Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Go ahead, admit it. When you wake up - if one of your major tasks for the day is link building you're likely to hit the Snooze button, pull the covers over your head and procrastinate for just a few more minutes. We all know it's important - but I don't think it's anyone's favorite task.

Well to make your life easier (and maybe the link building a bit more interesting) I've found an interesting article over on Search Engine Land by Julie Joyce on just this subject. After polling some link builders she's written up an article outlining 6 methods for finding good quality links. Of course there are more than 6 but when I read the list - it was a good refresher on some things I knew but "forgot" and hit on a couple things that I hadn't thought of in the way she wrote about them. I didn't have high expectations when I saw "yet another link building article" I was pleasantly surprise to find this one. It only takes a few minutes to read and it well worth the time.

You'll find the article over on the Search Engine Land site here and while you're there - you might just want to peek at some of the other great content they have. It's like Danny Sullivan knows his stuff or something. :) (for those of you who aren't SEO's - Danny has been reporting on search engines since the first one was composed of mammoths scrawled on caves and helped start Search Engine Land and the always enjoyable SMX events)

Labels: link building, seo article

Companies who give free advice often get benefits of recognition and media attention. These days that is more often via social media the likes of blogs, stumble upon, and digg, all of which are modern forms of "word of mouth advertising". But they surpass word of mouth in that references from online social media may stick around years longer than a customers memory can recall things clearly. Information also moves so much faster in our modern world. A reference to your site online whether good or bad can generally spread a lot further a lot faster than good old fashioned "word of mouth advertising". Not to mention that the references stick around a long time and continue to be viewed by more and more web surfers as time goes on.

So why not take advantage of that and publish all manner of resources to garner some attention? At first glance for a businessman it might seem a bit strange to publish resources on say fishing if you're a fisherman. Or if you're the best jewel smith you would think you should keep your tips and tricks to yourself. However the reality is most of the people who see this information and think "it's cool" are never going to be at a level of expertise to become your competition. They still would need thousands of dollars in training and tools to match the quality your business already offers. Not to mention that most of your tips and tricks are probably known among industry professionals so you're not really divulging any secrets that could affect your customer base are you? If anything a few amatuers might try your advice and find they're unable to achieve the quality you are. They'll be able to appreciate your companies workmanship even more.

If authors were worried about competition text books would only be written by retired professionals. Instead active industry professionals are often the one's writing new resources because it gains them respect and a reputation in the industry. Online that respect and reputation can translate to your businesses website being a hot topic and resources you publish have a chance to spread among social media attracting all kind of buzz in your direction. The question is will you be ready to keep up?

Free tools, tutorials, howto's and various other resources and gadgets really are the way of the web. Domaintools? MXtoolbox? Tizag? Howstuffworks? Speedtest.net? Ipchicken.com? All of these services monitize themselves in some way. Some of these monitize themselves with advertisements but others are built by a particular business strictly to promote themselves or their partners.

Customers love when you give them things for free. You might be a bit aprehensive the first time your business is asked to publish free advice. But consider advanced fields like the software industry or web design and think about how long it took you and your employees to get where you are? Did it happen overnight? Unlikely. It probably took years of your spare time learning your trade either at home in your coding cave or at College or University.

Don't be a protectionist in a time where free tips are the the norm. Your contributions may help people with their coding hobby. (some of which will go on to be professionals after years of dedication) Most people are likely to realize they can't compete with the level of quality your company can produce in such a short time. Then there are those who fiddle around and find out at some point that they don't have the time to do it themselves. Meanwhile your real competitors already know the score themselves so your free resources probably won't help them any.

Out of the few prodigies that can turn a professional product from your tutorials and other resources have you really lost any business? This person obviously had the time, the talent, the ambition and the desire to do things themselves. Were they ever a potential client?

There are already many do it yourself programming and web design communities and resources out there. Why not add to the pool and get your name spread around blogs, twitter, instant messages, discussion boards, and more?

