• Contest rules on the Domain/URL
  • The contest keyword is an amazing 5 words. But only 2 are allowed in the domain name entry. I guess this is good to give too much of a domain name advantage. I like this rule since often in SEO contest, who ever get the .com of the domain has a good advantage.
    Example: http://www.promotionalitemscorporategiftssrednarbs.com is not allowed because all keywords are in the domain. But a domain like http://www.promoitemscorpgifts.com is allowed since only two keywords are included in the domain.
  • Subdomains containing keywords are not allowed. Only folders and filenames can have the keywords which I think is also a good rule. Although I don’t really believe in the big strength of the subdomain’s power in ranking, it still does have some advantage.
  • A competitor must own the domain name. This rule already filters out the blogspot and wordpress accounts that are knowned to rank higher in short amounts of time.
• Contest Linking Rules
  • Of course all SEO contest has links to the sponsors/organizers of the contest. What is unique about this contest, is there are several link variations. And you have to choose at least 10 and they are deep linking. Very interesting since making it more varied and linking to various parts of a page makes the link building seem more natural.
  • Links are on the page for the whole contest duration. Good since some just place the links when it is near the end of the contest.
  • Now all the links should be above the fold on a 800×600 resolution. And this is wow, in the first place is who uses that resolution nowadays. And placing all 10 links in that small space will look like a main navigation in my opinion.
• No Dynamic Pages
  • I like this rule. It eliminates the use of any popular CMS of any kind. Even your own CMS will not be allowed. And sometimes that is all the SEO some people know. They only know WordPress SEO, Drupal or Joomla SEO.
  • Sometimes the design of a site will help in link baiting. And some just rely on modifying existing free CMS templates to start with. This will show the well roundedness of a competitor.
• Prizes for Traffic
  • Competitors are required to place their Google Analytics code and shared when contest ends. Which is needed for traffic awards.
• All Hats In
  • Blackhat, Whitehat, Greyhat, whatever. Do whatever you want. Although having only static pages already limits a large amount of blackhat you can do, whatever blackhat techinques you have left, you can still use. I kind of understand this rule since it is hard to monitor and police. People can always claim they did nothing even if they did. And you can attack others claiming they did blackhat even if they didn’t. It’s just a hard policy to follow and make everyone 100% comply. Now if you get banned, then that’s your problem. My suggestion is keep it clean so even after the contest you still have a site and try to make money out of it in whatever way you can.
• No Traffic/Lead Fraud
  • They claim they have their ways of determining this and it should not really be that hard. There are several patterns you can see in traffics and determine if traffic is really authentic.
• More Prizes
  • They have good spread of prizes, for top traffic sites, top referrers, best built coding, highest ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live and highest overall ranking. Up to page 2 of Google has a prize.
• Every Contest Entry Cannot Mention it is Part of an SEO Contest
  • I think this is a good rule. In fact I feel like I do not want to join another SEO contest that requires a new domain with keywords about SEO. I just can’t make another site about SEO. They are too many already. Which is why the Global Warming SEO contest was my favorite. Everything else is about SEO and that always sounds like spam the world to me.
• The longest keyword phrase in a contest I have ever seen
  • Promotional Items Corporate Gifts Srednarb is a mouthful. WTH is srednarb? *LOL* Well it is an SEO contest. We have had others in the past that were also nonsense words.

Contest starts September 19, 2008 and ends a few days before Christmas on December 22, 2008 at 9pm Pacific Time. Good luck to all competitors. Click for more information on the Promotional Items Corporate Gifts Srednarb SEO Contest.

• Benj Arriola – SEOContest2008.com
• Eligio Tapiador Jr. – SEOContest2008.org
• Gary Viray – EuroSEOContest2008.com
• Garry Baybayan – ItsOnMyTV:SEOContest2008
• Ed Canape – SEMLaguna:SEOContest2008
• Zaldy Dalisay – SEOContest2008Winner
• Jehzeel H. Laurente – Jehzlau’s SEOContest2008
• Kenneth Mendoza – Sabre9: SEOContest2008
• Dennis Cabase – SEOContest2008.me.uk
• Mito Pontillas – SEOContest2008.blogsome
• Moslemen ‘Jun’ Macarambon Jr. – SEOContest2008.info
• Neil Maranan – MySEOContest2008
• Leo Mirabuna – iSEOContest2008
• Edward Santillan – SEOContest2008 Dubai
• Cheryl Estorgio – SEOContest2008.SEMTitans
• Philip Tiangson – Philippine SEOContest2008
• IcezOrg – SEOContest2008.i.ph
• Eric Marantanan – Camaniugan SEOContest2008
• Allan Fernandez Duncan – Try SEOContest2008
• Almer Viloria – AJViloria’s SEOContest2008
• Kojak Eugenio – Kojak’s SEOContest2008
• Ricusa – Ricusa’s SEOContest2008
• Christian Lacsamana – SEOContest2008 Guide
• Francis Gerald Alcala – SEOContest2008 SEOContest2008
• Ronald Allan Mojica – Ronald’s SEOContest2008
• Eric John Tabin – SEOContest2008.SEOGlobalPro

