Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

I've heard from several clients today who had their page ranks change both for the better, and worse (my own hardware website went from a PR5 to a PR4). However it seems that a re-occurring bug where Google drops the page rank of internal pages that deserve to be ranked has snuck into this update. After most page rank updates I usually check out one of the previous employers websites to see how their page rank distribution is. Currently of all their pages the homepage, and two of the categories pages have page rank the rest of their website reports as being unranked so not even a PR0. Hopefully we will see a corrective page rank update in the next few weeks.

Labels: google update, pagerank

Beanstalk will be closed from December 24, 25 and 26. We will be open from the 29th to the 31st (closing at 3PM on the 31st) and reopening on January 2nd.

We would like to wish you all a very happy holiday season and look forward to serving you with services or just information in our blog and articles in the new year.

Labels: beanstalk

Anyone that has a high ranking websites knows the better they rank, the more spam they are going to receive, and we are no exception to this rule. Personally I can find it amusing to browse through some of the more unique spam to see what sort of tactics they use to convert their recipients. One of the better scams I've seen is the Internet Brand / Internet Trademark scams, where someone claims to represent a domain registration company who has someone interested in buying your domain name as their trademark. Today I received another one of these scams but in this one they were referencing the financial crisis as a secondary scare tactic. Luckily their grammar is terrible, there is an excess of white space, and it is based completely on fiction which should raise red flags with anyone that reads it.

Dear President/CEO,

We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies' domain name registration and internet Intellectual property right protection in Asia. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On Dec.15 ,2008, We received an application formally.One company named " Arnolds investment Company " wanted to applied for the Internet trademark " Beanstalk-inc " and some domain names through our body.

During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names' keyword and internet trademark is identical with your trademark. Meanwhile, it is in the special time of financial crisis. Many companies are registering and protecting their own internet intellectual property right in various methods.These days we are dealing with this case, I wonder whether you consigned Panlong company to register these domain names through us? If yes, we will complete the registration on these domain names. Or you do not even know this company what so ever? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Auditing Department
TEL: 00852-9566 0205 00852-9566 0496
FAX: 00852-9566 0302
Email:Ivy.Ji@westdns.org
Web: www.west-technology.net

Labels: domain names, internet brand, online scam, west technology

I've had to call a few clients to proactively talk them off a ledge and I thought that perhaps I'd do well to post some recent going's on at Google up on the blog for everyone. There is an update underway over at chez Google. There appear to be at least 3 sets of data going around and a simple Refresh can provide different results for the same search depending on the datacenter you happen to hit.

In general the differences appear to be minor however I have seen a few cases where a site that is in the top 10 on one isn't in the top 30 on another.

This updates seems to be a little more major that we've seen in a while. I haven't had time to analyze what's going on yet and honestly - I'll probably wait until later in the weekend when things start to stabilize before I look into it too much (why try to study a moving target when you can wait for it to rest?) If there's anything interesting to note after the update has settled you can be sure I'll be writing about it here.

I wish you all luck through this update (unless of course you run an SEO company ;)

Labels: google update

I forgot to put up a blog post yesterday announcing the release of the two latest articles by Beanstalk. Written by yours truly the articles cover article writing as a link building tactic (and they're good for our blog readers too :) and another article on how to make your Internet company eco-friendly through reduction and carbon offsetting.

You can find the article on our site at:

• link building with articles
• becoming eco-friendly

I hope that you enjoy them. Stay tuned, we've got more coming up next week.

And as a reminder, my weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio airs today from 2PM EST until 3. It looks to be a good show so be sure to tune in at WebmasterRadio.fm.

Labels: seo article, webmaster radio

Best Of The Web (my personal favorite Internet directory now that DMOZ is essentially DOA) is offering a deal on their already solid pricing for submissions.

BOTW charges $99 per year or $249 for a permanent listing in their directory. A much better value than the $295/yr from Yahoo! in my opinion (but that's just my opinion).

As a warning, they do actually refuse sites so if you have a horribly designed site or offer no value to your visitors, don't bother applying. But if you do have a solid site and you do want a great listing, it's well worth the look.

To make it better, they're now offering 25% off for the month of December. You need to enter the Promo Code BLIZZARD and the discount will be applied.

To check out their site to see what they have to offer you can visit www.botw.org. And don't forget your code. :)

Labels: botw, direcory, dmoz