Labels: link bait, link building, social media

We just finished airing a great episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm. Today we covered a bit of news including the free-to-attend Affiliate Convention - organized in part by my co-host Mr. Jim Hedger.

Our first guest today was none other than Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz who discussed a great paper they recent published on link building titled, "The Professional's Guide To Link Building" (which - I'll point out - the fact that I'm linking to it in this blog post proves one of their link building points). Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in building links.

We discussed link profiles, what to look for when analyzing your competitors and how to determine the right strategy for your link building efforts.

Rand also discussed with us some comments made by Seth Godin regarding how to make money from SEO and whether or not SEO's need to know code (apparently 21% of SEO's polled don't think they do).

After Rand, Jim and I had the pleasure of chatting with Barrie North from Joomla Shack who discussed with us the benefits of Joomla as well as other SEO-friendly CMS systems. We covered issues such as easy-of-use and what to take into account when first setting up your site.

If you missed this great episode you can listen to or download the podcast from the Webmaster Radio site here.

Labels: affiliate convention, barrie north, joomla, link building, rand fishkin

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

When I launch my browser (Firefox) it starts with 4 tabs. The first three are the major engines with "seo services" in the query just so I can keep close tabs on how we're doing. The 4th is another Google datacenter with the same information. Yes, I'm that obsessed. It also gives me a close watch on what's going on at Google - I can constantly see any time a minor adjustment is underway.

When I walked in the door this morning, our Director of SEO Services Daryl Quenet asked me if I'd seen the results and who was up today. He was getting a different set of results than I had gotten just a short while earlier. After searching other phrases it became pretty clear - there's a minor update underway. If fact, we have one client that in the duration of a call was in position 3, then 22, then 13 and then 6 (and it was about a 5 minute call).

In the results for the competition for "seo services" I've admittedly been a bit disheartened with who we're competing against lately. As I've noted previously on our blog, there was once a time when we were up against WeBuildPages for the #1 spot. That isn't the case anymore and unfortunately, a lot of the sites now beating WeBuild have what I would consider to be "less that ideal" link strategies. To me, I'd almost rather be #2 in a solid competition against worthy opponents than #1 in a competition against sites that have sloughs of footer links and blogrolls. Basically, I'd rather be up against "real" linking strategies.

Unfortunately, it appears that the newer algorithm (and it's been this way for a while now) is favoring link strategies that go exactly against the best practices. I'm not going to name names here (you can check the backlinks of our competitors (and us too if you like) to find out who's doing what - on maybe spend your time researching your own industry) but here's some of what we're seeing get results that they shouldn't be:

Paid Links:
Ugh. There are numerous competitors out there who have bought links and are reaping the benefits. No matter what Matt and crew might say over at chez Google - they're just not as good at devaluing them as we're being told. One of the sites I was looking into has many paid links in obvious locations on irrelevant sites and is doing quite well with them. Now, I'm not saying go out and get yourself some paid links - it's always a risky venture but this is definitely the area of biggest annoyance to me as we have no paid links simply because we're not willing to risk our rankings and to watch sites climb into the top 10 with them, even after being reported, is annoying to those of us that have secured legitimate links with great effort and is hurting those that they beat out.

Links On Client Sites:
Alright, admittedly this is a tactic that I don't love but I can't really argue it. We tend not to put links on client sites. I personally find it to be in poor form to charge a client and then take a link from them HOWEVER there is a legitimate claim that this is advertising and giving credit where it's due.

Regardless of what side of the equation you're on in that debate though, should these really count as backlinks? They're not links given by the site owner as a vote, they're default links put there by the party that will benefit. Google needs to find a way to discount these links much better than they are right now.

Run Of Site Links:
This is an easy one. If a link appears on every page of a site - it shouldn't count. If it's there for traffic, great but I can't think of a single reason why a run-of-site link, any run-of-site link, should be legitimately counted as a vote. Even if the link is to a parent company - the link is not so much a vote as a disclaimer and should be treated as such.

