Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

We've always tried to be ethical business people. We've been in business since 2004 and have had a guarantee since our launch. It's changed a bit over the years but the heart of it has always been the same - if we can't get a client into the top of the rankings then we haven't earned our full salary. You can read about it on our site here if you'd like to see how it's worded.

Well I got an email from the SEO Consultants Directory a few months ago noting that someone else in the directory had a problem with us offering a guarantee. Why others should have any say in how we operate our business I have no idea but at the end of the day we worked it out and the folks over at the directory were satisfied that we were true to our word.

Well alas - that wasn't the end of it. I got an email last week that they weren't listing any new SEO companies that offer a guarantee. When I replied this morning I got back a note that after 4 years - we've been pulled from their directory.

To be fair as we don't offer the option to comment on our blog, here is the reply to my question as to whether our company would be pulled:

Yes you have. Dave, you're guarantee is a prime candidate for our focus and one of the three that were read in detail that caused us to come to our final decision in this area. It reads like SEO Snake Oil and to the average consumer is going to confuse the **** out of them. That's your choice though and we did bring this up once in the recent past. We're really surprised that someone with your tenure and standing in the industry even has such a myth attached to their site in this day and age.

Nothing personal, strictly business.

Thanks for being a long standing member. But this doesn't work for us. And changing it now in a "reaction" to our decision would not be of any help either. This is sheer mumbo jumbo. We were almost tempted to use it as an actual example of what we were discussing and decided against it out of respect for our members. I think you were the only one out of our 109 Active Members who advertises this type of SEO Guarantee. And, we've caught some heat about it over the years and have overlooked it because we know what you are guaranteeing is usually a given with most successful campaigns. You've made it look like you are doing something that others cannot and then have slapped a guarantee on top of it to enforce that belief. Heh! And then you have a Google Guarantee? Oh boy, don't get us started, please...

So I don't particularly get the point. My favorite part is, "... have overlooked it because we know what you are guaranteeing is usually a given with most successful campaigns." OK then - basically our guarantee is what most SEO's offer but we just outline it and put it in our contracts. What then, is the problem?

At any rate - that's my rant for the day and now I have to get back to working for clients. To be fair - if there's a reply from the directory worth noting - I'll add it to this post.

Labels: beanstalk

Thanks to our clients Beanstalk has been "forced" to move to a larger office space. Our new address is at:

103- 814 Broughton Street
Victoria, BC Canada
V8W 1E4

Of course, our phone numbers are the same.

I'd like to personally thank our clients for -

a) helping us to grow out of our old offices, and
b) their patience over the past couple days as we worked to move our offices as quickly as possible

And now to get back to playing catchup. :)

Labels: beanstalk

Just about anyone who has worked in a large office has seen the company they work for make rash decisions about how firing an employee will affect their company. Although it doesn't happen very often sometimes these decisions have a way of just blowing up in the companies faces and creating a PR disaster. Today I read about Ivell Marketing & Logistics who recently fired someone because of the contents of her Facebook account.

Ivell Marketing & Logistics recently fired Kimberley Swann, 16 from their firm for posting on her facebook about her job being boring. Now right away any of you that do Social Media Optimization, or Reputation Management would think this is something to be handled with tact with perhaps a written warning or some other kind of reprimand. As we all know that one whiff of a news headline relating around Social Networking, Social Media, or Facebook will be picked up by the blogosphere which can create a PR nightmare for companies (especially marketing firms). And lets all be honest most office admins find their jobs boring, especially if your a 16 year old female teenager.

The real problem with getting blogger all fired up is the fact that a lot of a larger bloggers have very strong sites which tend to rank fairly easy especially for company names like Ivell Marketing & Logistics which is a three word phrase. In fact if you Google the Ivell Marketing & Logistics company name you will find 5 instances of them firing Kimberley Swann in the top 10. The sad thing for Ivell Marketing & Logistics is this is still a relative fresh news story so as it gets picked up on a larger number of blog, where some of these blogs will credit their sources with a link they are in some real trouble.

With this kind of negative media and blog exposure its very unlikely that Ivell Marketing & Logistics would ever be able to push all these negative blog posts out of the top 10 on the search engines. With two or three negative pages in the top 10 it is possible to push them to the bottom of the first page or off completely, but once posts of this nature start to build organic links then it no longer becomes possible. Bad PR stories unfortunately can be some of the best link bait.

