tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116511402009-07-02T16:18:57.309-05:00At 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.Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.comBlogger569125This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-44445753636851322552009-07-02T13:16:00.003-05:002009-07-02T13:44:33.474-05:00

For those of you who haven't noticed - there's an update going on over at Google. It's lasted about a week and I first reported it back on Tuesday.What appears to be happening is that they're trying to react to some aspect of backlinks but unfortunately the house of cards is teetering and cr@p results are climbing to the top for many search queries. I liken it to pulling a loose thread on a

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/07/google-update.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-10297096446260538632009-06-30T19:01:00.002-05:002009-06-30T19:07:00.956-05:00

I just wanted to make a special notice to all our clients and website visitors that we will be closed tomorrow for the July 1st holiday. It's Canada Day up here in the great white north (which isn't all that white now as we hover around 21 degrees (that's about 70 degrees to those of you south of the border). :)So to our Canadian friends - Happy Canada Day and to our American friends - we look

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/happy-canada-day.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-16225494565824161832009-06-30T11:56:00.005-05:002009-06-30T12:04:04.177-05:00

Just wanting to put out a general head's up that there appears to be some massive fluctuations going on in the Google SERPs and from what I can see - at least some form of the algorithm is garbage producing, to say the least, entirely lackluster results.As we all know - this happens from time-to-time and I can't blame them, they have so many updates that sometimes it's just not going to work out.

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/trust-not-what-you-see-on-google-or.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-68720216950131765392009-06-25T14:32:00.004-05:002009-07-02T16:18:57.320-05:00

In preparation for today's show on Webmaster Radio I did my obligatory ransacking of the web for SEO news. Of course - I do this on a regular basis but on Thursdays I dedicate a solid couple hours to just this one task as opposed to the "when I get a chance" aspects of most other days.Today I found a few interesting stories and so rather than report of something we've discovered or putting my

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/google-and-of-course-bing.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-13325072366281303892009-06-25T00:21:00.004-05:002009-06-25T00:48:22.476-05:00

If all three search engines agree ... it must be true right? If that's the case then Beanstalk SEO is composed of the nicest staff and people you'll meet. For our regular blog readers you'll remember that last Friday I decided to run a test when I found that "polite seo" was actually a searched term to see how long it would take us to rank. 3.5 hours later it was ranking top 3 on Google for

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/if-all-three-report-it-it-must-be-true.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-73452290342807376712009-06-23T13:07:00.005-05:002009-06-23T13:37:07.543-05:00

I've refrained from joining the plethora of mobile web users so far due to the fact that I've never wanted to surf the web on a squished cell phone screen at near dial-up speeds, but online hand held devices are becoming larger and more user friendly all the time with bigger displays, better software, and increased network speeds. Meaning that the time is "now" to catch the wave (and the

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06800525324176178324noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/who-needs-mobile-website.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-74926816841602856352009-06-19T17:27:00.004-05:002009-06-19T23:04:57.143-05:00

I'm going to be honest, in playing with some Firefox extensions for an article I'm writing on, well, Firefox extensions I clicked a link to the search results for "seo" and discovered (to my surprise) that "polite seo" is actually a searched phrase. Now, I don't know if I'm polite by the standards of the Queen (I'm Canadian so that reference some how comes up in the context of our parents'

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.comhttp://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/polite-seo-test.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-25653518936556913342009-06-19T15:21:00.004-05:002009-06-19T15:42:41.718-05:00

I love Friday's (and who doesn't). Today there's a bit of news from the SEO realm for you and I'll add a bit of humor at the end just to make the end of your day (or weekend) a bit more entertaining. :)First let's discuss Bing (oh God not again). Annoyingly - I have more good news for Webmasters from Bing. For why this is annoying you can reference yesterday's post. But here we go anyways.A

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/seo-on-friday.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-5919107552953020482009-06-18T13:01:00.002-05:002009-06-18T14:51:09.627-05:00

Alright - I'm actually starting to get tired of reporting on good news from Bing and there's now a part of my looking forward to slamming them for some stupid mistake they're making but today is not that day. For anyone who's followed the Beanstalk blog you'll know that thus far I've been very impressed with Bing and the first successful attempt Microsoft has made in challenging Google. It's

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/more-good-news-from-bing.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-11164448194593209442009-06-17T14:05:00.004-05:002009-06-17T18:11:46.415-05:00

Well it appears that it's Christmas in June Bing. For the second consecutive week it has "stolen" marketshare from the other two major engines. comScore reports that Bing is now at 12.1% market share which is up from the 11.3% they were at last week which was up again from the 9.1% Microsoft had prior to the launch of Bing.In search penetration (% of users who have used the engine - this number

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/early-christmas-for-bing.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-32351893373716104252009-06-17T13:41:00.009-05:002009-06-19T16:39:46.488-05:00

Our friends over at Joomla Shack recently gave us a copy of this books second edition printing. I was a bit surprised at how easily it read. The book covers the major points a techie would need to know to quickly introduce himself to Joomla including installation, understanding Joomla's document and menu hierarchy, user hierarchy, its approach to css templates and setting up a test area for

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06800525324176178324noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/joomla-15-users-guide-in-review.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-8802750476141205652009-06-16T19:52:00.004-05:002009-06-17T14:02:47.587-05:00

Last week when I was at SMX Advanced I reported on some comments from Matt Cutts on how PageRank sculpting using rel="nofollow" had become a useless endeavor and in fact may well work to your disadvantage. This statement lead to chaos within the SEO community.At the SEOmoz party I ran into Matt and asked if we could expect some clarification. Well today we got it. I won't bother recapping the

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/matt-cutss-answers-renofollow-issue.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-6137420631027210532009-06-11T16:36:00.003-05:002009-06-11T17:08:01.122-05:00