Widgets:
This one might come right after paid links in my list of annoying links that shouldn't, but do, seem to be working right now. One of the sites I've found has that majority of their links coming from a counter that links with an image to their site. From what I can see, they don't even offer the counter on their site and thus - they likely (though not necessarily) have paid to have their link put in by the counter creator as a "sponsor".

In this case we have a paid link combined with a low quality, non-anchor text link (though the images to have alt tags) that it effective. This obviously shouldn't be the case if what we're trying to count are real, quality, vote-given links.

And So ...
So what's the purpose of this rant? Well, I know that people from Google visit our blog, I can see them in our stats and so my hope is that one of them will read this blog, take a look at how they're counting backlinks and give credit where it's due - to links worked for and earned by either providing valuable information, providing a valuable resource, or other such "tactics" that actually reflect a vote from one site to another rather than counting a default link with low value based on Google's own guidelines and articulated philosophy towards the subject.

And just to help things along I'm going to give a link to WeBuildPages for SEO services just to give them a boost. Now they just need to get their onsite optimization in place and perhaps we'll once again be up against companies that should be in the top ten. ;)

A Warning:
Now some of you may be thinking, "Hey, these tactics are working so let's do it !!!" If that's your mentality then I warn you to do so at your own risk. Google is trying to get a better value system in place for links and eventually they will succeed. If you're looking to only rank briefly then you might stand a chance but if what you want it to build a quality site that will withstand the ebb-and-flow of the algorithm over time (and I hope you are) then these tactics will eventually get caught and downward your site will tumble.

We're starting to see a very little bit of this in some cases (depending on which set of results we're seeing right now Google settles on) but not enough. My hope is that Google will be able to pick these links up, give them the credit they deserve (none in most cases) and let the true links acquired in mine and other industries count as they should.

Labels: backlinks, black hat, link building, paid links, webuildpages

Google Keywords

Google has just started showing the estimated monthly search numbers in their keyword suggestion tool. For the first time in a long while we're now able to see the estimated search numbers on the engine who's results we most want to see the results of.

As a word of warning, after using it and comparing the numbers with the click through volume for a number of phrases, the number appear to be a bit high - that's because it defaults to Broad Match but you can select Exact Match from the drop-down and get the the numbers you're looking for.

You'll find this new feature added to the Google tool here.

A Test Of Links

Also, there was an interesting test run by Johannes Beusand published on the MarketingFan.com site regarding the value of multiple links to a single page on residing on a single page of a website. He basically strives to answer the question, if there are two or more links on a single page of a site and they point to a single page on another site - how are they treated?

I'm not going to be mean and note everything from the site here and steal their traffic. :) You'll find the link to this interesting test here.

Webmaster Radio

And today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Ryan - the man behind SES. Kevin discussed the show, the organizing of it, and some of the great sessions that'll be held in San Jose.

After that (and some ranting by both Jim and myself about the stupid fees we Canadians are charged for cell phones and specifically web usage on them) we had on Dave Szetela from Clix Marketing discussing the recent changes Google has made to the quality scores for it's AdWords advertisers.

Again, I could repeat the discussion but it was based on a couple posts covered elsewhere here and here.

Labels: adwords, google, jim hedger, keyword activity tool, link building, webmaster radio

Two new SEO articles came out of Beanstalk today.

The first article, titled ">1 Is the Lonliest Number" doesn't so much cover SEO as is intended to help Internet Marketing providers to survive the current economic climate. In a time when competition for dollars is at a high, insuring that you attain and maintain clients is critically importance. This articles outlines how we're surviving it and notes some common trends in companies that aren't.

The second article is more SEO focused. The article, titled "A Beginners Guide To Link Building" is just that. In it we explain why link building is important (from the search engine's perspective) as well as covering different aspects of links that are factors and a few of the more important link building methods. A good read for those just getting their feet wet in SEO and link building.