Labels: facebook, Ivell Marketing and Logistics, Public Relations, Reputation Management

Beanstalk will be suffering temporary downtime on phones until approximately 10am PST Wednesday the 25th.

We are moving to a new location with a larger space and unfortunately - they have to bring our phone lines down to move them.

The total downtime will be ~8 to 10 hours from midnight until 10am. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Emails will be answered of course though we will be moving all our staff, computers, etc. over the Wednesday so we will have to take care of issues on a priority basis. We should be back to normal by Thursday.

Thank you very much for your patience.

Labels: beanstalk

Once again I've been invited to speak at the Search Engine Strategies Conference - this time I'll be doing a site clinic where I'll have the opportunity to help others who's sites aren't performing as they should be on the search engines.

I very much look forward to the opportunity and New York is definitely one of my 2 favorite US cities to travel to (it's a coin toss between New York and San Jose).

I hope to see some of you there and invite you to contact me in advance to setup a time to meet for a coffee or a pint at the show.

Labels: ses ny 2009

I just found out about this one earlier today and I have to say - that the big three got together on this one is a great step for their respective indexes and a great way to control duplicate content issues.

I can't possibly outline what the new tag is an does any better than Matt Cutts.

And to make matters worse (in the form of making the sources I reference appear VERY small) I've got another video for you. So that's two posts in one day, both referencing Matt Cutts and both with interviews from WebProNews. There are more resources below. :) But first - the video:


Here some additional followups and resources related to the new Canonical tag:

Joost comes up with some great plugins for common content systems. Click here for more information and perhaps to contact Joost directly and find out when he sleeps.

Jim Hedger writes about this over on the Webmaster Radio blog (Note: link removed as the post has been removed in a redesign).

Labels: canonical tag, google, matt cutts, msn, webpronews, yahoo

Our friends at Google are kind enough to outline on their site the do's and don'ts of SEO. They call it their Webmaster Guidelines and it's become the 10 Commandments of SEO.

When one reads it one can't help but view it as a best practices list and really - there isn't much anyone can say about it to claim it's a bad set of rules. Basically it reads, "Don't cheat and you'll be OK." which can be likened to the seventh commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

But what happens when the one who makes the rules breaks them? A parent who scolds their child for smoking and then is caught with a cigarette in their mouth loses a lot of their fight and a lot of their justifications. Will the same happen to Google.

At this point you might be saying to yourself, "For goodness sake Dave - get on with it - what rule did Google break?" Alright, I'll get right to it. They broken the most "sacred". "Thou shalt not buy links just to improve your rankings.

As it turns out, old Google Japan has been buying links in the form of blog posts to help increase their rankings. Of course, it wasn't actually Google - it was a third party (of course) and Google Japan's PageRank has been dropped to a 5 from the 9 it was at.

So a black eye for Google. Of course, they have a good explanation but then - who doesn't. :) All the same, the one person who came out of this looking great - Matt Cutts who once more represents Google well and you just want to trust him to do no evil. :)

You can watch a video interview with Matt to get a better idea of what went on below.

Labels: google japan, paid links, webpronews

As an SEO it's important to do regular research on topics such as link building (among about a hundred other things). As a blogger it's important to post information that I find unique, interesting or just downright helpful.

Today I was looking around at different link building information and stumbled on a number of interesting threads and posts that I thought would be interesting. Some I've seen before, some are even a couple years old (which doesn't mean they are irrelevant, believe me).

So here is my top 3 favorite link building tonight:

Google explaining what they look for in links - I can't believe that I saw this for the first time tonight. Back in October Google posted this explanation of what they're looking for in the way of links and how they tell the difference between a good and a bad link and some tips on how to build links. Nothing revolutionary but sometimes it's good to hear it from the horses mouth (whatever that means).

101 Link Building Tips - Aaron Wall & Andy Hagans created a list (in 2006) of 101 link building tactics. One of them was to create a great 101 tips list so kudos ... it worked and here's your link. :)

Link Building Secrets - Some of the top SEO's share some of their secrets. Everyone from Boykin to Fishkin weigh in.


So there you have it - my top link building information for the evening. If you find the list helpful, wouldn't it be nice of you to link to it to let others know. ;)

Labels: link building