As many of you already know my company sent me and some other folks to the WebmasterWorld Conference in Las Vegas this year.  It was a good time and the sessions were good even it not for a ton of new useful information but to confirm some of my current strategies.  I did pick up a couple little things that I brought back with me to test and I am in process of determining if I think they are viable ideas or not.
I stayed at the New York New York hotel which was very nice. It was on the other end of the strip so it took me a while to get to the convention center but that was not that big of a deal.  I am not really a big gambler but it was fun to watch everyone I was with gamble and have a good time.  One of the people I was with won a couple hundred dollars which was cool to see. I did try some of the slots and electronic blackjack though which was fun. I think I lost a total of $20 over the week so as you can tell I don’t really gamble.
I am pretty sure that I got pick pocketed while out there but nobody believes me because they must have put my wallet back in my pocket after taking my cash. I lost $40 that way.
The last session of the conference which was PubCon was where everyone met in a pub for drinks and fingerfood. It was a great time, probably my favorite session but I ate some of the shrimp rolls which made me violently ill on the plane ride home. Totally not worth it.   I was sick for about 4 days and still scared to eat anything seafood related.   My advice.. Don’t eat the shrimp in Vegas.  I would curious to know if anyone else got really sick as well.
Now I am playing catchup at work and mostly caught up now thank God. The year is close to over and 2008 is looking like it is going to be a busy one. I have been very bad about updating this blog but hope to be a little more consistent in the future.  Well that’s about it for now. If you have any questions, let me know.
Thanks,
Brad Henry
I was recently searching through the web the other day as I usually do for my job and I always find it interesting to see the number of ways that people will try to make money on the web.  Most of the times you only end up make the guy rich whose advice you’re electing to get rich from.   It’s a terrible thing really; so many people end up wasting their money on all these books and never see anything from it.  What they need to do is give up on trying to “get rich quick†and start their own business. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication but the reward can truly be a great thing.  I found a great Franchise opportunity resource the other day that is provides a lot of great information on all kinds of franchises.  The reason I like franchises so much is that you are using a proven system and if you put in the hours and do it right, you are only setting yourself up for success.  Next time you think anything about getting rich quick, forget it!  Check out RedHotFranchises.com and find something that suits what you love to do and you won’t regret it.
I’m heading to the GAAC Training Conference at the Googleplex in Mountain View CA tomorrow. The conference officially last from October 10-13 but I will be sticking around until the 14th. This weekend is the Oktoberfest weekend in San Francisco and I am sticking around to enjoy the festivities. I will be taking some pictures over the next couple of days but don’t expect any from inside the Googleplex.  I’ve been told that security is tight but all the GAACs will easily be able to get to their training seminars.  This will be my first time for the training since Beacon Technologies received final approval only a couple of weeks ago.
You can look for more news posts about the happenings over the next couple of days and I will be posting some pictures if any are taken at any of the more social events taking place.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
On Friday, my client was sitting neatly in position two for a very competitive search phrase “Furniture†and so I enjoyed my weekend looking forward to seeing the analytics on Monday. However, I was in for a shock when I checked the search engine results pages (Serps) for my targeted phrases. My client was nowhere to be found in the top 10, in fact none of my client’s competitors were even in the top ten, instead it was loaded full of shopping engines including Amazon, PriceGrabber, Bizrate, Yahoo Shopping, Ebay, and Overstock. There was a change that is directed towards sending Googlers directly to these engines versus directly to the actual furniture provider’s websites.
There are several theories as to why I think Google may have done this. First, Google claims to want to send their searches to the most relevant pages and perhaps Google feels that during the holiday season, people want to use these comparison shopping engines versus actually shopping directly from the manufacturer and feel that they are providing better results by doing this. That is the Google friendly theory. Another less Google Friendly theory is that a lot of these companies that had great visibility in Google no longer do and at the worst timing, just in time for the holiday season. What are these companies going to do? Adwords of course! Now that these companies don’t have the visibility they need from the natural results, they will have to pay to gain visibility through the Adwords search network and pay Google for every click thus significantly increasing Google’s revenue off this particular industry.
There are several other reasons this may have happened as well and as of now, I can only speculate. I will be reviewing several other industries to see if this change is consistent but I am most familiar with the Furniture industry which is why I was able to immediately see a major change in the SERPs. If you know who was ranking in top 10 for other industries and just saw a huge change to favor these giants as well, I would love to hear from you.
In SEO, Google is the 600lb Gorilla that you have to wrestle with. Due to all the spammers out there, Google has to constantly update and tweak their algorithms to try to provide the most relevant results and to block spammers from gaining top positioning.  Because of this, it is very difficult to achieve a number one position for a targeted phrase and keep it there.  One thing that I have noticed after watching a couple very competitive keywords and a client’s positioning over the past couple months is that about every two weeks there is a significant transition in positioning.
Sometimes the client ranks in top 10 for about two weeks then drops 30-40 positions for the next two weeks then returns back to top 10 positioning.  After watching this “cycle†if you will, it leads me to believe that each data center runs two completely separate algorithms that rotate on a schedule. I don’t think there is a single algorithm that is broadcast across all their datacenters that Google tweaks. It just wouldn’t lend enough flexibility for geographic regions. By splitting up the algorithms across datacenters and running dual algorithms that rotate, it would also create a buffer that would contain any spammer attack to a small geographic area and would prevent spammers from compromising results across their entire network or for any extended period of time.   While this is only speculation into Google’s highly secret search practices, it would provide an explanation as to why some results may be different if you searched for something in Greensboro versus San Francisco and why one week you will be top 10 and the next you will be in the low 50’s.
Google search engine optimization is different from other search engine optimization because of the complexities involved. While your ultimate goal is to have a high page rank page with relevant inbound links from credible sites with good unique content and targeted Meta Tags, it can sometimes be hard to achieve that with a preexisting website. Many times restructuring a website is the only way to achieve the desired results.  Even then, the competition has gotten so tough that a new site will have a very difficult time seeing first page results because Google trusts the sites that have been around for a long time and prove to deliver quality results.  There are multiple strategies to help your Google search engine optimization and marketing efforts but without a professional SEO analyst to guide you through the complexities, you may have a very difficult time seeing any real results. If you have any questions regarding Google SEO, please feel free to send me a message at bhenry at beacontec.com.  I enjoy listening to people’s questions and will be happy to get back to you as soon as possible.
