Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Last Thursday Google launched an interesting new product called "Google Web Page Creator". This product allows anyone (including people with the technical know-how of my 8 year old son) to build web pages using a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor.

Unfortunately we haven't been able to test it out at this point as Google has had to restrict access to it due to overwhelming demand however they are actively working to increase their capacity. If you visit the Web Page Creator page at http://pages.google.com/ you'll be able to enter your email to be notified when the service has been expanded.

In the meantime you can read some great articles on this new offering at:

By Chris Sherman at Search Engine Watch - Google Introduces Web Page Creator
By Margaret Kane At CNET - Google unveils Web page creator
By Harry McKracken at PC World - Google Web Page Creator?

Being a geek I naturally am subscribed to receive the Dilbert comic delivered to my inbox each day. Naturally.

Having a few friends in the tech sector (I wonder if I could name even one that isn't) I forwarded today's Dilbert to a few of them to much chuckles and laughter and so ... I present it to you. While this comic strip won't catalyst you're site into the top ten on Google it just might give you a smile and ready you for the next round of link building, or keyword density analysis, or ...

And so here it is, today's Dilbert that gave us all the chuckle.
Note: you'll appreciate it even more if you've even worked in computer support.

Note: the image above is copyright United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

If you're as geeky or at least almost as geeky as we are here you might be interested in subscribing to have Dilbert delivered to your Inbox to. It's free (gotta love that) and you can do it at http://www.dilbert.com/.

Note, in a past blog we noted that the author of Dilbert (Scott Adams) was giving away a very funny eBook "God's Debris". You can download it from our blog here.

There's a great article out by WebProNews expert author Joe Griffin on the current PageRank Update. The article covers what website owners are seeing (who went up, who went down) and more importantly why and what this means to your search engine rankings.

This article definitely falls into our "recommended reading" list. It's timely and very well structured. You can read the article in full on the WebProNews site here.

Beanstalk has just entered into an SEO competition for the phrase "cpayscom online casinos" held by CPays.com. Unfortunately for us we're getting in late and have thus lost a couple months to get the job done over our competitors but then ... sometimes the playing field just isn't level to begin with. :)

The contest runs until July 1, 2006 with the top 50 on Google winning a prize and the #1 sites on Yahoo! and MSN also getting a "little something". Of course we're more in it to see if we can come from behind and take it. :)

For the purpose of this contest we're using the site www.far-sited.net to target the phrase cpayscom online casinos and hopefully this blog post will help a bit. ;) The site itself is a small directory of Internet resources but with a PR of 5 it may help get us where we need to be for the competition.

Good luck to all the competitors in this (but not too much). Feel free to run the searches on July 1st to see how we did or check our blog - we'll post the results here.

It's always good to start one's morning with a pick-me-up. Some like coffee, some like a run, but I'll be honest: nothing gets my blood pumping like walking into the office on a Monday morning to a PageRank update. Well fortunately for me, that's exactly what I walked into this morning.

This latest Google PageRank update and what it's effect is on websites poses little surprise. Basically they have once again raised the bar on PageRank making it more difficult to attain higher levels. Does this make it harder to get your website high in the search engine results? Not at all.

If your PageRank took a bit of a dip in this latest update or perhaps didn't increase by as much as you hoped you have to keep in mind that when Google raises the bar on PageRank they're not just creating some unique rule for you and you alone. If you look into your major competitors you'll undoubtedly find that they too have decrease or, if they're taking active measure to responsibly increase their PageRank, that they like held at their pre-update levels or increased only slightly. Your competitors too have had the bar raised so it's still a level playing-field.

Other than a shifting in that little green bar on your Google toolbar (or the QuirkStatus extension for Firefox).

The only downside to this update is that it overshadows the blog post I was going to make today and shall here anyways.

I picked up a copy of Time Canada over the weekend, sucked in by the cover which included a picture of Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin. The article covered much of what's changed at Google with thier launch into a $100 billion dollar company. The article also includes a section on being a Google Expert with tons of interesting facts and interviews with the "big three" over at the Googleplex.

You can read the full article on the Time website at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158961,00.html. Something I really like about Time is that they don't make you have a membership to read their articles online. If you have a membership you get access to a few different features and you also get to skip some advertising however if you want to read the full article without paying for a membership you need only watch a short ad and it's all yours. :)

The image above of Brin, Schmidt & Page playing with Legos is copyright Time Inc.

Well, we told you yesterday that if you came back today we'd post a couple new SEO tools that we've found and so we will. :)

One of these tools can be found on the Digital Point website at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. This tool accesses both the WordTracker and Overture databases to get an easy way to compare the two sets of data. It also allows you to specify what region you're checking for so that you can (if desired) have the Overture data drawn from the appropriate database. We've always compared the two sets of results when selecting keywords, this just makes it a lot quicker.

Another cool SEO tool that we've found is a PageRank prediction tool put out by iWebTools.com and can be found on their site at http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction. This tool predicts (not to be confused with "tells" as it's not 100% accurate) what your PageRank will be after then next update. There are other PageRank Prediction tools out there however this one, based on how it's drawing it's conclusions, seems the most accurate.

Today's blog post will, for the benefit of all our loved ones, not contain any SEO news. In order to keep peace in many households we will not be posting some great tool or information that would leave you, our valued readers, just itching to be late to your romantic evenings in order to try then out.

We did discover a neat little PageRank prediction tool today and you'll just have to pop back tomorrow to find out what it is. For tonight, turn off your computers, sit down with your loved ones and enjoy a glass of wine.

Tomorrow you can pick up again knowing that your partner isn't fuming. :)

There's a notice on the Search Engine Journal that Dotster will be holding "happy hour" tomorrow during which they will be selling domain names for $1 each. As many of you are aware ... this is an excellent price.

If you're planning on purchasing any domain names in the near future now's the time but it's only for a 1 hour period tomorrow that you'll be able to get then at this price.

You'll find more details on SearchEngineJournal.com at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2920.

Beanstalk is testing a new site design. At this point we have only posted it to our business web design page however it will soon be going live site-wide.

Please feel free to contact us regarding what you think of the new site for overall visual appeal vs. our old site, navigation, etc.

On this tanget we woudl also like to apologize that we haven't been as proactive in keeping you, our valued visitors, up-to-date in the recent goings on in the SEO news as we've been preoccupied with getting the final touches on the new design complete. Starting next wee we will resume of regular blog posting to insure you have all the information you need to attain success on the Internet.