Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Yesterday we noted here on Beanstalk's SEO blog that there was a backlink update starting. While the backlink counts don't appear to have fully propegated we are seeing some fluctuations in the rankings on google.com.

Keep watching the Beanstalk blog for more updated news on this and other events that will affect your rankings and your online business.

The latest edition on Beanstalk's monthly newsletter "Climbing The Beanstalk" has just been published. This newsletter covers, among other things, the Jagger update, the Yahoo! adoption of Google's "sandbox effect" and more including links to many great resources.

Also included in the newsletter is the announcement of Beanstalk's taking over of the marketing and management of Total Optimizer Pro and the subsequent reduction in price of this excellent SEO software from $397 to $195.

In case you haven't yet signed up for our newsletter you can read it on our site at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/newsletters/28nov05.htm.

Well, for those of you who haven't had enough updates on Google post-Jagger get ready for another. Google appears to be updating their backlink counts which should (if history serves) indicate that some ranking shifts are to be expected later in the week.

We don't have much more detail than this at this time as all we're seeing thus far is different link counts however we'll keep you posted as more information becomes available. Keep wathcing the Beanstalk blog for more news on the latest Google update.

A subject that has been discussed on many SEO forums is whether or not Yahoo! has an equivalent algorithmic factor as Google's "sandbox". The answer is a definite yes though it appears to operate under very different rules than Google "equivalent".

The Yahoo! sandbox appears to not so much penalize new domains as it does increase the value of links over time. This aspect is certainly included in Google's version however Yahoo! has a lighter penalization and increases the value of the site almost instantly when a link is built however the relevancy assigned by the anchor text is what increases over time.

Additionally, Yahoo! seems to favor significantly sites that use a wide array of anchor text including text that doesn't focus on the same keywords. For example, for the Beanstalk site Yahoo! would favor the Beanstalk site if we used "search engine positioning" some of the time, "seo services" other times, "Beanstalk" periodically and 3 and 4-word variations on the above phrases as well. Google on the other hand does like variations but at this time favors sites that use different text but doesn't favor vast variations such as entirely different phrases.

It must be understood that this is not to say that vast variations will penalize your site on Google however they are not favored in that you won't get "bonus marks" for doing so though it is important that all your incoming links not use exactly the same anchor text. For example, n targeting "seo services" on Google we would use "seo services" some of the time, "guaranteed seo services" other, etc.

Once we have had a bit more time to fully analyze how they're aging links we will be publishing an article on the topic. Keep watching Beanstalk's SEO blog (you may want to add it to your Favorites) for notification as to when this article will be released.

While up here in Canada we had our Thanksgiving back in October our friends to the south are currently enjoying "turkey day" and we would like to wish them all a day full of joy and the hope that the traditional dinner with the family and inlaws goes smoothly. :)

For those interested in learning a bit about the origin of this historic day, the trials and tribulations of those who sailed on the Mayflower, and what life was like back them in an easy-to-follow and graphically pleasing manner there's a great area on scholastic.com on just this topic. A very good read that taught me much about the history of this important holiday. You can view it in the scholastic.com website at http://teacher.scholastic.com/thanksgiving/.

Happy Thanksgiving !!!

ComScore just release it's first report on the online holiday shopping experience and it looks like it's going to be a very merry Christmas for those selling products and services on the web. Online shopping has increased 24% this year and continued growth is predicted through the holiday season.

If you'd like to view all the statistics you can do so in a great PDF document produced by ComScore which can be found here.

Back on November 1, 2005 we announced some changes with Total Optimizer Pro. Due to some technical issues (and having to deal with a 3rd party payment processor) we are about a week behind on the launch but this awesome SEO tool referenced many times on the Beanstalk blog is once again available for purchase.

Until we took over the marketing and management this tool went for $397 and was worth every penny. I've lowered the price to $195 until Febuary 1, 2006 when you can expect the price to increase. There will be some enhancements to the product at that time but as always, upgrades are free for all users so you might as well purchase it while it's on sale at $195. :)

We've done a review of the product on our site at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/recommended/top.htm.

We haven't had time to get a full tutorial up on the official TOP site yet, it will be added when a full redesign is engaged in December however you can visit the Total Optimizer Pro website at http://www.totaloptimizer.com/.

