Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

I recently found a post on the WebProWorld forums from Chris Richardson, and excellent writer for the same site. In his post he lists off a sleugh of excellent SEO tools and resources. As we’re always ones to not just seek out new clients but to also educate and help do-it-yourselfers (and thus this SEO news blog was born), I felt that this was a great resource to point out to our valued visitors.

There are too many tools given there to list them all of here so you’ll have to check it out yourself. You can visit the forum post at http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54254.

For more great tool you may also want to check out Beanstalk’s SEO Tools page at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/tools.htm.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 1:48 pm

Microsoft and Yahoo! yesterday announced a landmark agreement that will help consumers by making the two major IM systems (MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger) interoperable.

This marks the first real cooperation Microsoft has undergone with a major search competitor since launching MSN search. But are they softening their stance on competitors?

In this SEO’s opinion the answer is a resounding “no”. There is an old Arabian proverb that reads, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And Google is definitely the one to beat on by both involved here.

To be sure, the agreement simply allows for users of the different IM systems to communicate, the real loser is services like Trillian that were created to allow connectivity to the various systems through a single interface.

Will we see more of these types of agrements in the future? Undoubtedly. As long as Google is developing relationships with major corporations to advance thier reach such as the one with Sun Microsystems you can count on Microsoft doing the same.

You can read the press release of this announcement on the Microsoft site here.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 4:01 pm

Back on October 4th we announced on our blog the alliance formed between Google and Sun Microsystems. If you’d like to look back for this post it’s titled, “Like Google Earth? How About Google Sun …“

In that post I mentioned that I was installing and testing OpenOffice and noted that I would report back as to whether I found it a viable replacement for Microsoft Office. Admittedly it took me a while to get used to it and the way that it functions. Similar to my switch to the superior Firefox browser from IE I found myself trying to do things the hard way out of habit and quickly realized that OpenOffice is built in a much more instinctive fashion.

Once I’d worked through all of that I did find that there were many features absent in OpenOffice that are available in the Microsoft version. I realized this through the absence of as many drop down option however I still have yet to need a feature that isn’t there.

It easily dealt with the documents I had produced in Microsoft Office and allowed me to create and work with templates, edit past documents and provides for all the formatting considerations I need.

The spreadsheet (their version of Excel) appears equally strong and again, I have yet to find a function that I need access to that isn’t available.

In short, I will be continuing to use the OpenOffice suite. To replace Outlook (my past email client) I have switched to Mozilla’s Thunderbird and found it to be on par with their browser. An excellent tool. Again, it took a while to get used to doing things the easy way but once I got over that hurdle it’s been smooth sailing. I did find the absence of a calendar in Thunderbird detrimental however I was reminded by Allan here at Beanstalk that Thunderbird is open source and there are tons of extensions developed for it much like Firefox. A quick search and I found a great calendar extension and I haven’t looked back.

If you would like to download and test the OpenOffice suite you can do so here.
If you need to replace Outlook (as I did) and would like to give Thunderbird a try you can download it here. If you need the calendar extension you can find it here.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 11:58 am

Our friends over at Yahoo! have recently conducted a study that shows that people place an extraordinarily high level of trust and value into results from search engines:

When it came to trustworthiness, search came in second to family and friends–but by a small margin.

The study, written up over at MediaPost Publications, is enlightening and details some intriguing statistics on what people are searching for online and how they value the results.
More proof that information is power

SEO news blog post by @ 6:36 pm

Having been caught up in incoming family, etc. for what was in Canada, the Thanksgiving long weekend, I don’t have the exact time of the most recent Google update on hand but it appears that I was at least pretty close with the Friday evening estimate. The earliest mention I could find of the update was from Sunday however being the geek that I am I felt it necessary to check and confirmed changes begining on Saturday.

There has been no backlink or PageRank update however that should be expected to occur in the near future, I would predict it to happen some time later in the week. Since I really like giving a day to watch I’ll predict Thursday evening (the same day/time the last PR update occured). Of course, this is just an educated guess at this point and to insure that you know as soon as it occurs you’ll want to keep watching our SEO news blog.

This latest update has been relatively significant. I will be writing an article in the next few days, once I have had a chance to fully analyze the new/changed factors. Another reason to watch our SEO news blog: you’ll be kept informed the second this article is published.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 6:26 pm

The most recent article by Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning was just published on the launch of Google Reader. This excellent service now offered by Google stands to make content syndication a much more widely used and popular form of information retrieval and marketing source.

Read the full article on the Beanstalk site at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/se-news/google-reader.htm.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 2:20 pm

Every SEO who’s been watching Google’s results over the past few days (which can hopefully be read, “every SEO”) is undoubtedly looking, wondering what’s Google’s doing that’s resulting in more sp@m at the top of the results and some drops felt by totally relevant and properly optimized sites.

To those who are wondering I would suggest not to panic just yet. Base on the current flux and past Google trends this is not the end of it. Undoubtedly Google is simply applying and testing some algorithm tweaks to see how it goes on specific datacenters and sometimes even with specific industries.

I will stick with my initial prediction of the full update this Friday evening. Unfortunately I may be (oh how I hate to say it) wrong on this count. It may come a bit later than my initial projection depending on the amount of retweaking they’ll have to do after this round of testing.

In short, don’t panic just yet. Keeping watching the Beanstalk SEO News Blog and we’ll keep you posted as to when the full update occurs. Then you can panic.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 1:38 pm

Alright alright, cheesy title I know. (I just couldn’t resist)

Google and Sun Microsystems announced today an agreement to promote their products to the world. During the announcement they noted that this move will make it easier for people to gain access to the Java Runtime Environment, the Google Toolbar, and OpenOffice.

Google notes that this move will, “help millions of users worldwide to participate in the next wave of Internet growth.”

Rumors of the announcement had many pundits anxiously awaiting a death blow to Microsoft and were left wanting. There was no, “shot that was heard around the world” today. Rather, this move appears one that will slowly wear away at Microsoft. That is, unless Microsoft counters with a move that will help protect their marketshare (which would basically have to be a reduction in the cost of Windows and Office to … well … free).

While there wasn’t much hoop-la around today’s announcement it’s probably one of the most substantial moves that any of the major search engines have made recently. While not all the effects are directly geared towards enhancing Google’s position they will all either help Google or hinder Microsoft which, in turn, helps Google.

And now I must get back to the installation of OpenOffice.

I’ll let you know in our blog if it really does make a solid replacement for Microsoft Office.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 5:06 pm