Also posted on SEOContest2008 Online and on SEO Philippines blog.

One of the most common IMs I get from my friends online is where’s your car? Can I see your car? Did you get your Citroen C2? have you drove your car? The car they are referring to is the car I won in the SEO World Championship. The photo above is not the actual photo of my car. Here is the actual photo of my car:

Ooops, I did not win that! But that is my car. *LOL* Just got into a small accident about a month ago. Anyway, on the Citroen C2. It is a European car, and I was thinking of two options at first, have it shipped at home in the Philippines? Or have it shipped at home in the US? Both countries have no Citroen dealer, thus if needed for future maintenance, and where parts may be needed, looks like I need to have them shipped from Europe.

So what happened was the Citroen C2 was converted into cash, and I paid all my debts and I was planning on saving the money first but since my family is now moving to the US with me as well, my car was not good enough, so my SEO car, the Citroen C2 became a different car. It became a van using the cash I still have for the initial payment and I’ll just pay for the rest. My SEO World Championship Car became a Honda Odyssey van. *LOL*

I did some SSL/TLS on the license plates.

The control panel I think is more confusing than cPanel running X or BlueLagoon. I kind of like simple dashboards like the one on WordPress. no clutter and just what you need then place the others in their menus. My steering wheel input device has extra buttons on both right click and left click. But most of the extra buttons are mainly to control the media players.

Additional output device overhead. A DVD player is built-in.

Lots of space in this van. 7GB so seven 1GB persons can fit comfortably in the Honda Odyssey.

My SEO World Championship Van – A Honda Odyssey. Honda of Escondido was great! Andrea has done well presenting everything I needed to know. Josh had some good sales lines although I have heard lines like that before many times. Although he was still great. I like listening to good sales people, I learn a lot from them. Robert the finance manager was great as well as he has discussed everything well including all matters required by law. Thanks to Kim who was following up on other financial matters I had to address to.

Since you guys did a good job and has a great team, you should let me return the favor and present to you a good job as well on how your website can dominate the search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN, just like how I did it in the SEO World Championship

Ok, I was away for 2 weeks and went to the Philippines for SEO events, at the same time to see my family as well. In the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest, I was in 2nd and 3rd overall by the end of January and all that changed when everyone started catching up in February and I was not working that much. I arrived in the Philippines on February 19, 2007 and had no Internet connection as the connection of SmartBro was erractic. And was not able to know what was happening in the SEO Philippines contest. And I knew I still needed to place my required links and edit my confirmation file. I had to rent at some Internet cafe just to fix it. And I didn’t even memorize my passwords and I needed to work everything around just to get into my accounts.

The Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest Awarding Day

Everyday was a busy day and me and my wife drove out later than planned. We did not bring our daughter Jamie this time so we can stay a few more minutes or hours after the contest and have some SEO chats. Mike Lopez who rode with us was also late anyway so everything was all fine.

The whole driving trip was all about SEO, PHP, web design, web development, web hosting, domains, and all related stuff as usual which is normal when talking with Mike. Upon arriving at the venue, at the VIP room of Metro Phi Restobar in Metrowalk, Ortigas, Pasig City, we were entering almost at the same time Abel Quitoriano arrived. People that were already there were Jedi Dancel, Marc Macalua, Ely Tapiador, Jozzua, and after a few minutes, Jason Torres came.

As usual, SEO topics were flying left and right as well as website monetization, about Rostom Hernandez‘ $7,000/month domainer earnings on PPC landing pages, Alfredo Palconit‘s drop from the cumulative rankings in his attempt to get the designing prize as well. Gio Castro‘s strong entry into the top prize, Marhgil Macula‘s comeback on Google that made him get a top spot again to win also in the cumulative prize. More people came that I already knew and people I knew online but have never seen started coming like Dennis Agulo, and Jun Macarambon. It was nice knowing and seeing the faces behind the other websites. If I do not remember everyone that wanted some link love, sorry if I cannot remember all of you.

