Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Today on Webmaster Radio I had to host the show solo. Our sympathies go out to Jim Hedger who had the unenviable task of heading to Toronto for a funeral. Our hearts go out to Jim and his family.

Todays show however was a great one. We launched our 10-show series on SEO with a show dedicated entirely to keyword research. We're also supplementing each show in the series with an article on the subject at hand. You can find the article here.

Speaking with me on the show was Ken McGaffin from WordTracker, Richard Stokes from AdGooroo.com and Curtis Dueck from Epiar. Each lent an interesting angle to the keyword research discussion and I thank all of them. You can visit the Webmaster Radio site and download the podcast if you missed it.

And from Google ...

While all SEO seems to involve Google, some news came from them today specifically in the form of their 2007 Q4 earnings. Here's the summary:

Revenue of $4.83 billion
51% increase over Q4 2006
14% increase over Q3 of 2007
Google owned sites $3.12 billion
AdSense sites brought in $1.64 billion (up 30% over Q4 2006)

Revenue from outside the US totaled $2.32 billion (48% of revenue - up 4%)

Now here's where I saw something a bit unexpected. Traffic acquisition costs paid to partners increased from $1.22 billion last quarter to $1.44 billion in Q4. Compare this with $1.45 billion generated last quarter vs $1.64 billion in Q4. That means that the amount paid to partners increased by about 18% while the amount earned only increased by 12%. So Google is paying out as a % of revenue more than they were in Q3. That's assuming we all trust stats. :)

Congrats to Google on yet another great quarter. And ya gotta love investors. With a bunch of positive press out prior to the Q4 earning announcement the stock dropped to a low of $534.29 per share at 10am this morning and then rose to a high of $573.00. Basically, someone made 7% ROI in about 6 hours. More than I get in my saving account that's for sure. :)

Labels: adgooroo, epiar, google, jim hedger, webmaster radio, wordtracker

I gotta say, SES San Jose was awesome. While the sessions themselves are always interesting and there's always something to pick up from them - it's usually the networking and "aside" conversation that you have that are the most memorable. This thought inspired me to post a "the people that you meet" post with some of the more memorable people that I had the pleasure of meeting in San Jose.

Jim Boykin - WeBuildPages.com
It's been a long time that I've wanted to meet my arch nemesis. Jim's site and the Beanstalk site tend to bounce back-and-forth in the rankings and have done so for the last year. If we're not #1 for "seo services" I don't even have to look to see who is.

It was great to finally meet Jim and learn that, aside from being a thorn in my side in the rankings from time-to-time, he's an alround good guy and knows his SEO (I should certainly hope so or I'd have to take it personally that they oust us periodically).

Kristine Schachinger - TravelWorm.com
Kristine was awesome to meet and a ton of fun. She managed to keep up with us SES'ers as far as the partying went but always kept her wits about her.

I also had the opportunity to meet the Travel Worm. This friendly little critter tried to eat my lunch but after a quiet threat to stick him on a hook and drop him into the ocean he let me eat in peace.

Ken Jurina - Epiar.com
Ah Ken, ya gotta love him. I had to give him huge props for this shot. The camera wasn't working properly and he managed to keep my 180 pounds aloft for quite a while. Was it worth it, not so sure.

The truly shocking things about this pic is that we'd each only had a couple beers by this point in the night. ;)

Robert Garcia (rumblepup) - Banler.com
Robert is the guy on the right. If you follow my Flickr posts as well you'll recall that I first met him at SES New York a few months ago.

I spent many hours over the course of the week discussing everything from SEO to politics with Robert and look forward to the next SES to chat with him again. A great guy and, while he won't say so, a very good SEO - even if I did make him wrong once ;)

David Brown (neo) - Neo1SEO.com
Running into David Brown reminded me that he is indeed a nice guy even though he tried to hit on my wife in New York (this is a joke). With forearms as large as my calves and a sense of humor that's even larger I'm now tagging him "the strongest SEO in the world".

In fact, if you're an SEO or blogger I'd truly appreciate if you'd link to http://www.neo1seo.com/about-neo1-seo.htm with the text "the strongest SEO in the world". It's an inside joke but it's a funny one. You can gather from this pic where the name came from and I'll note, he didn't lose an arm wrestle all night even though he was up against people coming in fresh. Nicely done David !!!

Glenn Convey - Metamend.com
Glenn is the President of Metamend, my old arch nemesis before I started competing with WeBuildPages.com. Now I hope Glenn knows it wasn't personal (seeing as how he didn't work there at the time). They're also a Victoria, BC based SEO firm so of course, they had to make my "hit list".

"Unfortunately" I got to know Glenn at this SES event and I learned, well, darn it - he's a nice guy and I look forward to seeing him again at future SES events and hopefully at some local tech functions.

Michael Gray - Wolf-Howl.com
Michael gave what was easily one of the most talked about presentations at SES San Jose 2007. He discussed paid links and basically blasted Google for having the "nerve" to tell webmasters what they can and cannot do on their own websites to monetize them.

While I don't necessarily agree with everything Michael said I do have to agree that it's Google's job, not ours, to find ways to determine whether a link should be considered a vote towards a site. And for you few Google employees who visit our site each day (and you know who you are) please note that Michael in no way paid for the link above. :)

Ken Leonard - Hackersafe.com
Ken hosted a dinner and man, can he pick great food. I had the pleasure of sitting beside Ken and he's both a gentleman and a scholar. A truly enjoyable meal with great company.

Also sitting at the table with me was Christian Wilson (see below), Bryan Eisenberg (author of a book I'm a huge fan of, "Waiting For Your Cat To Bark") - Bryan, it was a true pleasure to meet you, Cresta Pilsbury (also from HackerSafe) and others who were sitting farther away from me and thus, I didn't have the pleasure to get to know.

