Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

I love Google. Before I head into my latest rant I wanted to get that out of the way as this is two posts in a row that involve me complaining about something Google is doing. Perhaps the flaw is in the way I viewed Google - as more than just a marketing company. I suppose that this means I wasn't really paying attention when the quarterly reports came out. :)

First, let's setup the situation ...

The year is 2004 and I've just registered the domain beanstalk-inc.com. I like sharing information and I like adding content to our site and so as soon as the site was fully operational and our core 100-or-so pages of content ere built I worked to get a blog started with the first post appearing on March 24 of 2005 (about the AskJeeves purchase). :) When I was choosing the blog system to use the choice was pretty obvious to me. The logic went something like,

• I want Google to crawl my blog
• Google owns Blogger
• Google creates the Blogger code
• Google will thus always be able to crawl Blogger blogs
• I think I'll go with Blogger

I wanted to content on our site so I chose Blogger and went with their FTP option. I chose Blogger because of the FTP option. I have setup clients in Blogger because it's run by Google and has an FTP options. Google has just announced that they will be discontinuing their FTP option. Insert expletive here.

Now, I can see their reasoning. By their count, only 0.5% of the Blogger blogs are uploaded via FTP and are responsible for a disproportionate amount of support resources HOWEVER I would counter with two point.

About 75% of all the blogs are spam and I'd bet that the ones hosted on actual domains are more likely to be legit. I may be wrong but I'd bet not. But still - if we assume that we are still left with only 2% of legit Blogger sites being uploaded via FTP. So what does that mean in numbers? I don't have access to the most current data but let's say - thousand upon thousands of users will feel the inconvenience and now I have to go back and appolgoize for recommending to my clients that they use Blogger and further - find a solution.

Now - I do like their sub-domain solution (they'll host blog.beanstalk-inc.com but let's be honest - it's still going to cost me to go this route via lost links to existing posts and the lost weight that seems to affect 301'd links (though I'm not sure why but it does appear to happen).

At any rate - that's my rant and stay tuned, once I figure out what we're going to do and test it - I'll blog about the results so if you too are caught in this mess - hopefully we'll be able to give you a solid solution. :)

And good luck. :)

And now on to the good news ...

Beanstalk has once again made the grade to be included in TopSEO's best of the best winning awards in the following areas:

• Optimization
• Content Creation
• Link Building
• Training
• PPC Management

A big thanks for TopSEOs and to our clients. :)

Labels: blog, blogger, google

Beanstalk SEO copywriting manager Matt Tuens has released his latest article. Titled "How to Write Engaging Blogs People Want to Read" it is arguably one of the best I'd read on the subject.

As usual - I'll avoid some lengthy explanation of the article. It's 931 words so it's a light read and worth every minute.

Enjoy. :)

Labels: blog, copywriting, matt tuens

A new article from Beanstalk's Matt Tuens is out today of SEO for blogs. It covers everything from links to content selection and more.

This article is part 3 in the blogging series. Here is an excerpt:

In a perfect world, your well-written, useful and refreshingly original blog would rank well in search engine results just because it’s good. But that’s not reality. Great content is the foundation of a good blog, but it doesn't guarantee high rankings. There are some search engine optimization (SEO) things you simply must do to increase the chances that your blog will be found – and read.

Be sure to read the full article, "SEO For Blogs".

Labels: blog, seo article

We've just completed part 2 of a 4 part SEO article series. Unfortunately I realized that I didn't blog the publication of part one. The irony here? The article series is on blogging and how it can help your business.

The articles, written by Beanstalk's Director of Copywriting - Matt Tuens, cover:

Yes Your Company Really Does Need A Blog
A article on why your business needs a blog and why.

and

What Type Of Blog Will Benefit My Business The Most
An article outlining different types of blog and the benefits of each for your business.

We hope you enjoy. :)

Labels: blog, seo article

The lastest article by Beanstalk SEO has been published today. Written by Matt Tuens, the article outlines why your company needs a blog. It might seem pretty obvious but if you don't have one - it's a must read.

I won't bbother outlining the points from the article in this post. The article is only 1031 words - a pretty easy read. Watch for the next articles from Matt where he'll be sharing tactics for creating successful blog posts.

You can read his current article here and his others at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/matt-tuens.html.