Good luck and happy SEO'ing. :)

There's a very interesting article posted on the PBS website on where Google is going with their technology purchased and product development. While I wouldn't necessarily agree with all the conclusions the author, Robert X. Cringely did I believe it gives a great analysis of what Google's up to and if nothing else, it certainly plants the seeds of what could be.

So why is this gossip about Google important to the SEO? As I've written many times, understanding where Google's headed will give us SEO's, webmasters, and business people looking to optimize their own sites the advantage of understanding or at least questioning where Google will be months and years from now. Understanding this will give us the ability to more accurately predict how we will be able to market sites online through natural search and otherwise when that time comes.

This article falls into our "recommended reading" category for all but the black-hat SEO's. It won't teach you the tricks but it will make you think about what's coming. You can read the article on the PBS website at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117.html.

Veteran SEO Jim Hedger has published another great article, this time on Google Analytics and the usefulness of understanding what website visitors are doing on your site. He discusses conversions and how to increase them using this free tool and covers what Google will accomplish by offering this service free.

While I obviously believe SEO to be a highly valuable service for website owners, at the same time one cannot ignore the extraordinary importance of understanding what your visitors are doing when they get to your site. After all, SEO is not about the bragging rights of having high rankings, it's about ROI. I don't know about you but I'd personally rather be on page 2 with revenues in excess of $1,000,000/mth than on page one with revenues at $25,000/mth. What the visitors does when they get to your site is highly relevant.

This article fits into our "highly recommended reading" list and can be viewed on the ISEDB website here.

Google today announced the launch of Google Base, a free online resource for the selling of products and services online (and a whole lot more).

While the service itself is provided to increase the types of information the can be made available through Google including information that is otherwise not available online it also stands potentially to take a big bite out of eBay over time. Combine this with the largely anticipated launch of Google Wallet and voila - eBay & PayPal vs. Google Base & Google Wallet. Hmmmm .... I wonder who'll be left standing 3 years from now. ;)

There's not much in there yet but I'd highly recommend checking out Google Base at http://base.google.com/ and become familiar with how it all works. If you sell a product or service then this free tool stands to be a fantasitc addition to your marketing arsenal. It currently has many limitations (see the article by Danny Sullivan referenced below) but it's sure to be improved over time.

You can read their press release on the launch on the Google website at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/google_base.html.

There's also a great article on Google Base by Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3564506 in which he discusses some of the limitations of the system (remember that it's still in Beta).

Well the SEO community is "abuzz" with what appears to be more fluctuations on Google. The Jagger Update it appears is over but there's definitely tweaking going on to the algorithm over at the Googleplex with sites moving up and down with more frequency than would naturally occur in the eb and flow of the web and websites.

Yahoo! too it appears has been working on their algorithm and has applied and update. While there is reasonable argument on both sides I personally believe that Yahoo! too has a sandbox (read: aging delay) and it appears that for some sites it has been lightened.

If your site was one of those the suffered under the Jagger Update and you're using ethical SEO tactics my advice is to not panic and to stay the course. There are sure to be more tweaks to come. The only Beanstalk client to notice any real losses in Jagger 3 is recovering during these tweaks and there's certainly more to come as the sp@m that is showing up in the results is filtered out. While Jagger 3 did a good job to provide relevant results for a large array of phrases there appears to be an increase in poor results in other areas. They are sure to address this in the near future.

As always, you'll want to keep your eyes on the Beanstalk blog and/or use our RSS Feed (link at the top of the right-hand navigation) to keep updated on Google, updates, and SEO in general.

Google announced this morning that their web analytics tool (formerly Urchin) is now being offered free to all website owners. While I have to admit that Urchin is not my favorite of the web analytics tools, it's certainly better than the vast majority (including the one you probably got with your hosting package) and at $0 you definitely can't beat the price. :)

If you can't afford the hundreds of dollars for ClickTracks then this is definitely worth using.

As I'm fairly paranoid when it comes to dropping code into websites just for tracking and the affect that it may have on a site's ranking I've always be hesitant to do so however this code is owned by Google and thus one can safely assume that Google isn't about to have any issues with it's use. :)

For more information on Google's free web analytics you can read more on their site at http://www.google.com/analytics/. You can also signup free there. :)

Today is Remembrance Day here in Canada. We at Beanstalk would like to take the opportunity to thank those who sacrificed their lives that we may live in a country where we can start businesses, live free and (to borrow from the Declaration of Independance of our friends to the south) to hold tight the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is in fact these friends that gave us the tradition of wearing a poppy out of rememberance. Reminding us of what was sacraficed.