We hope you enjoy.

Labels: link building, seo article

In what can only be considered a devastating leak of information from Google HQ in Mountain View, a confirmed but as yet publicly anonymous executive from Google has leaked papers detailing some of the key fundamentals to Google's link value calculation system. The announcement by Google earlier today details some of the contents of this information as they work hard to minimize the effect that this will have on their algorithm as SEO's around the world scramble get their hands on it. The news, first leaked by SEO-guru Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, comes as a shock of sorts and leaves SEO's scratching their heads figuring out what to do. There has been startled reaction from the community but first - let's cover a few of the key points (we'll provide a link to more thorough information below).

The leaked information confirmed and illuminated the following information:

• The PageRank we see in the green bar has no bearing on how a site will rank. This information is generated internally based on user expectations and not as a ranking factor.
• The weighing of factors occurs in the following order: Google's internal PageRank, position on page, number of links on the page, anchor text, relevancy. I found it VERY interesting that trust is not yet a calculation on link worth though this may be an omission in the information provided.
• Reciprocal linking is detectable and while it is not penalized, no value is given for the links. A limitation outlined in this is the Google apparently has little ability to to detect legitimate linking sites that happen to link to each other.
• Paid links are not detectable. There is currently no architecture for the automatic detection of paid links. Google relies on reporting by SEO's and webmasters.
• There's a lot more in there - this is just what I've gleaned at the time of this writing. There's a link below to the documents themselves.
  

I had a chance to have a very brief chat with Matt Cutts (quality control guru from Google) who has told us he will be responding on his blog once more information on the leak becomes available (and I'm sure when he's given the OK by the Gods of Google to talk). His response to this leak was, "... this is obviously an issue we are going to have to deal with quickly. We expect SEO's to take quick advantage of this information and a strategy is being developed to deal with this and make adjustments to the algorithm shortly." You can monitor Matt's comments on his blog and a big thanks to him for taking a moment out of his understandably hectic schedule to answer a couple questions for me.

On the other side of the coin sit the SEO's. While we're all obviously reading all the information we can on the leak - we do so with some concern. In an email from Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz he noted, "You might think this is a great opportunity for SEO's but it's not - in fact this is one of the worst things that could happen. All the information we're all reading will be invalid by the time we could employ the tactics and we're about to head into a period of significant instability in regards to Google's rankings . Not only do we have to fear for the rankings we've worked hard to attain over the years - we also have to deal with rankings that will be in a constant state of flux over the next few months. Clients are NOT going to be happy." Good call Rand and you can monitor his comments on the subject on their blog at http://www.seomoz.org/blog.

This is obviously an issue you're going to want to research this issue - there's a lot more about this and links to the documents on the cnet site at http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9907571-36.html. Well, the article is actually about Google's April Fool's Day joke but we think ours was fun too. :) Enjoy the day. ;)

Labels: april fools day, danny sullivan, google, google update, link building, rand fishkin, seomoz

Today we're going to discuss three things. Links, links and ... well ... links. Where to begin where to begin? I know, let's start with links:

Links
Today Jim Hedger and I hosted our weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio. We covered a variety of topics from Google surpassing $700/share in trading to the battle over advertising and Google's upcoming issues with Facebook (i.e. Facebook stands to provide a TON of relevant search and advertising opportunities and they're going to provide them to Microsoft).

After a brief discussion on those topics we had on patent guru Bill Slawski for the remained of the show to discuss ... you guessed it ... links. Bill definitely knows more than your average bear about search engines and links and was happy to share his wisdom bringing up important points to consider such as the move AWAY from global search results to results tailored more to the individual user's likes and dislikes as defined the the user, their search behavior and the behavior of similar users. If you're interested in this subject (and if rankings are important to you - you should be) you can read more about it in an article I wrote on Personalization as well as on Bill's blog where he lists the important patents related to personalization. To get a full feel for it you've just going to have to visit Webmaster Radio and download the podcast. :)

Links
And so let's move on to topic #2. Links. The link counts are getting messed up at Google again (not that they've ever been particularly reliable. As Jim Hedger points out, whenever we see these sorts of fluctuations going on it usually means there's something bigger about to happen.

