Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

The latest article by Beanstalk's Dave Davies (me) was published today. The article, titled, "Searching Like A Pro: Tips On Searching From An SEO" covers many ways to speed up and streamline the way you search to find more relevant results, faster.

Covering such areas as the cached pages, quotation marks and a number of specialized search functions it is sure to help make your online experience more enjoyable.

This article was inspired by odd statistics and a conversation with my father in which I realized that no matter how intelligent many people are, without 6+ years of experience and thousands upon thousands of queries run over that time, most people aren't making use of the resources that are out there to help them find the best information in the least amount of time.

You can read the article in about 5 minutes and it may well save you countless hours of frustration. You can view the article on the Beanstalk site here.

Just as a head's up to all potential clients of Beanstalk, we have had to extend our freeze on accepting new clients until February 2007 as a number of people have asked to be put on a "wait list" which of course we we're happy to do.

For this reason and our dedication to insuring all our contractual obligations are met (especially our guarantee of course) our time will be monopolized through to February 2007. If you would like information on alternative SEO's that we can recommend or would like to be put on a waiting list for February please don't hesitate to contact us.

Well it's been a bit since the last post over here on the Beanstalk SEO News Blog. I apologize for this as there's been a few notable events. Unfortunatley one such event is that I'm currently in the process of moving and much of the "non-client time" I've had had been dedicated to carrying furniture and then rearranging it to get it into "the perfect spot".

As announced, last week was the fourth installment of your truly on Webmaster Radio. I was in a bit of a tizzy right before the show and forgot to tape it. Fortunately they do and put it in the archives so you can listen to the show on the Webmaster Radio site here (you'll also be able to listen to any past episodes you may have missed).

On the air we discussed a number of issues and I had the pleasure of interviewing both Jaime and Chris Cummings from Lycos. Jaime Riehle is the Senior Product Manager for Web Publishing and Chris is the Product Manager for the new Lycos Cinema. Chris and I chatted for most of out interview time covering Lycos Cinema, how it works, how it's funded and where it's heading. When Chris and I had the chance to chat we discussed the direction Lycos is heading in, the arrangement with Ask.com and he managed to nicely evade my question regarding whether Lycos will also be providing some results/services to Ask.com. ;)

After the interview I had a chance to chat with Jim more on his experiences at PubCon in Vegas, Google, Yahoo, and MSN all agreeing to a Sitemaps XML standard and a few other notables. I'll be sure to let you know when the full program is available to listen to on Webmaster Radio.

Until then, keep watching the Beanstalk blog. The house is getting settled and it's back to business as usual. :)

On my daily journey through some top webmaster resources I stumbled upon an article feature over at WebProNews on net neutrality. It's odd that I didn't think to cover this in a previous post as I did touch on it on Webmaster Radio last week. The issue at hand was the neutrality of the Internet which, while the Republicans held Congress the fate of the democracy of the Internet and the way it functions was being threatened. Republican Senator Ted Stevens lead the charge though, as WebPro author Jason Miller so delicately reminded us, he has no real understanding of the way the Internet function referring to it as,"a series of tubes." And as Jon Stewart would point out, "that's OK, he's only the one in charge of regulating it." (See the video below if you're up for a chuckle)

The issue at hand is the placing of control over the Internet and how all those 1's and 0's are handled into the hands of the major telco's such as AT&T. What this would effectively do is allow them to charge for preferential treatment to those who could pay for it giving enormous advantages to major corporations and reducing those who can't afford to pay the extra to settle for slower access to their websites from visitors. Hosting companies should fear this as should small companies that couldn't afford to pay the extra fees (and we all know how "fair" telco's are when they hold monopolies right?)

There is still a chance that the bill could be pushed through in the time it takes for the Democrats to takeover in the Congress and Senate however this may be difficult as any opposing Republicans (and there were some) are more likely to vote with their conscience rather than tow the party line.

While I try keep away from politics in the blog (though I love it as a hobby) I'm truly grateful that the Internet just might maintain its democratic structure. We might not always like what we find there but when we do, it's almost worth the 300 spam emails we had to weed through to find it ;)

The article by Jason Miller on the issue is definitely worth a read and can be found here. You can also find a number of interesting information on the subject through Google News here. And now, enjoy the video. :)

Labels: net neutrality, ted stevens, webpronews

Today we'll be doing our fourth installment of The Alternative of Webmaster Radio. In this segment I'm going to be bringing up a very important which is that Rand Fishkin's trademark yellow shoes have been discontinued.

For those of you who don't know Rand, he's the CEO of SEOMoz and an alround great guy. I'm interviewing him for the next generation of SitePoint's SEM Kit.

If anyone out there knows how to get their hand on a pair (or two or ten) of the yellow Puma's that are his trademark (image to right) please contact us. There is a reward. :)

For those of us that reside primarily in geekdom, the state of any major technology, especially of the online variety, is big news. Well David Sifry (one of the creators of Technorati) published yesterday his "State Of The Blogosphere" address. Here is the summary:

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.

The post by David Sifry includes much more information and some interesting graphs to help you get a better image of what's going on in this huge medium. It's highly recommended reading for any bloggers out there or people interested in understanding this extremely interesting form of communication. The article can be viewed on David's blog at http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000443.html.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find an email from WebProNews Content Editor Chris Crum asking me if we could be added to the WebProNews blog partners. This question took me back to a similar question from SEO Jim Hedger when he inquired if I would be interested in speaking on Webmaster Radio. The opportunity for exposure on an authority site that I visit regularly and recommend often? Well, OK. :)

So a very big thank you goes out to Chris and the WebProNews team. It's always an honor to have the work you put in to keep your visitors up-to-date appreciated by such an authority resource.

And in other, flatteringly news: we were also pleased today to discover that we have once again been listed as one of PromotionWorld's Top 10 Best SEO Companies. This is the 5th consecutive month we have made this list and we are honored once more to have been included. PromotionWorld is definitely an excellent resource for those interested in SEO and Internet Marketing and we are definitely proud to be recognized by them.

Today launched the third installment of my new "career" as a radio personality on Webmaster Radio. Host Jim Hedger and I discussed the purchase of JotSpot by Google, Microsoft Senior Policy Counsel Fred Tipson's comments regarding pulling out of China for ethical reasons, the upcoming US elections, the Ask-Lycos deal and "the Google". ;)

You can listen to the piece by clicking here. (note: you will only be getting the portion where I was speaking. If you want the "full meal deal" you'll just have to listen to the show which airs on Webmaster Radio Thursdays at 5PM EST).