March 27, 2007

Neil Patel Teaches Jason Calacanis SEO

In response to Jason Calacanis's comments about SEO, Neil Patel has shown Calacanis that even basic SEO actions can improve your traffic.

Great job mate. We look forward to the description of the site improvements.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:19 AM | Permalink

February 6, 2006

The chrisisthebest rohtuaswentahyarg & gurtieisthebest rohtuaswentahyarg SEO Contests

I know, I know. I swore off writing about SEO contests. But the chrisisthebest rohtuaswentahyarg SEO contest is different, as it involves some of my pocket change plus a cool "I Love Larry" T-shirt. There's also the gurtieisthebest rohtuaswentahyarg contest run by Gurtie, as she describes more here. It's open to old and new skool SEOers (I'm old skool), but winning will be nearly impossible. I mean, what's the "non www version of the www" mean? Anyway, link to me with both of those terms, so I can win them both. Meanwhile, Interview with Tim Mayer is priceless. Really priceless. I'll except:

TM; Well, don't you want to discuss about Yahoo saying they don't want to be number one in search?

GHN; Not yet. So what was your surname before you married Marissa?

TM; My wife's called Christa. We could talk about the latest Yahoo weather update?

GHN; Yeah in a bit. What's it like being married to Larry's ex?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:06 PM | Permalink

January 16, 2006

Google Base & The v7ndotcom elursrebmem SEO Contest

Damn -- just when I thought I could ignore the latest SEO contest, it does something interesting. First, Greg Rockstar Boser notes that while Yahoo already has picked up 130 matches for v7ndotcom elursrebmem (and I see 296 myself, right now), Google comes in with zilch. Since the keywords for the contest were only announced today, one conclusion is that Yahoo is much faster at Google in gathering new content. (Another conclusion is that Matt Jagger Cutts over at Google is rallying the troops to keep v7ndotcom elursrebmem content out of Google).

Whatever, the case, Google isn't alone. MSN has no matches while Ask Jeeves comes in with two. But Threadwatch reports Google results that not everyone can see. These appear to be flowing from Google Base into regular Google. Whether you see them seems to depend on whether Google has decided you are in the right country, frame of mind, hitting the right cluster, got the right cookie or some other semi-voodoo factor to show them to you.

Be sure to see the screenshot at Threadwatch or the blowup Barry does complete with highlighting over at Search Engine Roundtable. You'll see the special "Home Page:" or "More About" or "Author" links coming along with the listings.

Funky results not enough for you? Want to join the contest. Well, you'll find the rules of the originating contest here. The prize is $4,000 plus an iPod. Do a bit more work as explained here, and you could pick up an additional $3,000.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:25 PM | Permalink

January 4, 2006

Just Saying No To Blogging About SEO Competitions

I've covered SEO competitions in the past, the classic nigritude ultramarine one from 2004, loquine glupe from last January, hommingberger gepardenforelle from last April and seraphim proudleduck from last September. Now in the past week, three more have popped up. I'm passing on covering any of them and pretty much expect to do the same on any new ones going forward, unless they are especially unique in some way.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:18 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2005

Hommingberger Gepardenforelle: German SEO Contest Announced

Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped has the scoop about a new search optimization contest from Germany.

The contest is being sponsored by a German computer magazine publisher and will use the nonsense term of "Hommingberger Gepardenforelle." Philipp goes on to say that Google.de, Yahoo.de, MSN.de and Seekport.de will be the engines used to judge positioning.

Much more in the Google Blogoscoped post: Hommingberger Gepardenforelle.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:14 PM | Permalink

January 31, 2005

Loquine Glupe SEO Contest Begins

In the spirit of the nigritude ultramarine and seraphim proudleduck SEO contests, the latest one is for being tops on Google by March 1 for the term loquine glupe. More details here. Checking Google, there's 1,230 pages already listed for the term.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:42 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2004

New SEO Contest: Seraphim Proudleduck

Now that the Nigritude Ultramarine SEO contest is history, it was only a matter of time until copycat contests emerged. Here's a new one: rank tops for "seraphim proudleduck" on Google and win $1,700.

Only days old, the term that formally had no matches on Google is now up to nearly 14,000 pages. Nigritude Ultramarine was another term that formerly had no matches. After the contest, it gained nearly 200,000 matches.

I spotted the contest via the Google Blogoscoped site, which wants to win. Enticement to gain links? Any winnings will be distributed via a lottery to those who register inbound links with them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

Why We Went With Movable Type

For the technical folks wondering, we've gone with Movable Type software for our blog. I know, that's somewhat ironic for a site that covers search engine marketing issues. Anil Dash, vice president of Six Apart that makes the software, has written recently of having a pretty low opinion of the search engine optimization industry.

Tangent time here. I largely agree with Dash that the industry has gained a bad name. Our long forum discussion, Improving The Reputation Of The SEM Industry, explores this more. But there are plenty of people who do indeed focus on content. In fact, having great content and not spamming is something I've talked out in my search engine placement tips published on the site since it began in 1996.

But it's also true that Dash's victory in the recent nigritude ultramarine search engine optimization contest had little to do with great content and much more to do with a link bombing campaign he invited on his behalf. There's a bit more about that here.

That's ironic, given that one of the things many bloggers have been plagued by are those using comments solely to gain links (and for a really sad tale on this practice, see this past article we ran from Mike Grehan, Google PageRank Lunacy, on how link spam spoiled a memorial site for his friend.

Tangent over! The debate on my end was between WordPress, a great, free open source blogging system and Movable Type, a great and inexpensive blogging system. I played with them both and was especially impressed with the ease of use WordPress offers. But categorization is going to be a big part of our blog.

Both offer it, but Movable Type seemed to make it easier to recategorize or completely move things around. That was the clincher -- though the system desperately need to solve the problem of subcategories not being listed hierarchically when you add a new entry. More on that issue here. I'm using precisely the same "cat:subcat" workaround as someone else describes, but no one should have to.

Our categories will light up in about a month or so, primarily for the paid members of our web site. Search Engine Watch already has a robust categorization system. Anything that runs in our newsletters eventually migrates to one of the many pages we maintain on various topics. But the updating of this information by hand has been incredibly time-consuming. The new blogging system will automate this, leaving more time for fun things, like writing more articles!

Finally, some technical thanks are in order. Rob Matthews is a good friend who helped me get going with Movable Type. I'm link dropping in appreciation -- need hosting? Rob's company Tiger Technologies has done a great job for my personal needs. And want to change things in Movable Type like how file names are written? Learning Movable Type from Elise Bauer is a great site with tips on that issue and more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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