I was already predicting an algorithm update later this week or over the weekend. Could this just be the tremors before the Earthquake. And please dear God let Google haven't learned a valuable lesson from the Florida update of 2003. ;) (and for those of you who were SEO's at the time (white hat at least) you'll shudder at the mere though)

Links
And lastly we're look at links. Well, we won't so much look at links as we will a rap about them. I've gotta say, this is a first for me. :)

Labels: bill slawski, facebook, google, jim hedger, link building, webmaster radio

I'm going to write this post in hopes that the influx of people who seem to be calling us lately asking about PageRank will read it. I'm not convinced that this is the case however it's worth a try. A trend I've noticed as an SEO is that questions tend to come in waves. Today everybody wants to know (or there's mass confusion on) links and PageRank (or more specifically, why they don't have a higher PageRank). And so this post is born. If nothing else, it'll offer me a link to point those people to down the road rather than explaining AGAIN why their website doesn't have a higher PageRank and why this isn't really the question they should be asking themselves.

So let's start from the beginning, why are we all chasing rankings (and since rankings predate PageRank - this is the beginning)? We chase rankings so that we can get traffic. Why do we want traffic? So we can get business. So let's take a look at what the questions we should be asking ourselves are regarding PageRank, the factors being - business, traffic, rankings and PageRank. Lets see if we can figure out which of the factors are unimportant knowing that the end goal is business. In this equation we will make the logical assumption that if you increase the relevant traffic to your website, you'll increase your business. Thus, for our purposes here: traffic = business.

1. If you have a high PageRank but low rankings will you have an increase in traffic/business?
2. If you have a low PageRank but high rankings will you have an increase in traffic/business?
   

If you answered yes to number one then perhaps you need to visit more SEO blogs and forums to get a better understanding of how Internet Marketing works. If you answered yes to number two but no to number one you get the point - PageRank is irrelevant.

Now, there will be a couple of you out there who will have read some statistics regarding people using a high PageRank as a yardstick to measuring the authority or trustability of a website. Putting things in perspective however we can all agree that this is a small percentage of the population (do you?) and if this trust is what you're looking for you'll find it much easier and cheaper (time is money) to attain by adding HackerSafe to your site and getting the roughly 14% conversion increase you can get by going that route.

So we'll focus on the real business and it's very clear that what we're really after is rankings, not PageRank. Once upon a time PageRank had a strong influence on rankings - that is not the case anymore. It is certainly a factor, one among a hundred. Certainly not something worth all the hoop-la.

But thus far I don't think I've really answered the question I've set out to - so let's do that now. Really there are two common questions I seem to get asked frequently about PageRank and they are:

Why isn't my PageRank higher?
The answer here depends on the site of course however the most common reasons are:

• The links you're building are horrible - sorry but it's true. If you come to me with an acne treatment site with a low PageRank and ask why, please make sure you haven't done mass recip link building with low PageRank car insurance sites (or worse), or
• Google's lack of PageRank updating is the "problem". I've seen a number or sites that actually have some good link building tactics in place but have a low PageRank. When I ask when the link building started I'll generally get the reply that it's been in the last 6 months or so. While there have been some hiccups in the PageRank displayed in the tool bar we haven't seen a real update since April. These are generally the funniest people to deal with and here's why. The conversation usually takes the following turn:
  "Oh, that's why my PageRank is still a 2 (or 1 or whatever). I was wondering as I'm sitting at #2 for my phrase." Which occasionally makes me want to forget I'm speaking with a prospective client and cry out "THEN WHO CARES WHAT YOUR PAGERANK IS !!??!!"

