SEO/SEM News

Google buys Youtube, I know you know this already. I was not even able to blog about this in any of my blogs as the news was enfolding since I has just sleepy everyday those days when I just came back from my vacation overseas. But have you wondered what changes might happen to Google? To Youtube? To Google Videos? Watch this creative video and enjoy…

The top 10 Isulong SEOph contestants receive a prize. So that is everyone on the 1st page of Google.com.ph for the search term Isulong SEOph. As SEO Philippines founder Marc Macalua was keeping everything a surprise with a small sized window I already saw my site at the 10th spot. And Marc checked the results already a few minutes earlier and asked the audience if it was ok to use that results. The Mike Lopez said to refresh the results, where Mike Abundo agreed also. Then guess what happened? I was gone! *LOL* and isulongseoph.ph took the 10th spot.

No one was there to claim the 10th prize whom I believe belongs to Jedi Dancel. Below are the rest of the winners:

Isulong SEOph 9th Place Winner

Noel Bautista – noels-isulong-seoph.com

Noel Bautista, Isulong SEOph 9th place winner also blogs for the SEO blog: The Search Engine Weblog. Interesting Isulong SEOph SEO Contest techniques include having the beautiful and sexy Angel Locsin and the funny Alysa Alano “Keys Me” singing as link baits.

Isulong SEOph 8th Place Winner

Randy Lorenzano aka Dhundee – isulong-seoph.org

Dhundee is one of the people behind Kabarkada.net. One of the people I chatted with talking about the contest.

Isulong SEOph 7th Place Winner

Elymar Apao aka Jozzua – isulong-seoph.net

Elymar, also known as Jozzua has an interesting entry. Also one of the people that used the power of WordPress themes as link bait and his SEO Comics were a hit in the International SEO communities that worked well from trusted SEO domains.

Isulong SEOph 6th Place Winner

Moslemen ‘Jun’ Macarambon Jr. – isulongseoph.joomlamoro.com

Proud Moro Jun was not able to come probably due to issues with the weather since he will be coming from Mindanao and Isulong SEOph awarding was held right after the typhoon Milenyo, that made many areas of the Philippines powerless as they loss electricity and also making.

Isulong SEOph 5th Place Winner

J. Angelo Racoma – go-ogle.com.ph/isulong-seoph

J. Angelo, the blogger once featured on TV as a work-at-home Dad, used to have a government job and decided to be a full-time blogger instead. Earns probably the same if not even more and has more time with his family. I always wondered what the “J” means in J. Angelo. He just keeps it as “J” all the time.

Isulong SEOph 4th Place Winner

Zaldy Dalisay aka Major Kontrapelo – kontrapelo.com

When I got at the Isulong SEOph event and was getting to know everyone and I was introducing myself, I came across Zaldy’s table and he introduced himself as Zaldy Dalisay and his name did not ring a bell, I even asked him if he has an Isulong SEOph entry. *LOL* Only when he took his award was the time I found out Zaldy was Major Kontrapelo. Zaldy who was together with his wife that time, is an active forum poster of Janjalani’s PinoyNets. Some of his interesting Isulong SEOph techniques include support from the PinoyNets forum and funny post on his Isulong SEOph entry. One of them I remember was a post where he has been working late at night on his Isulong SEOph entry and his wife was not happy about it and ask him to choose. Isulong SEOph or get separated. *LOL*

Isulong SEOph 3rd Place Winner

Rostom Hernandez – isulongseoph.org

Rostom Hernandez is one of domainers in the SEO Philippines group. As I started to want to get into this arena of making money, he has given me a good summary of several domain parking services and for me, who is starting out, just went with Name Drive as he suggested since this has no quota unlike other domain parking services. All I can say is this guy is one of the people that was so hard to catch up with when it comes to forum posting. He had something posted online everyday, and he chooses good forums with RSS feeds that ping Technorati so we see his post everyday. His site was number one on Google.com, and a long time number 2 on Google.com.ph but was pushed back to number 3. I guess he realized that Google.com was treating his site as number 1 so you can see by the last few weeks, more and more Tagalog language was posted in his blog, probably trying to influence Google.com.ph to prove he has a Philippine website and should be treated in the same way in Google.com.

