Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Well, today on Webmaster Radio I presented the finding from the first rel="nofollow" test. A few minutes later in the chat room I was presented with a link to another blog. The post read as follows:

Blogspam works, but only in large quantities

Dave Davies did some research on whether nofollow links still pass some linkjuice, and as it turns out (which we knew of course) it does, a bit… So, for your blogspam to be useful, you have to do it in very very large quantities :)

Posted on http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

Alright, not exactly what I was getting at. In retrospect however, this is a fairly logical conclusion (not the only conclusion but a logical one). That said, there are a myriad of other factors at play which fortunately will trip up many of the would-be spammers hoping to use this tid-bit of info to their advantage.

The second round of testing will continue as planned. We're not saying to sp@m anything and certainly not blogs, these tests are run to determine all the available tactics and sometimes just out of curiosity (I don't fish and everybody needs a hobby ;). If we know that posting in forums WITH LEGITIMATE RESPONSES OR COMMENTS will help our site or a client's site in the rankings then it is a useful tactic. I'm hoping not to see a flurry of bots now ransacking blogs and forums with "guaranteed lowest rates on mortgages" or the oh-so-useful Viagra ads.

Labels: blog, rel=nofollow, search engine spam

The first rel="nofollow" test is complete and the results are as expected. To avoid the results getting tainted we were unable to provide the specifics as to how the test was being run. Well, that's not the case anymore.

What we wanted to determine is whether a link to a website that had the rel="nofollow" attribute attached passed on anchor text weight. To determine this we built a few links to the Beanstalk homepage from a few forums that automatically added rel="nofollow" to all links. The anchor text we used for these links was bsiseoinc (knowing that the keyword itself fit into two criteria: it didn't appear anywhere else and it held no value to anyone.

As of this morning we are now seeing the Beanstalk homepage among the Google results for this phrase despite the fact that that the term appears nowhere on it and there are no links pointing to it with that keyword that do not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute.

Now, what we don't know right now is exactly how much weight these links have. Until now the common belief was that anchor text from a rel="nofollow" link would pass weight only if the site had other links using the same anchor text that were not "blocked". This is clearly not the case. That said, it is clear that they don't hold as much weight as a standard link as the Beanstalk homepage appears low in the results at this time.

And so we will continue testing this. The next test will be to determine how much weight a link with rel="nofollow" passes. This test will be spread over months as we will be building two sites to complete for an unused term, one getting only rel="nofollow" links and the other getting only standard links to determine how many rel="nofollow" links are required to beat the site with followed links when all else is equal.

We will of course keep our blog visitors posted. :)

Labels: rel=nofollow

And so we end another week and bring in another weekend. This weekend is more fun than most for those of us (guys) with children as it's Father's Day. Ah, Father's Day ... a day dedicated to dad when we get to get up especially early, spend the day doing stuff our kids want to do "for dad" such as play at parks and go to kid movies. ;)

And so in celebration of this fine fine day I have a link to help you lighten up and separate yourselves from the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life. I'm found some very humorous videos on a site aptly named "Very Funny Ads". The funnies ads created and some of them truly bring a chuckle. So if you're a dad, this will help bring a humerus end to your work week and get you ready for the fun awaiting you on Sunday morning (bright and early) and for those without children or if you are among the 51.3% of the population that's female (you know, the ones who actually had to go through all the pain of giving us these bundles of joy) then this is purely for your enjoyment.

So turn down your speakers or plug in your headphones, make sure the boss isn't watching (or make sure the boss reads Beanstalk's blog so you know what they'll be doing ;) and enjoy. You'll find the site at http://www.veryfunnyads.com/.

And now for some real SEO news:

A couple weeks back on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I discussed the launch of Google Universal. Well-known freelance writer Claudia Bruemmer has written an interesting article on how to optimize your site for this new search function which is published on the ISEDB.com website. The article gives tips and advice on how to rank over multiple formats for keyword phrases now that Google is drawing results from their verticals into the general search results.

A very good read that will give you food-for-thought as you head into the weekend. As a note, read this BEFORE watching the ads noted above. You might as well get the work-part out of the way before enjoying yourself. :) You'll find the article on the ISEDB website here.

Another interesting article that is worth read was published by Stoney deGeyter a couple months ago but which I just read again recently and forwarded to a client who's site violated more than one of the rules. Stoney wrote 10 tips to quickly increase site conversions. While this article doesn't get into advanced conversion optimization it does cover many of the most common mistakes website owners make. This too is a good read. Even if you have good conversion it's good to get a refresher on the basics and Stoney covers them well. You'll find this article here.

Labels: claudia bruemmer, conversion optimization, fathers day, google universal, jim hedger, stoney degeyter, very funny ads, webmaster radio

Our test on the relevancy and value of links that contain the rel="follow" attribute are still underway however I thought I'd pass along an update.

In this test we chose a word that appears nowhere on the Internet and posted links to our homepage with the rel="nofollow" attribute in them. At this time a number of the links we built have been picked up. That said, our site is not yet appearing for the keyword in question and so the test in inconclusive (though only a few days old).

My own estimates at that if the anchor text relevancy is going to pass (which I believe it will) that the Beanstalk site should rank within 2 weeks of the start date of this test which means we should be ranking for this phrase if my personal estimates/assumptions are correct.

Keep watching and we'll keep you posted on this test an other important happenings in the industry.

Labels: rel=nofollow

There is much confusion out there regarding the rel="nofollow" attribute despite the fact that it has been around for years. Newbies and hardened SEO-geeks alike are still not 100% sure as to what the value of a link is that contains the rel="nofollow" attribute. And so we at Beanstalk will be running a number of tests to determine what we can about this tag and any value a link that includes it may pass to a target site.

To insure the purity of the test we'll be releasing the methods we're using as we post the results rather than prior to the test completing. The first test, we can say, is to determine whether anchor text relevancy passes through a link that includes rel="nofollow".

Stay tuned, we'll report back as soon as the first test is complete.

Labels: link building, rel=nofollow