Which is really what this blog post (or is it a blog rant?) is about. The second question I get asked a lot is:

So what are you going to do to increase my PageRank?
The truth of the matter is, nothing. I'm not specifically interested in your PageRank. If you look at our guarantee page you won't see a "We guarantee to get you a PageRank of x over 6 months." We run ranking reports, not PageRank reports.

Now, we have to do a lot of link building and our primary focus is to get good relevant links so in the end, the PageRank of the sites we work on will go up however that's not really the point. PageRank doesn't pay the bills (unless you're selling links). Your page's rank - now that does. :)

So thank you all for listening to my rant. I do hope that it has answered some questions and please accept my thanks ... you've been a good counselor. ;)

And Matt (Cutts) if you're reading this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE just help us get rid of the bloody green bar. paid links wouldn't be a problem for you anymore (or certainly less of one) and I wouldn't have to answer these questions anymore and could just be left to focus on relevancy. :)

Labels: google, link building, pagerank

The latest article by Beanstalk came out today. Titled, "The Dark Art Of SEO" it covers all the advanced black-hat SEO tactics we use including cloaking, blog comment spamming, paid links, FFA spamming for competitor sites and more.

And do I have your attention yet? ;)

Alright, in reality the article covers some of the hidden and often forgotten areas of SEO. Those parts hidden in the dark and rarely accessed. The tactics discussed will take time and patiences and probably money but will give you a huge advantage over your competitors provided that you already have the basics in place.

You'll find the article here. Nothing like a little light reading over the weekend. ;)

Labels: link bait, link building, seo article

Today on SEOMoz's Whiteboard Friday Rand Fishkin discusses links. He gives some valuable advice on how to value links. What might have appealed to me more than anything else is the ego of it. Rand advises us to treat links as an entity outside of Google. His basic advice is:

If the link would be valuable even if the search engines didn't exist then it's a good link.

This matches well with what I discussed in my article "How To Win Links & Influence Engines" when I was discussing paid links. In it I wrote:

The only advice I will give to those looking to purchase links is this, ask yourself, “Am I expecting to get traffic from this link?” What this will weed out at the very least is small footer links and links on irrelevant sites. Basically, if the link is worth it without the boost in rankings then continue to pay for it and consider any ranking increases a bonus. If you aren’t getting any traffic from the link then it’s likely not worth paying for. If you’re not getting traffic then the site likely isn’t relevant or the link is in a poor location. The engines will likely pick either of these up and you’ll end up paying for a link that isn’t passing on any weight anyways.

This rule translates well to virtually all types of links.

I won't go into all the details of the video, it's only 6 minutes and that's 6 minutes well spent. You can watch it below:



And a big thanks to Rand for summarizing this topic so very well. That's why you're one of SEO's "Rock Stars". :)

And to our visitors, enjoy the weekend !

Labels: link bait, link building, paid links, rand fishkin

Beanstalk's latest article, titled "SEO For Google In Five "Easy" Steps" was published today. This article outlines the five basic steps to ranking your website on Google today, and in the future. It covers:

• Site structure
• Content optimization
• Link baiting
• Link building
• Social media

You can read the article in full here.

Enjoy the read and good luck (unless you're competing against any of our clients of course ;)

Labels: content optimization, google, link bait, link building, seo article, site structure, social media

There is much confusion out there regarding the rel="nofollow" attribute despite the fact that it has been around for years. Newbies and hardened SEO-geeks alike are still not 100% sure as to what the value of a link is that contains the rel="nofollow" attribute. And so we at Beanstalk will be running a number of tests to determine what we can about this tag and any value a link that includes it may pass to a target site.

To insure the purity of the test we'll be releasing the methods we're using as we post the results rather than prior to the test completing. The first test, we can say, is to determine whether anchor text relevancy passes through a link that includes rel="nofollow".