Labels: blog, matt tuens, seo article

2009 has started off great thanks to Advanced Web Ranking and Top SEOs. Advanced Web Ranking made it a great morning by providing me with the monthly ranking reports for a number of our clients. So I suppose it isn't *really* Advanced Web Ranking so much as a great team of dedicated SEOs and link builders who made that a great experience but I've got enough happiness to go around.

And Top SEOs helped make it a great morning by once again handing us two awards:

• Best in Organic Optimization
• Best in SEO Training

As with Advanced Web Ranking - I suppose it's more our great staff that I have to thank for these awards but I'll do that when I get back from holidays ... for now I'll thank Top SEOs for recognizing our hard work and presenting us with this honor.

And a big thanks to you as well - our blog readers and clients. We grew teremendously in 2008 and I'm looking forward to growing with you through 2009. Watch for some big changes to our blog frequency and free SEO tools in the near future.

A Reminder

Don't forget to change the copyright date on your websites.

Labels: beanstalk, blog, free seo tools, organic optimization, seo training, topseos

Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz (OMG, that's two post in a row about the guy) had his whiteboard Friday today (as he does every Friday). Whiteboard Friday is an "event" during which Rand uses a whiteboard to illustrate complex SEO theories, technologies, etc. in layman's terms. He does a damn good job at it too.

This weeks whiteboard was about how the engines can "sniff out" the origin of a story through links and rank the first source of a story even if a stronger source posts about it later and even if other sources have better anchor text. It's a great post that right now discusses only the news and blog searches but which Rand asks, "could this be expanded to include regular search?"

Now, in my opinion I don't believe that this type of analysis and ranking really works in the regular search arena. If I write a 500 word summary of a new Google patent and I'm the first to cover it and, after reading my post, Bill Slawski over at SEO By The Sea writes up on the patent (like he wouldn't have found it already) and writes a 10,000 word summary of it's ins-and-outs and an analysis of it's application in the real world and links to the Beanstalk blog post as the first source he found out about the patent on (thanks for the imaginary link Bill ;) which of our two pages should rank when people look up information on that patent? Heck, I love traffic but even I'd have to say that if Google wants to provide good results they're going to display Bill's 10,000 word analysis above my 500 word summary in every search regardless of where it first appeared.

Of course, Rand is covering the technology in simple terms to illustrate an idea and of course the algorithms are more complex than simply a link mapping system to determine first source with the source ranking regardless of content. Just wanted to make sure that was understood before you watched the video however. :)

So without further ado, here's Rand Fishkin explaining how engines recognize first source for blogs and news:

Labels: bill slawski, blog, rand fishkin, seomoz

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

I love RSS and I love the Firefox Extension RSS Ticker. Firefox is an excellent browser and combined, these two make it easy to keep updated on the latest going-on effortlessly by scrolling my favorite RSS feeds across the bottom of my browser window. And that's how I found this latest tid-bit of info on the Marketing Pilgrim blog.

For those who have blogs through Blogger (like this one) and who have converted to the new system recently, take a look at your code. It appears that there are some *minor* issues. Actually, just one but wow - is it a doozy.

Blogger blogs, by default, include the following generic code: <$BlogMetaData$>

Well this doesn't look so bad. It tells Blogger to insert the meta data specified for the site through the Blogger control panel, how helpful. The control panel allows you to set your blog as listed or unlisted. If it's listed then it will be crawlable, if it's unlisted then it will not be. Unfortunately for some unfortunates who have recently switched, this tag is producing the following:

<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true">
<meta name="generator" content="Blogger">
<link rel="service.feed" type="application/atom+xml" title="DanoTestMule" href="http://testmule.blogspot.com/atom.xml">
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="DanoTestMule" href="http://www.blogger.com/atom/6602135">
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.pyra?blogID=6602135">
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">

Hmmm, looks OK, looks OK, WAIT!!! <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"> Huston, we have a problem.

So, if you've recently converted to the new version of Blogger, be sure to check your code. You might find something a bit, well, let's use the word "hindering" shall we?

As an additional note, and on an unrelated topic, please accept my apologies for the lack of posts of late. I've been busy ransacking and preparing to write about Google Personalization which involves tearing through 6 patents (now THAT's fun reading) and then taking the time to understand what they actually mean. SiteProNews editor Jim Hedger and I will be publishing a white paper in the next couple weeks on the subject. I will be posting some patent info in the next couple days on this blog so keep watching.

And to be fair to the source of the Blogger info, here's your link Andy. :)

Labels: blog, blogger, google, jim hedger, nofollow, noindex, personalization, white paper