Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

As we noted back in our article, "Anatomy Of An Internet Search Engine" it is critically important in SEO to not only understand what specific factors the search engines are considering but also to have a very solid understanding of what they are trying to accomplish and what technologies they are employing to attain top rankings and hold them. It is this point that makes the recent purchase by Google of the Orion algorithm of key importance for SEO's and to those trying to rank their sites highly on this important engine.

This algorithm changes the way search results are generated by comparing similar results to multiple related queries and ranking sites in part by how they rank over this multitude of phrases. An example of such a query could be:

Searched phrase: world war 2
Comparative phrases: axis, allies, adolph hitler, holocaust, etc.

What the algorithm now does is takes into consideration a site's ability to rank for a multitude of these phrases and takes this into consideration when determining the ranking of the site for the actual query phrase.

In the article we noted above we wrote,

"For example, the overall relevancy of your website (i.e. does the majority of your content focus on a single subject) has become more important over the past year or so. Does this help the searcher? The searcher will find more content on the subject they have searched on larger sites with larger amounts of related content and thus this shift does help the searcher overall. A tactic that includes the addition of more content to your site is thus a solid one as it helps build the overall relevancy of your website and gives the visitor more and updated information at their disposal once they get there."

This aspect of SEO becomes even more important with the introduction of this new algorithm into the ranking factors. The more pages you have the more likely you are to rank for multiple related phrases, the more likely you are to rank for the main search query targeted.

Bill Gates said of the Orion Algorithm,

"That we need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today. We believe that Orion will do that."

And while Microsoft didn't end up purchasing the algorithm it is clear that they know it's value and are sure to find some way to integrate a similar technology into their own ranking systems.

What does this mean for SEO?

So what does this mean to you? This means that once again there are new factors that need to be considered when seeking to rank a site highly on the search engines for all but the least competitive phrases. SEO is about to become more intensive once again with new requirements and considerations added. We will all have to think outside the box about what other phrases may be searched to determine the relevancy of our site to our primary phrases and work to attain good rankings for those phrases as well.

This may not sound like a lot of fun but an important point to consider is this, if the phrases are deemed relevant to the search engines then they probably are. If they are in fact relevant that a visitor to your site is more likely to find the information they are looking for if that relevant content is present. Thus, this move not only improves the rankings on the search engines in that the visitor becomes more likely to find what they're looking for when the visit your site, it also forces us to create better sites that will provide useful information to our visitors thus keeping the visitors on our sites longer and increasing our ability to steer them towards our desired "call to action".

This purchase signifies the beginning of a new era in SEO where there are once again a slough of new factors to consider. While this algorithm will still need to go through testing and integration by Google, now is the time to start preparing your site for this change.

For a while now we've been seeing different search engine results based on location however on MSN and Yahoo! we're now seeing stable and completely different results based on the country the search is coming from. To further things down a more "confusing" road is the fact that those in the UK searching on the .com are seeing the same results as those of us in Canada however those in the US are seeing different results.

Google is showing similar differences however to a lesser degree. They've been providing different results for a while now and seem to be testing a number of things such as providing different results to those in the east than those in the west and sometimes just random results that change when you hit your Refresh button.

So what are those of us in Canada who are marketing to the US or, as is the case with Beanstalk, who are performing the SEO for companies in the US but who are seeing Canadian results to do? The simplest solution to this problem is to use a tool that runs the search from a US location. The best tool I've found for this is GoYa-Rank. This handy little tool searches all three major engines (coincidentally the only three we're really interested in over here at Beanstalk as they're the only three we base our guarantee on).

If you're from any country other than the US and market your goods/services into the US I would recommend to add his tool to your favorites and check it periodically to see what your results are there. You can find the tool at http://www.goya-rank.com/index.php.