Some stats are out on how Bing is doing and so far so good.As an SEO I'm always interested in how the major three engines are playing against each other. In this case (and finally) a Microsoft attempt at a search engine seems to be working in both the direction of marketshare as well as in the actual results and how they're displayed.I'm going start by noting that the advances Microsoft has made

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/bing.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-50075594112319905772009-06-02T19:12:00.003-05:002009-06-02T19:53:35.757-05:00

Sitting at SMX Advanced listening in on a Q&A Session with none other than Matt Cutts:PageRank Sculpting - You won't get a penalty BUT it's not as effective at gearing pages to rank and receive PageRank as it used to be. It's better to create a structure that puts the more important pages higher in the hierarchy (this makes sense :)Nofollow does work to not pass strength however (such as is the

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/smx-advanced-you-and-with-matt-cutts.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-42982541653178809842009-06-02T17:52:00.003-05:002009-06-02T18:44:20.279-05:00

I sit in a session that's of great interest to me and that's mobile PPC (and mobile in general).Cindy Crum from Rank-Mobile opens up the session with a general outline of PPC ads, the devices they're built for and how you can create the ads. She notes that there are some tremendous limitations to creating mobile ads in the text allowed (due to limited screen space).She talks about the higher bid

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/06/smx-advanced-mobile-ppc.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-71363723196724486142009-05-29T15:02:00.003-05:002009-05-29T15:07:45.721-05:00

I've been waiting excitedly for SMX Advanced for the past few months and finally the date is almost upon us. For those of you not registered to attend, I believe there are still 5 or 10 spots left. This is easily one of the best shows for those experienced in SEO and Internet Marketing.For those of you who won't be able to attend - be sure to watch our blog next week. We'll be posting often on

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/05/smx-advanced.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-17177099462277045052009-05-13T17:32:00.005-05:002009-05-13T17:57:53.561-05:00

Back at SES Chicago 2007 I had the great fortune of attending a Blackhawks vs Canucks hockey game with one Mr. David Dalka. It was a great game and given that I'm from Canada about 20 miles from Vancouver - it was made better by witnessing the Canucks walk all over Chicago (though admittedly, I didn't want to cheer too much in hostile territory :)Well I got an email from David a couple weeks

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/05/oh-vancouver-why-oh-why.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-18303222423410878182009-05-12T11:21:00.003-05:002009-05-13T16:03:07.424-05:00

Many moons ago I raved about a tool called PR Prowler. A great tool in it's time for finding quality backlinks quickly and significantly reducing the time that offsite optimization takes and the benefits it delivers. We've continued to use this tool over the years however as time goes by you learn to want more-and-more from the tools you use.Well - a big thanks to Shawn for listening to what we

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/05/new-seo-tool-launches.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-18046153766720899862009-05-06T13:31:00.004-05:002009-05-07T11:54:30.485-05:00

Best Of The Web (our personal favorite paid directory) is offering a 15% off discount on submissions to their directory for the month of May.Since DMOZ has become all but useless, Best of the Web (the oldest running directory) has become the most valuable and through directory on the web. For the price of a listing (less than $300 for a lifetime listing) it's higher on our list than even the

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/05/botw-discount-code.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-6118770328896475272009-04-27T13:55:00.003-05:002009-04-27T14:08:21.950-05:00

I received an interesting email regarding an often used technique for hiding content. I could describe it but you can see what's what at http://www.hireacamera.com/. Just click the "Resources" link at the button and watch the text appear.Now, I consider this to be cloaking but I want to know what others think. As we don't allow commenting on our blog (unfortunately I just don't have the time

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/cloaking.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-55309341606741492492009-04-27T11:34:00.002-05:002009-04-27T11:43:19.083-05:00

Sometimes we at Beanstalk have some analytical gem to pass on (or at least - what we think is) and sometimes I'm just impressed at what others have written. In the case of the latter, I try not to regurgitate what's been said. Below you'll find a Coles-notes version of a great article I read on social media and a link to the source so you can get the full feel for yourself.Kristine Schachinger

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/sociology-of-social-media.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-8773031667733481942009-04-22T13:06:00.003-05:002009-04-22T13:16:08.363-05:00

Happy Earth Day everyone! I'd like to say that in the spirit of conserving energy and resources we were all going to turn off our computers and lights but I have a strong suspicion that our clients might now be as happy with that as the planet (and staff) might be. :)But do what you can, reuse what's possible and recycle the rest.In the spirit of the day and of helping the planet, I'm going to

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/happy-earth-day.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-25105314607895096552009-04-16T14:02:00.002-05:002009-04-16T17:16:17.095-05:00

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" (

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/chatting-with-rand-fishkin-barrie-north.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-42155074291560871522009-04-09T17:47:00.002-05:002009-04-09T17:50:04.425-05:00

Beanstalk SEO will be closed from April 10 until the 13 for the Easter long weekend. Easter is a statutory holiday up here in Canada and as such - our doors will be closed.Many of us will be checking emails over the weekend so you can communicate with us that way though unless it's an emergency - it may be Tuesday before we're able to get back to you.Thanks for your understanding and happy

Dave Davies, CEOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10990136068142211775noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/closed-for-holidays.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11651140.post-30641867768061817292009-04-08T15:38:00.003-05:002009-04-08T16:48:26.379-05:00

I just got off the phone with one of my clients that is irate with Hostway Hosting which recently purchased the hosting company he was with Valueweb Hosting. Now mergers and acquisitions in the hosting sector are rather common as it is a quick way for a hosting company such as Hostway Hosting to pick up additional clients with little effort. However there are ways to do a seamless hosting

Daryl Quenethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716754684632366876noreply@blogger.com0http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/2009/04/hostway-hosting-sticks-it-to-valueweb.html