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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.

    December 13, 2007

    A Bunch Of Stuff

    Well here we are, days later and no posts. I still have dozens of emails sitting in my Inbox waiting to be answered from my week in Chicago (last) but I felt the need to post today. I’m not going to get a chance to get into great detail on the personalization session in Chicago which I was really hoping to but that will take far more time than I have (hours) and so all I will say on that tangent is that I recommend visiting www.seobythesea.com. Great info on patents. You’ll also want to review my past article on the subject here.

    Alright, now on to other news. Let’s begin with today’s radio show on Webmaster Radio. Jim and I discussed the Net Neutrality issues that Roger’s (a Canadian ISP). Rogers is injecting their own content into pages (such as usage warnings) and was caught doing so on the Google homepage. The content they injected mentions Yahoo! Here’s how it looks:

    Rogers injects content onto Google homepage.Image found with a story on he subject on Wired.com here.

    Not cool. Now, who owns the content? Is it Rogers for allowing the data to pass to the user or is it Google for creating the content to begin with? I have a hunch we’ll soon find out.

    Jim and I also went on to discuss Google DoubleClick and some of their more recent issues. Ahhhhh, will it never end (I hope not – it gives me something to chat about on the radio). :)

    One of the points of interest is the filing by liberal consumer parties objecting to Deborah Majoras (Chair of FTC) being involved with the voting on the issue given that her husband (John Majoras) works for the Jones Day law firm which represents Google/Doubleclick.

    While the defense of this would be that John is no part of the deal (perhaps but would likely having influence nonetheless) and that Jones Day only appeared before the EU in that battle and that they have nothing to do with the FTC. That could be but I’m not sure why their site would read that Jones Day is representing Google/DoubleClick on, “international and US antitrust and competition law aspects.”

    Now all this said, I think it’s all silly. Google has every right to the acquisition in my opinion. The reason competition laws were made was to protect the consumer. Google product is free so really, what are we being protected from. Yes yes, if Google has too large a hold on the marketshare they will control the advertising and then they can charge advertisers what they want right? Wrong. Advertisers will pay whatever it takes as long as the money made is higher than the cost paid to provide a product or service. Whether Google controls 55% of the marketshare or 80% this won’t change. They could control 100% of the market – I’m still not going to pay them more than I make to advertise my product. And have you seen what the bids are? This isn’t about cost per click, it’s about scale (they want more clicks) so the consumer won’t really be affected and the advertisers will just have more clicks to choose from which may, I would argue, lower the cost they need to pay.

    But moving on …

    We had Li Evans on the show to discuss social media and all that it isn’t. She was an awesome guest and a joy to chat with in Chicago as well. I couldn’t do it justice and so I’ll just direct you to read her latest article (it’s what the interview was about). You’ll find it on her site here. Great post, recommended reading.

    So that was the show. I’ll give some advanced warning that I’m pretty sure we’re in for a bit of a shuffle on Google this weekend. I’m not sure if we’ll see one on Yahoo! but we likely should within the next week or two. Both engines have had updates recently and not all the effects were beneficial for the searcher (though in some cases the results improved – I’d have to say that overall they declined which means they will be corrected).

    And to take us into the weekend and has nothing to do with Chicago or SES …

    A hilarious video. Sung to the tune of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” it suggests that there’s a new bubble about to burst. A good way to start your weekend (unless you work as a geek I suppose in which case it’s basically poking fun at you … ummmmmm … HEY !!!)

    Enjoy. :)

    SEO news blog post by @ 6:39 pm

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    December 6, 2007

    Live From Chicago

    Well big apologies for not getting a chance to blog about Chicago before now and even this post will be short. I’ll save all the details until I’m back and can put up some resources for those who attended my session.

    After many delays I arrived in Chicago on Tuesday at 9:30PM and the fun began there. After a couple hours of chatting and chumming with those SEO’s that chose Chicago in December rather than Vegas (we call ourselves – the ones who weren’t thinking straight :) it was time for rest to be fresh for my speaking on the Personalization panel at 10:15 after which I had the opportunity to host Webcology (a radio show I co-host on Webmaster Radio) . A great show and big thanks to the WMR crew.

    After that it was a Blackhawks game (big thanks to David Dalka – an expert in local and mobile search marketing than I had the good fortune of meeting in Chicago) where they were beaten by the Canucks (being from Canada I love hockey and the Canucks so it was a good night) and off for some blues with assorted SEO’s and show organizers.

