, what makes an authority site?” Well, no one has a definite answer. But what we do know is it has all kinds of backlinks pointing to different pages of the site, especially the homepage (hence a high homepage PR), and has lots of fresh contents (no need to be all unique) and last but not least, it is old.

In my next blog post, I will show you one ‘junk’ authority site that does well under the new Google Caffeine. Through that study, you will have a better idea of how you can create the legendary authority site! Stay tuned…

Sometimes I ask myself, “What would I do if I were a newbie in internet marketing?”. Let’s answer this question today. I believe it will benefit some of our readers here.

1) Build Adsense Income

Yes, the first thing I will do is to build my Adsense income.

Until today, I am still grateful that I added Adsense in my overall game plan.

The thing is, in the processing of building Adsense income, I would have mastered a few important skills, which include website building, simple server management and most important of all, search engine optimization.

I don’t have to know how to sell or promote things. As long as I know how to bring in traffic, I am likely to make money!

It’s truly a “Learn As You Earn” scenario.

When it comes to making money from Adsense, I will not start a blog, which most people will do nowadays. This is because blogging takes time. I want to spend most of my time learning more skills and exploring other ways to make money. (Note: When I say “starting a blog”, I don’t mean starting a blog filled with prewritten articles. I am referring to a blog where I need to personally write articles and post frequently.)

2) Explore Affiliate Marketing

The next thing I’ll explore is affiliate marketing.

There are many different strategies to make money as an affiliate marketer. For example, you can create different niche sites to sell different Clickbank products. But I wouldn’t do that. Somehow I don’t feel that it’s going to bring me long-term passive income. (I may be wrong.)

Instead, I will become a ‘guru’ type of affiliate marketer, where I build an info-rich website (not blog) and a list. I’ll get traffic through search engine optimization, advertising and viral marketing.

Once my website is established, I can sell many different affiliate products and I don’t have to worry about whether a particular affiliate product will disappear tomorrow because I own the customers.

When choosing which niche to get into, I will look for a niche where there is a lot of potential to earn passive income. For example, I may get into the stock trading niche where I can promote brokering services that earn me recurring commissions.

Through this venture into affiliate marketing, I would have learnt the art of copywriting, advertising and viral marketing. These are essential skills that will make me a powerful online marketer in time to come.

Did you notice that I said I will start an info-rich website (not blog)? Basically I will not start a blog until I feel committed to the niche.

3) Mess Around, Explore and Dream Of Big Ideas

In the process of building my Adsense and affiliate income (while learning all the IM skills at the same time), I will spend some time exploring different online programs and tools. While some of them may help me in my existing websites, the main objective of doing so is to learn more business models and marketing strategies that other marketers are using.

From time to time, I’ll also day-dream about big ideas and when a good idea strikes me, I’ll ‘ignorantly’ jump into it and never say die until I turn that idea into reality. The irony is what comes after a good idea is always a pool of sh*t and you’ve got to swim through that pool before seeing fruition of your idea.

Finally, throughout the journey, my mindset will be, “Though there is no guarantee that every venture will turn out to be a success, all I need is one successful venture to make a killing online.” The good thing about internet marketing is the downside risk is always manageable, but the upside potential is unlimited.