Christian Wilson - WebsiteMagazine.com
As always it's a pleasure to chat with Christian. I met him at SES San Jose last year, again in New York and once again had the pleasure of his company this year.

Christian is an all around great guy, a credit to his company, and was kind enough to hold on to my bag of geek-toys overnight saving me from having to hit the hotel before heading off to the Google Dance (and with the lineups to get there, that saved me about an hour).

Big thanks to Christian and his fine publication to which I am a subscriber (and you should too, heck - it's free :). Click here to sign up.


Big apologies to the many people that I met who couldn't make the list. There were a couple criteria I had to weed it down to - I needed to have a picture, I needed to have chatted with you for a while, and well - I needed to think that it was great to have met you. Admittedly, the picture issue is the most limiting as I often found myself so interested in the conversations that I didn't stop to get a picture taken such as occurred in my many conversation with Bill Slawski (and if you read this Bill - you really did make me nervous as heck in the personalization session :).

Thanks to everyone who made SES San Jose the great success that it was. Special thanks to Chris Sherman, Danny Sullivan, Incisive Media, Bill Slawski, Jim Hedger, and my wife for creating the environment that I get to share and partake of new and insightful ways to do the job I love so much.

Labels: bill slawski, bryan eisenberg, chris sherman, danny sullivan, david brown, epiar, hackersafe, jim boykin, jim hedger, metamend, michael gray, robert garcia, ses sj 2007, website magazine, webuildpages

Well it appears that I'm just not going to be going to any sessions, and that's a good thing. :) Today has been spent networking and interviewing some excellent guests. Let's cover the interviews first:

Rand Fishkin From SEOMoz.com:
Anyone involved in SEO either does or should know the name Rand Fishkin. Whether it's as one of the most notable SEO's in the industry or as the man who ruined it for the rest of us by proposing to his fiance in arguable one of the most romantic manners every (come on Rand ... how can us mere mortals top that?) his name has become synonymous with Internet Marketing.

For those who don't already know, Rand purchased some commercial time on Veronica Mars (his fiance's favorite show. Here it is:

Want to know how she reacted (gee, is there even a doubt whether she said yes? ;)

See? Now how the heck do we compete with THAT??!!!???

Congratulations Rand. :)

Other than a little lecture on toning it down a bit Rand and I discussed a number of SEO issues. We discussed the movement by Google towards personalization, the benefits this has for some searchers and the issues it's causing (such as when you're referring to a resource by it's position in the results ("just enter "blue widgets" into Google and click on the first result" ... "no, not that site" .... "ugh, OK - what do you see in position 4?" ... and so on). it's also an issue for SEO's who send ranking reports for the same reason.

Rand and I also discussed Google's 0.02% claim regarding click fraud (we agree, that's a bit low ;) Rand is also friends with a number of the fine folks from the major engines, I just had to ask him how he can openly state that purchasing links is alright when it is in clear violation on the engine's guidelines. The the client is your client, not the engines. Again, we agree. :)

Of course we covered more. I was supposed to try to keep the interview to 5 to 7 minutes at the request of Webmaster Radio but it likely lasted closer to 15 to 20. Rand, you're a great interview and thank you very much.

I'll post the podcast as soon as it becomes available.

John Marshall From ClickTracks:
After Rand I had another great pleasure in chatting with John Marshall from ClickTracks. Despite being sick he was a trooper, showed up, and was great to chat with.

John and I discussed the future of analytics and some of the enhancements that were likely to come over the next year to ClickTracks and other analytics tools. The main point here was beginning to track individuals differently using scripts so repeat visitors and monitored and (I'l inferring here) patterns among types of users will be tracked.

We also discussed some of the recent enhancements to ClickTracks which I haven't had the chance to install yet. The goal is to make reports easier to read for the layman. From the sounds of it, mission accomplished but most of our clients have no problems reading the current set. :)

We went on to discuss a variety of other issues (sorry WMR team, I just can't keep it to 5 to 7 minutes when I'm interviewing people like this). You'll have to wait for the podcast to hear it all. I'll post a link as soon as it's available.

Jon Kelly From SureHits.com:
Jon and I had some fun chatting about SureHits.com, and insurance and loans focused CPC agency. We discussed Click Fraud (it's a CPC engine after all - I couldn't resist), the processes they have in place for detecting it (I have to admit, they're pretty good) and the hurdles they face as tey try to expand into the UK market with different regulations in their industries.

I'll post a link to the podcast as soon as it becomes available.


The Party:
Last night I didn't get to attend the party, I did however get to ride the bus to-and-fro (I'll post pics as soon as I get them off my camera) complete with the Bruce Clay team, the Google Webmaster Tools presentation team (very nice folks though I couldn't get a card out of them :)

After the party ended (that I only got to ride the bus to) I had the opportunity to hop back on it to head to a night club (Club 320 if you care) and then on for more resulting in a 4:30am bedtime and a sigh of relief in the morning that I switched to water at around 2am and stuck with that decision for the remainder of the night.

A picture is worth a thousand words an these pics might be worth more. The bus was amazing with TV's, laser lights, music, beer of many varieties and great company. I had a great time with the host of the bus Ken Jurina and Epiar. Thanks Ken - it's awesome and I'm glad I had a chance to chat with you and your team through the night.


So, that's "it" thus far aside from business development and networking issues that don't really need to be blogged about. :)

But stay tuned, there are more great interviews and parties to come. We're only half-way through day 2 of 4. ;)

Labels: clicktracks, cpc, epiar, google click fraud, john marshall, jon kelly, paid links, rand fishkin, seomoz, ses ny 2007, statistics stats, surehits