A fantastic whitepaper has come to my attention that is a "must read" for anyone involved in SEO or PPC management. The whitepaper, entitled "Giving Clicks Credit Where They'’re Due: What You Need to Know When Allocating Your Search Budget" lends a very helpful eye on search behavior. The paper, put out by search marketing firm 360i and SearchIgnite, reveals the behavior of search engine users and how this related to conversions (is there a more important topic in our industry?).

The whitepaper covers the difference in conversions of those who use generic terms vs those who use brand-specific terms in their search queries. While the paper focuses on what this means for those involved with PPC it certainly lends a helpful eye for those who are paying attention to their natural rankings. Here's a short excerpt from the whitepaper:

Key Findings

• The highest conversion rate (9.30%) came from when the user's first click and last click on a marketer'’s paid search ads were both brand terms. Yet, when the first click is on a non-brand term and the last click is on a brand term, the conversion rate is almost as high (8.73%). Marketers can leverage this by driving non-brand searchers to brand terms.
• The more times a consumer clicks on a marketer's ad, the more likely that consumer is to convert. When marketers run paid search campaigns, 25% of conversions from the campaign occur from consumers who click more than one of the marketer's ads. Purchasers click an average of 15% more of the marketer's ads than consumers who don'’t complete a transaction. In fact, consumers who click a marketer'’s ads ten times are three times as likely to convert as consumers who click an ad only once. This further shows how purchasers are more deeply involved in the process.
• Conversions also rise as consumers enter more unique keywords. Consumers entering multiple unique keywords accounted for 8.39% of the sample studied, but they accounted for 19.2% of transactions, supporting the "‘long tail"’ concept - the highly targeted queries that individually have a low volume of searches.

What does this mean to those of us in the organic world? That to maximize the ROI for our clients the arena is perhaps a bit more complicated that simply finding the phrases that are most searched and rankings a site for them. Perhaps it's now equally important to rank clients for the most-searched phrases AND the branded phrases the searchers are likely to switch to. Or maybe, in some cases, it's most profitable to simple target all the branded and product-specific phrases as opposed to the most searched. Just perhaps.

The whitepaper is available free here (you do need to register but that too is free). Again, this is highly recommended reading.

Hello and welcome to the beginning of the long weekend. :)

Due to the fun nature of the day and the upcoming weekend today's post will cover more entertainment than SEO though the geeks in the crowd will enjoy. First, here are a few fun links that we've amassed over the past week:

Mac Ads
The latest series of Mac ads that once again make their point while keeping us amused. Well worth the visit. I should note: I use a PC much to my father's mocking. Watch those Mac people - I think it's a cult. ;)

One Red Paper Clip
In one of the more interesting strategies to secure a house one Mr. Kyle MacDonald has gone about it in a very unique way. Starting with a single red paper clip back in July of 2005 he has traded his way up. He managed to trade the paper clip for a fish pen, the fish pen for a door knob, the door knob for a Coleman stove (good deal) and upwards. He's managed to work his way up to an afternoon with Alice Cooper (who loved the idea and who has a staff member in need of the lodgings (for a year only though, not his own home) he'd worked his way up to before that). So the latest trade he's wanting to make is for an afternoon with Alice Cooper. The deadline for this has passed but the results as to what he traded for are not yet in. I gotta say, not bad for a guy who stated with one red paper clip.

BJ & Tyler Win The Amazing Race 9 !!!
Well it happened last week. For those of you who've been regularly visiting our blog you'll know I'm a HUGE fan of The Amazing Race and an almost bigger fan of the team BJ & Tyler. Well they managed to pull it together and win the $1,000,000 resulting in enormous cheers from me, my wife and my eldest son who may be a bigger fan of their "kooky antics" than I am.


So enjoy you're weekend all. There is much coming next week to the blog in the way of some free analytics tools and more. But you'll just have to visit again to get those tips.

In the most recent "Google Friends Newsletter" I was reminded of a very cool tool they launched earlier this month which I inadvertantly forgot to blog about. They wrote:

"Google Trends enables you to compare the world's interest in your favorite topics. You can enter up to five topics and see how often they've been searched for on Google over time. Google Trends also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often."