Too often left out of these thanks are those who, in more recent times, have risked and too often lost their lives to maintain peace abroad during Canada's peacekeeping efforts. Today is a day for them as well for without them Canada would not be the country that it is.

It is difficult to expess the level of thanks one must feel towards those who lost lives, limbs, and loved ones in sacrafice for us; yet Heather Robertson captured beautifully our collective feelings:

We must remember. If we do not, the sacrifice of those one hundred thousand Canadian lives will be meaningless. They died for us, for their homes and families and friends, for a collection of traditions they cherished and a future they believed in; they died for Canada. The meaning of their sacrifice rests with our collective national consciousness; our future is their monument.

~Heather Robertson, A Terrible Beauty, The Art of Canada at War, Toronto, Lorimer, 1977

And thus, it is our duty to remember and our responsibility to appreciate and enjoy the freedoms that we have so that all that was sacraficed was not in vain.

Thank you.

There's an interesting article published by WebProNews writer Jason Lee Miller on how Google has changed and continues to push the idea of how our economy works and how these changes are affecting companies that previously believed they were outside of the effects of the search world.

Microsoft, Walmart and many others now watch Google with a mix of awe and angst as this giant continues to define how we find information and purchase products in the "New World Order".

As noted in the article "SEO For The New Google" by yours truly I note in reference to their latest update that, "... equally important, we'll see what Google is trying to accomplish ..." Understanding where the engines are headed will tell us what's coming up in their algorithms and can help us perdict what marketing trend will be available down the road.

This article fit in the "recommended but not critical" category of information. Be sure to give it a read if you have a few minutes. You can find the article here.

We have finally had time to analyze the various aspect of the Jagger update and have published an article outlining the changes to Google's algorithm, what they mean to you, and even a few pointers on tactics you can implement to help safe-guard your rankings again future updates by looking into what Google is trying to do with this, their most significant update since Florida back in 2003.

You can read the article on the Beanstalk website here.

If you have any questions or would like any additional information on the update or our services please don't hesitate to contact us.

The new and highly anticipated third stage of the Jagger 3 update from Google appears to be going live with the new algorithm appearing in the www.google.com results.

As with most of Google's updates they've kindly initiated it in the evening on a Friday just to further insure that those of us in the SEO industry are forced to work through the weekend. :)

Check your rankings now but don't rush off in a panic if you see some drops, there may very well be some tweaks still to come in the near future as Google reacts to sp@m showing up and flaws in the system.

Of course, with Beanstalk's rise into the top 10 for a highly competitive phrase we started targeting only a few months ago, I'm secretly hoping that there aren't tooooooo many tweaks to follow. ;)

We're finally starting to see some of the new results from the 3rd stage of the Jagger update bleeding into the Google results pages. Interestingly, I ran a search which produced the new results however when I refreshed the page it had switched back.

The update is beginning and the new results are sure to show up shortly.

Good luck all !

Looking accross multiple datacenters it appears that Jagger3 (the third and seemingly final stage of the latest Google update) appears to be starting up with new results appearing on more and more datacenters.

This latest update is very significant and appears, from early analysis, to "spank" reciprocal links and place more weight on the specific way sites link to yours.

Keep watching our blog for updated information as further analysis can be performed and for notification as to when the latest update hits the main Google results pages.

For those of you who are regular visitors to our SEO news blog you're remember that back on October 20, 2005 we humerously pointed out that during the PageRank update some sort of glitch (or just the wacky folks at Google pulling an early April Fool's joke) the MSN website dropped to a PageRank 2 with a whopping 8 incoming links recorded.

Since the Beanstalk site itself links to MSN 8+ times this seemed a bit off. :)

Well MSN is finally back up to a PageRank 9 showing that sometimes the folks at Google can make an exception for a single site (the update of their PageRank did not coincide with a general PR update). So apparently all you need to do if you want some special attention from Google is to get your site up to a PR 9. So what are you waiting for? ;)

Total Optimizer Pro, the fantastic SEO tool that has been mentioned a number of times through the life of our SEO blog is temporarily unavailable. Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning will be taking over the management and promotion of this SEO tool and will be relaunching it with a new price (lower) later this week and a new design later this month.

We are very excited by this fantasic opportunity and would like to thank Shawn and TopNet Solutions for providing us with the opportunity to take over such an excellent tool.