Stay tuned, we'll report back as soon as the first test is complete.

Labels: link building, rel=nofollow

No, this blog post isn't about how to get a link on Webmaster Radio. The show today is on link building and we've got ourselves a lineup of some of the best-of-the-best in the industry to discuss how it's done.

We'll be starting off with none other than Eric Ward. Eric is one of the worlds top link builders. We'll of course have MUCH to discuss there.

After Eric we'll be chatting with presellpageman on hosted content, paid links and more.

After presellpageman we'll be chatting with our good friend Neil Patel about the future of link building, social media and more.

It's going to be an excellent show so be sure to listen in at 5PM PST or download the show tomorrow from here.

Labels: eric ward, link building, neil patel, presellpageman, webmaster radio

Today was an exciting day at SES NY 2007. I haven't had the time to attend a session yet (that's right, 3 days in and still no sessions). On the plus side, I've had the opportunity to interview many of the people who's sessions I'd have most wanted to attend and ask them my own questions. :)

The Rest Of Yesterday:
After yesterday's blog post I had the pleasure of chatting with presellpageman (he doesn't want his actual name posted). We discussed links, the changes in how the engines treat different kinds of links, and what's coming up. We covered recip links, directories, paid links, articles, blog and forum commenting and of course, hosted content (his specialty). This was interview one of three I'm hoping to get on link building and how the strategies are and/or will be changing over the next year. I won't get into too much detail here as the interviews are for an article I'll be writing. I'll just post a link to it when it's completed so be sure to visit again for more details.

After the day was complete it was off to a fantastic dinner and pub crawl hosted by Efficient Frontier. A HUGE thanks to Chris Zacharias for an awesome night, a great dinner, and some fantastic company. We stayed up too late but it was worth it. :)

And Then It Was Today:
After a bit of a sleep-in (there was nothing pressing to do pre-noon so getting there at 10 seemed OK) the majority of my time was spent networking, research and hosting our weekly radio show live from New York.

We had a slough of great guests on today. I found that it's easier to interview when you've got a desk to jot notes on but with the guests we had it went smoothly. We had Kim from Cre8asite Forums, Li Evans from SEO Roundtable, Tim Daly from iMediaConnection, and Lori Weisman from Click Forensics. After that we just hit the crowd to ask a few questions.

I'll post a link to the show's podcast once it's online.

And Tonight:
Tonight we'll be off to Search Bash, a party hosted here are the Hilton NY by Webmaster Radio, LookSmart and Bruce Clay. But you'll read more about that tomorrow.

Labels: click forensics, creatasite forums, efficint frontier, hosted content, link building, lori weisman, presellpageman, seo roundtable, time daly, webmaster radio

It's always nice to be recognized when you put in the efforts to provide a great service.

When I received an email this morning notifying me that Beanstalk won PromotionWorld's top 10 link popularity services for 2006 I was obviously quite pleased. I knew that our services worked of course. We use them to guarantee our SEO services so there was no doubt in my mind that they were effective. Nonetheless, to have a company as reputable as PromotionWorld independantly rank us among the top 10 was obviously a pleasant surprise.

A big thanks go out from Beanstalk to PromotionWorld for this and the past awards we have received. And thanks also to our link building team. You do a great job and Beanstalk wouldn't be the company it is without you all.

For more information on our link popularity services please visit our link popularity services page.

Labels: link building, link popularity services, promotionworld

Today Beanstalk launched the third in what will be an ever-growing set of free SEO tools. The first two tools, announced last Thursday in this blog, focused on various ways to check your rankings faster and easier. Today's tool is designed to help you find relevant links faster and easier. This tool enables users to specify the relevancy by search phrase and the type via a drop-down box (article links, blogs, reciprocal, directories, etc.) We hope that you find this tool useful.

Remember to check back regularly as we'll continue to add more useful tools to our lists.

You'll find this new link suggestion tool here.

Labels: free seo tools, link building