In testing it out one can find some very interesting information. Basically it graphically compares search frequency vs news for a given phrases. You can check it out at http://www.google.com/trends.

Also in their newsletter they pointed out a great blog post by Google staff doctor Dr. Taraneh Razavi, M.D. Dr. Razavi wrote about RSI (repetitive stress injury). For those of us who spend WAY too many hours punching away at our keyboards there are some good tips and links to useful resources to help keep us healthy into the future. You can read the blog post here.

In my daily surfing of SEO and SE headlines I stumbled on a good article by Site-Reference's Mark Daoust. The article covers the recent changes occurring over at the Googleplex and seeks to enlighten regarding what's causing them and what Google is now looking for (as well as touching on what they may do in the future).

For those of you who have yet to crack Google's top 20 or who have watched your website slip out of previously held rankings and you're not sure why this article is recommended reading. If you're an SEO, webmaster, or just want a better understanding of what's coming down the road then it's definitely for you.

You can read the article in it's entirety on the Site-Reference website here.

For more information on this topic here are some Beanstalk articles that cover similar themes regarding the new Google:

Google SEO Articles

• SEO For Google
  
• SEO For The New Google
  
• Google PageRank Update Analysis
  
• Anatomy Of An Internet Search Engine

And just as a reminder, everyone should periodically review Google's webmaster guidelines. Add it to your Favorites (or Bookmarks for those of us using Firefox) and review it every month or two just for good measure. You'll find the guidelines here.

For those of you who are regulars to the Beanstalk blog you'll be familiar with our past posts and references to Google software engineer Matt Cutts. Matt was the one who first informed the SEO community about the Big Daddy servers and kept us posted on how they were being launched.

Well Matt's at it again with a very long but thoroughly informative post on some of the recent issue with Big Daddy and even a bit of info on how it works (i.e. how the new algorithm functions).

For those of you who want to get a better understanding on how Google works (I assume everyone raised their hands on that one) then this is highly recommended reading. You can read what Matt (did I mention he's a software engineer at Google - i.e. he knows what he's talking about and isn't just guessing) has to say here.

In my regular ransacking of the latest articles and news from the SEO community I stumbled on an article by Pole Position President, Stoney deGeyter (mentioned in previous blog posts as well) on a topic that is seldom considered yet which can have a large impact on a website's rankings.

In his article Stoney brings up the point that there can be four versions of the same page according to a search engine. Assuming it's the homepage we're discussing here the four pages could be:

• www.yoursite.com
• www.yoursite.com/index.html
• yoursite.com
• yoursite.com/index.html

These are the same page and would appear as such in your browser however if the engines pick them up as unique then you may be in for a bumpy ride.

This duplication of pages generally occurs when the links to a page are not consistent. For example, if the links to the homepage within your site point to www.yoursite.com/index.html this may get picked us as unique from www.yoursite.com.

The article gets into the importance of standardizing your internal and external link work to insure that the effects provide the maximum benefit to your website.

This is a good article and recommended reading if for no other reason than it's rarely covered and important to know. You can read the article in full on the ISEDB website here.

Part four our Beanstalk's four-part series on SEO for all three major engines has just been published. The series was divided into the following four parts:

1. SEO For MSN
2. SEO For Yahoo!
3. SEO For Google
4. Tying It Together

The article explains how to take the tactics used to optimioze for each engine specifically and tie them together to rank highly on all three. The article can be viewed on the Beanstalk website here.

Yesterday's post noted the SEO effects of violating Google's guidelines (i.e. your site is going to get penalized). This is a topic we discussed some time ago in our article, "Anatomy Of An Internet Search Engine". If anything it holds more true today than it did them.

Well, for those of you who have been using ethical SEO tactics in the optimization your websites you will enjoy what's currently going on in the Google rankings. There is currently an fairly significant update running across the Google datacenters that seems (in our early analysis) to be rewardng ethical tactics and weeding out the sp@m.