Ice-breaking contest like the SEO hunks and SEO babes was a funny one where it was done by nominations and won by volume of applauses. I was lucky to win one of the SEO hunk prizes, and also the SEO pick-up lines.

What I brought home after the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest

Prizes in the SEO hunks and SEO pick-up lines I got a Google notebook and pen inside a Google bag, a Yehey notebook, three PHP1,000 checks. Two were for being within the top 40 as a consolation prize by Lakeside Technologies and 1 for being in the top 10 winners in Google right at number 10. I got many priceless SEO tip sharing as usual from many of the top SEO people in the Philippines and listened to what Gio and Jason had to say about their Article sites. And I guess the most valuable knowledge I gained at the event was Rostom’s shared knowledge on domaining were most of them were shared after the contest. I knew there was a lot more knowledge to be shared that night but I was pretty tired myself too. Everyday I had some family matter to attend to and was barely able to work so I went home earlier than others since I don’t drink any alcoholic beverage as well nor do I smoke which I really do not mind hanging around even if I don’t drink nor smoke, but I also did not want my wife get bored to death on SEO topics that may not interest her.

For the official list of winners, list on the SEO Philippines forum:

Google Winners

Official winner list posted on: http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=391&highlight=winners

1. ituloyangsulong.com – Jason Torres
2. isulongseophil.com – Giovanni D. Castro
3. pinoyseo.com – Alwin Clores
4. marhgil.blogspot.com – Marhgil A. Macuha
5. e-infanta.com – Philip M. Tiangson
6. pinkseo.info – Rhiza Sanchez
7. allseocontest.com – Leo Mirabuna
8. blueseo.com – Eligio Tapiador Jr
9. ituloyangsulongseoph.com – Jemmuel del Carmen
10. news.ituloy-angsulong.info – Benj Arriola
11. go-ogle.com.ph – Phillip Kimpo Jr., J. Angelo Racoma, Ia Lucero
12. seobunker.com – Dennis F Agulo
13. ituloy-angsulong.pinoyhack.com – John Auriada
14. palconit.com – Alfredo B. Palconit, Jr.
15. ituloyangsulong.blogsome.com – DISQUALIFIED
16. ituloy.blogspot.com – Leo Mirabuna
17. ituloyangsulong.org – Alan Ocab
18. ituloy-angsulong.org – Rostum Hernandez
19. wrigg.net – Leo Mirabuna
20. psu-main.edu.ph – Philip M. Tiangson
21. isulongseoph.org – Rostum Hernandez
22. kontrapelo.com – Zaldy B. Dalisay
23. isulong-seophil.com – Eric John Tabin / Kenneth Tinio
24. ituloyangsulong.biz – Emmanuel Bautista
25. technorati.com – DISQUALIFIED
26. ituloy–angsulong.blogspot.com – Janette Toral
27. angsulongituloy.blogspot.com – Guada Ada Lajara
28. kenneth01.info – Kenneth M. Mendoza
29. isulongseoph.joomlamoro.com – Moslemen M. Macarambon Jr.
30. macalua.com – DISQUALIFIED
31. raziella.blogspot.com – Raziel Siaton
32. downloads.ituloy-angsulong.com – Benj Arriola
33. isulongseoph.talentado.com – Richmond Paul F. Ruiz
34. tigersquash.com – Connet Marie Ben
35. allseocontest.com – Leo Mirabuna
36. ituloy-angsulong.morofocus.com – Moslemen M. Macarambon Jr.
37. seo.ituloy-angsulong.com – Benj Arriola
38. ituloyangsulong.techtribeph.com – Jessie Natividad
39. ituloy-angsulong.vox.com – Phillip Kimpo Jr., J. Angelo Racoma, Ia Lucero
40. migs.paraz.com – DISQUALIFIED

Yahoo Winners

Official winner list posted on: http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=390&highlight=winners

1. Dreamhost.com – DISQUALIFIED
2. palconit.com – Alfredo Palconit
3. seoblogzone.blogspot.com – Annalyn Ida
4. blueseo.com – Eligio Tapiador Jr.
5. ituloy–angsulong.blogspot.com – Janette Toral
6. isulongseoph.talentado.com – Richmond Raul F. Ruiz
7. blogulo.com – Dennis F. Agulo
8. isulongseoph.org – Rostum Hernandez
9. itulong-angsulong.vox.com – Phillip Kimpo Jr., J. Angelo Racoma, Ia Lucero
10. ituloy-angsulong.morofocus.com – Moslemen M. Macarambon

