Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

This will be a very quick post to provide you, our valued readers, with a link. I've recently stumbled upon an interesting debate over at Sphinn based on an article by WeBuildPages' own Jim Boykin. The debate is on paid links and it's one of the more interesting I've seen recently with lines attempting to be drawn and people trying to figure out the different between an unguaranteed review (such as Yahoo!) and a paid review.

It's an eternal debate and won't be settled here but good to follow anyways. :)

You can read the back-and-forth at http://sphinn.com/story/24523.

Labels: jim boykin, paid links, sphinn, webuildpages

Today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the opportunity to discuss a number of topics. You can download the podcast of the show (recommended) in the next couple days from the Webmaster Radio site. It's also a good idea to visit it as there are many great shows and information for all levels of listener.

In every show Jim and I take some time to discuss the latest goings-on in the search engine world. Here's what we had for our listeners this week:

• ComScore metrics - ComScore released it's totals for the holiday season of 2007 with a 19% increase in sales over 2006 reaching over $28 billion in online sales. On boxing day the total crossed $545 million doubling boxing day sales from last year.
• Danny Sullivan Article - Jim and I discussed one of the best pieced of predictive writing I've ever seen. Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece as a time traveling reporter from 2010 discussing the breakup of Google. While I doubt it'll come true it's an awesome piece that helps give us a small glimpse and one possible future we SEO's and search marketers have in store for us.
  
• Traffic Power and Matt Marlon - Sometimes bad things happen to good people and that's always a sad day. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and that's ... well ... karma. Matt Marlon, ex-CEO of Traffic Power (an SEO firm that got all their clients banned by Google) was arrested for ... you'll never guess ... fraud. Just like those website owners that he helped scam and get banned with Traffic Power, Matt seems to like kicking people when their down and has taken advantage of a horrible situation and (pardon my French) screwed people out of their homes during the forclosure issues. Personally I'm happy with the outcome and this time I don't think he can try to sue Aaron Wall for reporting on it. ;)
• Aaron Wall's rants - and speaking of Aaron Wall, he's been ranting over the last few days about the state of SEO. I can't do justice to his comments save-to-say ... I agree. THe lines of Walmart coming into the arena devalues the service. Fortunately (unfortunately for clients) they're sure to realize that this isn't the kind of service that can be bulk packages and whipped out at discount prices and still have some reasonable amount of quality control.
  

After a brief commercial break Jim and I came back with WeBuildPages' own Jim Boykin (who I had the pleasure of meeting at SES San Jose last year. Jim has just launched InternetMarketing Ninjas.com where he provides videos from some of the SEO greats and many free tools (if you're willing to pay the $2,995 per year for the videos). I haven't had a chance to view the videos and, as Jim notes, the service is offered more to do-it-yourselfers than SEO's so I likely won't however the names and topics covered are definitely spot-on. Maybe Jim will give me a free sneak-peek (hint hint Jim ;) and I can report on it more thoroughly.

Good luck to Jim and the ninjas !!!

And in other news:

The latest article by Beanstalk is out. I wrote and article that changed considerable from idea to finished product (meaning there's another coming out soon). The article is on finding a good SEO-friendly web designer and can be found on the Beanstalk site here.

Labels: aaron wall, comscore, danny sullivan, google, jim boykin, jim hedger, traffic power, webmaster radio

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