The only tip we have for you regarding this current update (as noted, we're still early in our analysis) is that quality links have increased in importance. Do not confuse the word quality with quantity here. This is an increasingly important distinction Google is getting a very good handle on.

A very useful tool you'll want to consider adding to your favorites to monitor this and future Google updates can be found on the McDar site at http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php. This tool allows you to quickly and easily search multiple datacenters at the same time. Very good for monitoring what's going on during an update. It's also handy at other times as Google is showing different results depending on the datacenter you're hitting so you can see what's going on across different datacenters though during updates the results are very different whereas normally there are only slight differences.

Keep watching the Beanstalk blog for more and updated news on this update and other important events in the search engine and SEO world.

Due to the large number of review requests we receive and questions we get from webmasters, site owners and even some SEO's (tsk tsk ... you should know better) wondering why their site is penalized or banned we offer the following explanation:

You are violating Google's rules.

While Google's algorithm is a closely guarded secret (yup, even more closely that those 11 herbs and spices drempt up the "The Colonel") they do make very clear what is and what is not acceptable behavior for a website. If you have any questions as to whether any of your tactics violate their guidelines, they probably do.

You can review the guidelines on Google's site at http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html.

According to the Wall Street Journal (a fairly reliable source I'd say) Microsoft is considering working with Yahoo! to topple search giant Google. Unable to do the job alone Microsoft is considering selling MSN search to Yahoo! in exchange for a minority stake in the Yahoo! network.

This is a far cry from the Microsoft of old. Have they perhaps met their match in Google? The old Microsoft would have tried to obliterate them but now, having failed at that multiple times including the critical error of underestimating the power of the search engine many moons ago Microsoft is now scrambling to catch up and, unable to capture the marketshare they would like, are now considering alternative routes.

One faction within Microsoft Corp. is promoting a bold strategy in the company's battle with Google Inc: Join forces with Yahoo Inc.

That would be a major departure for Microsoft, the software maker that is legendary for toiling on its own until it captures a new market. However, people familiar with the situation say that Microsoft has considered the idea of acquiring a stake in Yahoo, and that the two companies have discussed possible options over the course of the past year.

Currently, talks of an equity stake in Yahoo don't appear to be active, given that Microsoft is focusing on a reorganization that it hopes will re-energize its effort to compete with Google, the fast-growing provider of search services and advertising.

Two wild cards remain: Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who has historically shunned large acquisitions, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, whose support would be key to bringing the necessary Yahoo shareholders on board for a deal. Mr. Yang and others in Yahoo would be hard-pressed to sell to Microsoft, people close to the company say.

However, people familiar with Microsoft say its top management remains open to a deal with Yahoo as pressure grows to perform better against Google.

The increasing pressure on Microsoft -- not just from Google, but also from its own shareholders, as well as from advertisers that want an alternative to Google -- could help to justify the acquisition or some kind of business collaboration, these people say.

Since 2004, Microsoft has invested heavily to better compete with Google but it has yet to boost its share of search or online advertising. At the same time, Google has released products that some industry experts say could over time eat into Microsoft's core software businesses.

Microsoft executives say that they are investing for the long haul, and that the online-search market is still nascent and has much room for growth. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the company doesn't discuss "rumors and speculation."

In one sign that Microsoft may be serious about major acquisitions, it has hired search-industry executive Steve Berkowitz to head MSN, the Internet unit that is building the Web-search business and is leading Microsoft's charge against Google, including Web search. Mr. Berkowitz, the former chief executive of search site Ask.com, is viewed as a likely deal maker at MSN, having completed more than 40 acquisitions in his career, according to a person close to the matter. He starts May 8. Mr. Berkowitz couldn't be reached for comment.

