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Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

July 9, 2008

Google Keywords & A Test Of Links & Webmaster Radio

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.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 3:09 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: adwords, google, jim hedger, keyword activity tool, link building, webmaster radio —

Google Keywords & A Test Of Links & Webmaster Radio

Google Keywords

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

A Test Of Links

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

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

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 3:09 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: adwords, google, jim hedger, keyword activity tool, link building, webmaster radio —

April 17, 2008

Google Returns To “Normal”

In today’s episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm Jim Hedger and I discusses a couple recent events at Google. Namely the release of their Q1 earnings (SURPRISE – they’re up over last quarter) and Yahoo! using Google’s paid ads instead of their own. Rather than re-hash “old news” (OK – it was earlier today but you can listen to it all by downloading the podcast here) I’m going to cover a new issues – Google’s latest update.

Recently there’s been much news about a massive shift on Google named the “Dewey Update“. The update itself caused much chaos as SEO’s around the world reported huge swings in rankings. The forums have been abuzz and the update, unlike most, took place over weeks with some sites changing positions wildly 3 and even 4 times in a day. The update appeared to have settled late last week with only minor tremors affecting the rankings in what one might conclude to be a new way of adjusting rankings on Google’s end – a more fluid approach to rankings.

Tonight however there’s been another significant shift however there’s a pretty major difference – this one is much more in tune with the updates prior to Dewey which took place on an almost weekly basis,usually starting on Thursday or Friday evening.

A major difference between what we’re seeing now and what we saw with Dewey in that the effects and changes appear far more logical whew one can look at the results across numerous sites. The changes seem to take into account adjustments made to the sites and increases in backlinks rather than massive adjustments to the ranking system affecting what can only be described as almost random factors (I’m sure they weren’t actually random however it was impossible to get a lock on what was being tested with the changes occurring too often for any proper analysis).

Obviously as an SEO I’m very happy to see this return to stability and as a searcher I appreciate that what I see today is likely going to be similar to what I will see tomorrow. Helps instill in me faith that the results I’m being presented with are actually relevant. Or maybe I prefer it as it reduces the frantic calls from clients asking why they dropped positions from where they were 2 hours earlier and my only reply being, “well – check it again in a couple hours”.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 11:38 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: google, google update, jim hedger, webmaster radio —

February 20, 2008

Content Optimization

As part of our ongoing series on optimization, Jim Hedger published part 4 in the series – content optimization. It’s a lengthy read (with a topic such as content optimization, how could it be otherwise).

This article is released in conjunction with a special on Webcology (a Webmaster Radio show hosted by Jim and myself). Be sure to tune in on Thursday at 2PM EST to listen to some great interviews to go along with the article. If you’ve reading this too late to catch the show don’t worry – you can download the podcast free of charge on the Webcology page here.

Jim Hedger, aside from being a great friend to me and the entire SEO community, is an SEO consultant for Metamend Web Marketing also out of Victoria, BC, Canada.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 8:38 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: jim hedger, metamend, seo article, webmaster radio, webpronews —

January 31, 2008

Google And SEO

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.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 4:48 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: adgooroo, epiar, google, jim hedger, webmaster radio, wordtracker —

January 29, 2008

Beanstalk Supports An SEO Contest

Beanstalk will be supporting the SEO Noobs SEO Contest with some prizes. We’ll be donating 30 minutes of consulting, an announcement on the Webcology Radio show (hosted by Jim Hedger and Beanstalk’s Dave Davies Thursdays at 2PM EST) and an announcement on Beanstalk’s blog.

Added in with the other great prizes this should be a great contest. It’s a bit different than most as the timelines are extremely short. The phrase will be one that doesn’t exist yet, the contest will launch on February 4 and the goal is to rank the site by March 4.

You’ll be up against the Beanstalk team however, other than the trophy, we’ll be donating any prize we might win (if we do) to the highest ranking newbie in the list (i.e. the highest ranking person with less than a year of experience in SEO). And of course, if we get beaten by a newbie I have to fess up and announce it here. Pressure’s on …

Also, we’re going to be taking this opportunity to test a couple different tactics against each other and see which ones work in such a short timeframe. We’ll be keeping you posted here. For information on the specific domains (coming once the contest starts) you can keep posted at our first Yicrosoft directory (SEO) site and our second Yicrosoft directory (Webmaster).

You’ll find details on the contest on the SEO Noobs website here. (Note: hyperlink removed as the site’s been taken down)

Good luck to all who compete.

Update: the contest is now on for “yicrosoft directory”. Entrants will be shooting to compete to rank a site in the top three results of Google within one month for “yicrosoft directory” with a brand new domain (not registered before February 4, 2008). Good luck to all who oppose us.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 12:23 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: jim hedger, seo contest, seo noobs, webmaster radio, yicrosoft directory —

January 24, 2008

Today In The News …

Today, being Thursday, was the day that Jim Hedger and I host our weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio. it was a great show with a focus on Yahoo! in the news and a great interview with Applied SEO’s John Carcutt.

There were two big stories about Yahoo! going on. The first was the introduction of Delicious info into the results. While most of us currently aren’t seeing it, a beta rollout of the new feature is live to many. For those who can, below the description in the search engine results Yahoo! is placing information from Delicious including the number of times the page has been bookmarked and it’s tags.

This of course lead to a discussion about how useful this could be to a searcher and how abused this could be by SEO’s. I liken it to the green bar PageRank. When we didn’t see it we didn’t focus on it but as soon as it became visible it became the crack of the SEO industry (except more expensive in many cases).

Hopefully Yahoo! has learned from Google’s error and we’ll see some great controls. You can read a great article about the launch on Search Engine Land at http://searchengineland.com/080121-095345.php.

We then discussed the massive layoffs over at Yahoo! reported by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and a whole lot more. Will this be the downfall of Yahoo!? Can they keep up if they have less staff? Are they just trimming the fat? The conclusion – we’ll have to wait and see. You can read an article on the subject by Jim Hedger as well on the New York Times site.

After a quick break we interviews John Carcutt from Applied SEO on his interesting business model of white label SEO. He works for other firms, as those firms, gives them the credit and collects the paycheck. Not a bad model and a great guy. Thanks again John from the great hat at SES San Jose 2006 !!!

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 2:58 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: applied seo, deliscious, jim hedger, social media, webmaster radio, yahoo —

January 23, 2008

January 3, 2008

Google Breakup, ComScore, Traffic Power, Aaron Wall & Ninjas

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.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 3:00 pm

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: aaron wall, comscore, danny sullivan, google, jim boykin, jim hedger, traffic power, webmaster radio —