Isulong SEOph 2nd Place Winner

Alwin Clores – bicolbusinessdirectory.com/isulong-seoph

Whin Clores of BicolBusinessDirectory.com was one of the competitors that I chatted with the most. He is one funny guy, and always kept me updated in the SERPs. Every SERP change everyday, he notices it and tells me about it. Although the contest started in June 1, 2006 and part of the rules was no domain should be older than January 1, 2006, BicolBusinessDirectory.com was already up with many pages and already existed in the SERPs. It’s trust rank was already higher than most. Interesting Isulong SEOph techniques he did was, copy and paste of high ranking content, even if it is duplicate content. He tried to rank in many other search terms aside from Isulong SEOph. I guess this increases trust with the big G as well. And most content he tried to rank for were SEO related. His viral stuff were mostly funny things like his famous Miss Isulong who you wish you have never ever seen. He used the power of opening other free blog accounts, adding good content and linking back to his site.

Isulong SEOph 1st Place Winner

Gio Castro – isulongseophil.com

Compared to other Isulong SEOph contestants, Gio did not seem to represent any SEO company, and did not seem to own one either and I believe he is also still in college. (As recently confirmed with a chat with Gio, who asked me, what made me think he was a student? *LOL* and I said I can’t remember, I think I read it somewhere. *LOL*) Gio was able to get into the SERPs very early with good links from many trusted domains. Although many of his links are comments with rel=”nofollow”, they still had good comment content that serve as good link baits. And getting in the SERPs early enough was good for Google result rollbacks when the dancing comes along. One mystery to me was from where all his traffic was coming from. He has a high Alexa rating for his traffic and yet I do not know where it was coming from. Although I know he owns ArticleWheel.com which is tons of content thus it was like making tons of links as well going to his site. When asked what was his secret when his prize was awarded, he simply said in the Filipino language, Tagalog, “I really am not sure myself, maybe I am just a good spammer”.

Isulong SEOph Winners

Sorry Noel and Dhundee, you got covered a bit here.

I tried to get another angle, I got Noel this time, but Dhundee still partially covered. Sorry Dhundee.

More photos

Boris Kerbikov, CEO of Lakeside Technologies, one of the major spoonsors of the event shares his views on search. He showed us 2 current magazines, with articles about Click Fraud on Business Week and the top fastest 100 growing companies in the world where some are home-based, has large sales, makes millions of dollars, but are small players but rely on search to make it on top and compete with the big guns.

Rhianee, the emcee of the event.

Just to break the ice, people had name tags but were not given to the right people, and a game was played to look for the people that goes with the right name tags. So the first activity to get to know more people was about search. Searching the face that goes with the name. The guy with a dask shirt and white sleeves is Arnold, who won an iPod nano as a prize raffled that day.

Can you count how many Isulong SEOph winners are in this photo? I think I see 3.

How many Isulong SEOph winners are in this photo? I see 4.

Arnold get’s the iPod!

Representatives from Cebu talk about SEO activities in Cebu.

I met Michael Turner, aka Neuron of CEO of Harvest SEO. Guy in the hat facing away is Jason Torres.

And here is the other Mike, Mike Lopez. Also in this picture is ‘Jozzua’ Elymar Apao and Terence Teves close up partial head.

And another Mike again, Mike Abundo evangelising the word of Search.

I guess the only Mike I do not have a photo of is Michael Rogers. Hmmm… but do I need his picture?

SEO Philippines founder Marc Macalua, Mike Turner and Mike Lopez.

Marc Macalua, Benj Arriola, Mike Lopez and Mike Turner.

Benj Arriola at Isulong SEOph/SEO Philippines 1st EB

Terence Teves slightly covered, Benj Arriola, Noel Bautista and Jason Torres

Marc Macalua, Terence Teves and Noel Bautista

Random group photos

More information can be found here

• Yugatech
• Neuron
• Mike Abundo
• ShobeCEO
• Photos by ShobeCEO
• Gio Castro’s Winning Speach
• Marc
• Anton
• Major
• Jozzua
• Video of Gio Castro after the awarding