Microsoft's recent quarterly results provided a picture of the pressure it faces from Google. On Thursday, Microsoft said the MSN unit fell into the red and its revenue declined. Those numbers show it is failing to capture the same online-advertising tail wind that is helping Google. By contrast, Google's first-quarter net income rose 60% from a year earlier to $592 million. U.S. online advertising generally rose 30% to $12.5 billion last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Microsoft executives also said they will need to boost investments in online businesses in the next fiscal year to levels far higher than Wall Street had expected. That prompted an 11% selloff of Microsoft shares Friday. The stock has ticked lower this week. In 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, shares fell 1.2% to $24.01, after hitting a 52-week low during the day of $23.90.

At its core, the clash between Microsoft and Google centers on Microsoft's attempt to build up its Web-search and online-advertising businesses, and Google's push to broaden its own offerings onto Microsoft's traditional turf. Google's encroachment includes software that lets consumers search the content of their personal computers, and email and calendar services that overlap with Microsoft software offerings. Microsoft has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into its search-engine technology and an online-ad system called AdCenter, which it plans to officially unveil this week. But so far its approach hasn't yielded the sought-after results.

In search, "Microsoft appears to be falling farther behind Yahoo and Google," says Henry Ellenbogen, portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Price Media & Telecommunications fund, whose holdings included Yahoo and Google shares as of March 31. Mr. Ellenbogen considers a Microsoft bid for Yahoo a possibility.

Some investors are growing increasingly impatient with Microsoft's spending to compete with Google head-on. "Chasing Google in search is a waste of money," says Walter Price, managing director at RCM Capital Management LLC. Investors such as Mr. Price point to the results so far: Microsoft's share of the Web-search market dropped to just 10.9% of all U.S. search queries in March 2006 from 14.2% in February 2005, while Google and Yahoo each gained share, according to research firm NetRatings Inc., and in March were at 49% and 22.5%, respectively.

A Microsoft-Yahoo combination could merge complementary strengths. To succeed in Internet-search advertising -- the business driving Google's growth -- a competitor needs three core elements: strong technology, a mass of consumers and a universe of different advertisers. Microsoft is spending untold hundreds of millions of dollars on the technology piece, but it doesn't yet have enough consumers using its MSN service to entice the needed advertisers.

A tie-up with Yahoo could address part of that problem. It has more than 100 million people visiting its site a month, making it the most popular Web site in the U.S. So far it is losing the race to Google when it comes to the technology for matching ads to consumer search queries, though it plans to unveil an upgrade to its system this month.

Combined, MSN and Yahoo would have all three pieces and, at least on paper, could leapfrog Google. Combined, the companies would have the "technology and the scale," to compete, says Ellen Siminoff, a former Yahoo senior vice president and now chief executive of search marketing company Efficient Frontier Inc.

RCM's Mr. Price says Microsoft should focus on building its online-ad business around media properties, such as sports highlights that display ads, the type of content services that Yahoo has spent years developing. "To the extent that they can preserve the Yahoo culture and let Yahoo focus on being the next-generation media company -- that would be really good for Microsoft," Mr. Price says.

Short of a wholesale acquisition, Microsoft could sell MSN to Yahoo, taking a minority stake in the Internet portal, say people familiar with the company.

Behind the scenes at Microsoft there are two factions of thinking about a Yahoo deal, say people familiar with Microsoft. One, largely led by MSN veterans, has been focused on Microsoft building its own answer to Google. So far that group has prevailed.

Pushing for more is Hank Vigil, a Microsoft senior vice president who internally is advocating for Microsoft to do a major deal such as a tie-up with Yahoo, say people familiar with Microsoft. Mr. Vigil has a long history of forging (and at times fixing) relations with other companies in the industries in which Microsoft plays. Last year Mr. Vigil led Microsoft in talks to form a joint venture with Time Warner Inc. that would have combined MSN and the media giant's AOL unit. The plan was scuttled after Google swooped in with $1 billion and took a 5% stake in AOL. Mr. Vigil couldn't be reached for comment.

For fear that the article will be removed we will reprint it here as it's fairly key in the evolution of search.
Article written by Robert A. Guth and Kevin J. Delaney for The Wall Street Journal Online.