    Today, exhausted, I got the pleasure of speaking on the “So You Want To Be A Search Marketer” panel. It’s not a panel that’s going to drive a lot of business but it’s great to help out up-and-comers in the industry avoid some of the mistakes and hurdles we’ve gone through over the years. Goodness knows we got our share of assistance and advice from those who came before us. :)

    And now, with only a few hours before my flight out I’m off to the Art Intitute. My only exposure to it thus far has been in watching Ferris Beuller’s Day Off (great movie BTW).

    Upon my return I’ll be uploading photos, and posting some resources that will supplements my session on personalization. If not before it’ll be up by Monday so be sure to check back – there’s some interesting stuff coming. :)

    SEO news blog post by @ 1:00 pm

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    November 16, 2007

    But Our Butts Were Still Red !!!

    And Another Google PageRank spanking.Well the dust hasn’t even settled yet on the three PageRank updates we were graced with in October and Google’s launched another volley and a vast number of sites lost some (or more) of those little green pixels.

    In our preliminary analysis there appears to be a bit more to it than the gaining or losing of some visual PageRank (mainly losing it appears at this point). In a chat I was having with Jim Hedger earlier when we were comparing notes both of us agreed that we’ve seen some shifting in the rankings over the past few days and both of us expect to see more in the near future (and by that I mean within the next couple days).

    From Jim’s observations a lot of the sites affected have had some association with SEO/SEM firms though may not be involved directly in the industry or sell links. I haven’t seen that myself as some non-SEO related sites got the hard smack (again?) but an observation worth noting while we seek common trends in what’s going on.

    Now, lets be clear – what appears in the green bar is not a particularly relevant reflection of the value of a site or it’s ability to rank highly (used to be – not anymore). That said, with all these major changes going on one can only assume that this is indicative of other changes in the way sites will be ranked. Or Google’s just messing around with us for fun or because the rumors are true and they’re going to dump the whole thing altogether and they want us to be thankful for it by the time it happens. :)

    To be sure we’ll be watching this carefully over the weekend and over the upcoming days and weeks (and months, and years …) and we’ll keep you posted as we have more time for analysis. Some useful reading and placed to keep watching are:

    • here of course :)
    • AndyBeard.eu - Andy has been following this closely since October and is reporting on it well. He brings up some great points in today’s post titled ZERORANK. One of my favorite points is one I’ve griped about before, that there’s no way to request reinclusion to Google without “admitting” that you did something wrong to begin with. Well what if you were actually penalized incorrectly?
    • DigitalPoint Forums – A discussion on the subject.

    So a thought for Google to close out the blog for the weekend – next time, please wait until our butts have healed from the first spanking before launching into the next round. :)

    SEO news blog post by @ 5:08 pm

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    November 1, 2007

    Links Links and … well … Links

    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:

    Bill Slawski - smarter than your average bear.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. :)

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC3UNewnA5g]

    SEO news blog post by @ 2:55 pm

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    August 31, 2007

    The People That You Meet

    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 from WeBuildPages.com.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 from TravelWorm.com.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 from Epiar.com.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 from Banler.com.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) from Neo1SEO.com.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 from Metamend.com.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 from Wolf-Howl.com.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 from Hackersafe.com.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 from WebsiteMagazine.com.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 lineup
    s 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.

    SEO news blog post by @ 2:50 pm

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    Farewell Jim

    My friend and veteran SEO extraordinaire Jim Hedger will be moving on. For the past year Jim has been the Sr. Editor of Jayde Online, helping change the face of SiteProNews.com, the ISEDN.org and keeping us informed with his blog posts, articles and of course, his show “The Alternative” on Webmaster Radio which I had the great pleasure of co-hosting with him.

    We all wish Jim the very best of luck as he pursues to advance his SEM consulting firm Markland Media, I know he’ll succeed wherever the SEO-world takes him.

    He will be missed as the voice of Jayde Online, but I have a hunch we’ll still be hearing from him often (call it a hunch).

    SEO news blog post by @ 1:18 pm

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    June 15, 2007

    TGIF

    And so we end another week and bring in another weekend. This weekend is more fun than most for those of us (guys) with children as it’s Father’s Day. Ah, Father’s Day … a day dedicated to dad when we get to get up especially early, spend the day doing stuff our kids want to do “for dad” such as play at parks and go to kid movies. ;)

    And so in celebration of this fine fine day I have a link to help you lighten up and separate yourselves from the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life. I’m found some very humorous videos on a site aptly named “Very Funny Ads”. The funnies ads created and some of them truly bring a chuckle. So if you’re a dad, this will help bring a humerus end to your work week and get you ready for the fun awaiting you on Sunday morning (bright and early) and for those without children or if you are among the 51.3% of the population that’s female (you know, the ones who actually had to go through all the pain of giving us these bundles of joy) then this is purely for your enjoyment.

    So turn down your speakers or plug in your headphones, make sure the boss isn’t watching (or make sure the boss reads Beanstalk’s blog so you know what they’ll be doing ;) and enjoy. You’ll find the site at http://www.veryfunnyads.com/.

    And now for some real SEO news:

    A couple weeks back on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I discussed the launch of Google Universal. Well-known freelance writer Claudia Bruemmer has written an interesting article on how to optimize your site for this new search function which is published on the ISEDB.com website. The article gives tips and advice on how to rank over multiple formats for keyword phrases now that Google is drawing results from their verticals into the general search results.

    A very good read that will give you food-for-thought as you head into the weekend. As a note, read this BEFORE watching the ads noted above. You might as well get the work-part out of the way before enjoying yourself. :) You’ll find the article on the ISEDB website here.

    Another interesting article that is worth read was published by Stoney deGeyter a couple months ago but which I just read again recently and forwarded to a client who’s site violated more than one of the rules. Stoney wrote 10 tips to quickly increase site conversions. While this article doesn’t get into advanced conversion optimization it does cover many of the most common mistakes website owners make. This too is a good read. Even if you have good conversion it’s good to get a refresher on the basics and Stoney covers them well. You’ll find this article here.

    SEO news blog post by @ 11:58 am

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    May 24, 2007

    An Interesting SEO Competition

    On today’s Webmaster Radio show I had the pleasure of chatting with Frederick Townes of W3 EDGE Web Design (they’re the folks who designed our site for us) as well as Jeff Quipp from Search Engine People. Jim and I had out usual banter for the first 20 minutes however rather than bouncing through a few topics we discussed Google Universal quite extensively. The show is definitely worth a listen if only to get a better understanding of this interesting twist on search and the challenges it presents for search marketers.

    But that’s not what the title’s about now is it?

    While he was on our show Jeff discussed an interesting SEO competition that they have running. Top rankings for an interesting phrase? Nope. Who can get a site into the top 10 fastest for a competitive phrase? Not even close. No, the fine folks at Search Engine People got a bit creative and are having a “write the best SEO song” competition. That’s right, if you can write the best song about SEO you win their $1000 prize.

    An interesting notion and I wish them luck. I assume the primary purpose of the contest is as link bait and I wish them the best of luck. it seems to be working well ‘cuz here’s a link to the contest. :)

    SEO news blog post by @ 9:08 pm

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    May 2, 2007

    A Great Show Coming Up

    Tomorrow on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I will be speaking to a couple of great guests. Dan Thies will be joining us to discuss a new project that will include a free offering for you (and me :) . I won’t get into more details but the free offering is worth the listen.

    Also on the show tomorrow is Aaron Wall. We’ll discuss paid links, the trends in SEO and probably a bunch of other topics I can’t even predict (the great interviews always end up WAY off topic).

    Be sure to join us at 5PM EST at WebmasterRadio.fm. You won’t be disappointed.

    SEO news blog post by @ 6:29 pm

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    April 14, 2007

    Shareholders Are Funny Animals

    I’ve always found Google shareholders to be funny animals and yesterday provided yet another example of the curiosity that is their buying/selling patterns. The big story being covered right now is the purchase of display advertising giant DoubleClick by Google for 3.1 billion (that’s right … billion) dollars. This is the largest purchase by Google to date in terms of sale price.

    As Jim Hedger from SiteProNews.com points out in his article on the DoubleClick purchase, Google’s paid 20 times DoubleClick’s annual revenue. This is well above the standard for the purchase on online properties. Even so, Google is looking at it not as a normal acquisition but rather a means to propel themselves into the display advertising space years ahead of when they otherwise could. And of course, that they’ve once again trumped both Yahoo! and Microsoft (both of whom were interested in DoubleClick as well) has got to be an added bonus.

    Here are some important links on the deal:

    So why does all this make me call Google shareholders strange animals? Because Google shares actually dropped yesterday in after-hours trading. This reminds me of the drop their shares took after their Q4 earnings report where they announced an increase in revenue but still noted a decline in share values because the increase wasn’t as high as anticipated (though still in the double-digits). Sometimes it appears that good news for Google’s overall health aren’t properly received by shareholders who sell too quickly and miss out on the true value.

    Take my advice shareholders, the DoubleClick deal is a good one for Google. While it might not look great on paper from a pure trade based on the dollar value of the company purchased, the technology and the leaps ahead this will give Google over it’s competitors is well worth the investment. And hey, even $3.1 billion lighter, Google will still report net gains this year. :)

    But what about this makes me

    SEO news blog post by @ 3:54 pm

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