MSN Winners

Official winner list posted on: http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=390&highlight=winners

1. marhgil.blogspot.com – Marhgil A. Macuha
2. seo-philippines.blogspot.com – Robert Desacada
3. e-infanta.blogspot.com – Noli M. Mirador
4. angsulongituloy.blogspot.com – Guada Ada Lajara
5. mitolynx.wordpress.com – DISQUALIFIED

Cumulative Ranking Prize Winners

1. isulongseophil.com – Giovanni D. Castro
2. marhgil.blogspot.com – Marhgil A. Macuha
3. blueseo.com – Eligio Tapiador Jr.

My Yahoo entry

When I came in early during the awards night, Marc requested if I can talk a little bit about my Yahoo entry on how it was done and what were my plans for it. And I did explain it, although the entry was disqualified since it lacked the time to work on fixing the displayed URL on the site.

The top winner, Gio Castro

I found Gio to really be very cool as he shared his experience on how he worked on ranking well in all 3 search engines. And gave a very good inspirational talk for beginners as he did share that he was also just starting out in SEO during the first SEO contest Isulong SEOph which he also won first place. I do hope that this SEO contest opens new avenues for him to play around with.

Thanks to everyone

Thanks to Marc Macalua who once again did pretty well for this self-funded event with the help of many SEO volunteers. Jozzua and Jenny did a good job in hosting the event. Thanks to Google Philippines Country Rep, Aileen Apolo, it was a pleasure meeting you in person. Thanks to representatives from Yehey, support from Digital Filipino’s Janette Toral, I can’t remember everyone I talked to, but I know a representative from the company of Bo Sanchez was also there. Thanks to people that shared kind words about me in one way or another or who had shared their admiration to what I write about like Robert Desacada, Alan and Carlo Ocab, Eli Tapiador, Gio Castro who appreciated my Yahoo 301/302 story. Daisy of Viventis Search Asia who appreciated me inviting them to the event who eventually coordinated with Marc. Jun Macarambon at may crush yata sa akin nyahahahahaha! Whin Clores for the PinoySEO blackhat that I even wore on my flight from Manila to LAX. Rostom Hernandez for sharing his wisdom on domaining after the event. And the few people that stayed behind to make the conversations more livelier like Abel Quitoriano, Dennis Agulo, Zaldy Dalisay and probably others that I have failed to mention.

Thanks of course to the company who I work with who allowed me attend this SEO event and got this vacation. To my colleague Mishon, and bosses Gilda, Ryan, Cor, Barbara and Jack and to the rest of the SEM group, thanks to the HR people as well Heather, Sandy and Michael.

Thanks to my family as well since this SEO vacation of course doubled as a family vacation as well. But this is my SEO blog, the other family stuff and other stories will be on the other blogs.

After the Ituloy AngSulong Contest

The Tableless CSS and PHP with AJAX workshop held last February 25 and 26 at Informatics Computer Institute Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila, Philippines was also a success. Thanks to Mike Lopez who handled the PHP workshop and Jason Torres who handled the Ajax workshop. Reine Sison, thanks for helping out in organizing everything. Thanks to Juliet Santiago-Chan, Center Business Manager of Informatics Computer Institute-Shaw for allowing us to rent one of her largest computer labs for me to conduct the workshop and thanks to all that registered in the workshop and I am happy that I have been receiving positive feedback about the lessons learned in the 2-day workshop. Next time we plan to come up with an advanced PHP with basic MySQL, advance MySQL, SEO, and website monetization in the future. Maybe we can someday get someone like Rostom talk about domaining and maybe someone from the Philweavers have a basic and advance Macromedia Flash workshop.

The rest of the SEO vacation days were more on SEO chats and forum post. I just arrived here in San Diego California this morning and barely has any sleep yet. I worked on this blog post as my first step going back to work mode. And once I got online I got invited to a Yahoo Messenger conference charoom of about 15 people from SEO Philippines and even so sleepy I was, the SEO topics, jokes, serious questions and answers still kept me awake a bit and I need to re-adjust myself again battling the jetlag. It is now nearly 8:00am on a Monday and I barely have sleep and I believe I can make it to work today and I might spend the whole day sleeping and go to work tomorrow. Besides the first Monday I was on vacation was a holiday, President’s day so hopefully HR will still count my vacation days as 10 days.

SEO contest are tiring, which makes me think twice on working on my GlobalWarming Awareness2007 SEO contest entry.

Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest Event Photos

I brought my digital camera to the event. My SLR Nikon D50. And one of the most stupid things I also did was I forgot the SD card at home which was in my laptop computer. So I did not take any photos. *LOL* Good thing Abel Quitoriano has a good collection of Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest photos take by his Canon Powershot S2 IS.

Here are some of Abel’s shots

Receiving my bag of Goodies from Google

Sharing my SEO pick-up line.

The PinoySEO blackhat I got from Whin Clores, thanks Whin.

Jedi Dancel, Mike Lopez, Me, my wife Marcia and Jason Torres

After the event SEO knowledge sharing with SEO Philippines founder Marc Macalue and Goyams creator Dennis Agulo.

Everyone listened to Rostom Hernandez’ domaining strategies.

More sharing from Mike Lopez, Jun Macarambon, Dennis Agulo, Me, my wife Marcia, Gio Castro, Zaldy Dalisay and Whin Clores.

What I was sharing here will not be shared anywhere else, not even on this blog.

The rest of Abel’s photos are on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bamster/sets/72157594554485632/

Update: I’m tagging Benj of news.ituloy-angsulong.info, GIO of Isulongseophil.com and
Dennis of SEOBunker.com to disclose their experience.

Benj – said he will at his blog at February 7
Gio – said right after the contest
Dennis – said “…”

So here is what I have been doing, but sorry to dissapoint others since it is not as detailed as Jasons post in the technical, code specific sense and giving out the specific methods of link building. But it is more of my strategy on how I brought balance to the 3 search engines. Please also note that I have already dropped in Yahoo and MSN as of today, February 11, 2007 which was really what I expected, but what I am not sure of is, is my site coming back? Now here’s the story of my SEO Contest Experience.

Trying to catch up in MSN – Playing with Keyword Density

MSN was like a new beast to me. After reading several threads on MSN about Live Search’s spam filter probably putting websites down, and I started to look at the over all keyword density of the top 10 sites on MSN/Live, I noticed most had a keyword density less than 3%. This is when I started posting topics that did not have the text ituloy angsulong” and just started to concentrate on topics that would be of interest to SEO people and hopefully try to get whatever link bait I can get, along with social bookmarking, it I was able to come up with some good balance in the 3 search engines and was playing in the 2nd and 3rd spot exchanging places with Gio Castro’s isulongseophil.com in the end of January.

The Yahoo Drop and Recovery – The 301 redirect

Thanks to Dennis Agulo’s SEOBunker.com results, excellent work on this site. Good ranking reports. In a screenshot of the ranking of this site, on January 30, 2007, my site jumps from 1 to 44. I have seen sites move up and down a few places, but 1 to 44 was really big, from page 1 to page 5. It looks like I may have trip flag that decided to put my website way down. The truth is I still have no answer why this happened. So I waited a while and was thinking maybe it will come back and it’s just some minor glitch or update going on. But I was seeing a downward trend while isulongseoph.com.ph was still on page 1.

On February 1, 2007, I decide to do a 301 redirect on isulongseoph.com.ph to news.ituloy-angsulong.info and just forget about it and not even hope to get back and just get any small individual search engine prize I can get. Then I noticed the search engine descriptions started changing and February 5, 2007, Yahoo brings back my site to the 1st page along with isulongseoph.com.ph with exchanging titles and descriptions because of the 301. Unfortunately, this also caused the MSN drop.

And this 301 redirect may have helped Yahoo, but it hurt MSN badly. Aside from that, isulongseoph.com.ph was not ranking high in MSN, so it might really pull it down.

Bringing Back MSN – The fresh content trigger

February 9, 2007, MSN decides to put back my site on the first page right after a fresh content posting. Other people have better telling me about this also that both Yahoo and MSN seem to like new post about a certain topic. My website went back to the first page of MSN right afte the new post. Was that the cause of it going back to the first page? Or maybe the 301 redirect was just starting to take effect on MSN? Or mabe both, the new post triggered the re-crawling and reevaluating the site now with the 301 redirect in place?

The drastic changes – massive 301 redirects

Aside from getting back on track, Marhgil Macula (Not Marc Hil Macalua although they look similar, they are really 2 different people) suddently springs back into the leader board making me, him an Gio switch in the overall 2nd, 3rd and 4th spot on every page load. And I got a notice from a company for my sponsored post on isulongseoph.com.ph that it no longer appears and forwards to some place else. Aside from that I have some paid link ads as well so I needed to remove the 301 redirect on isulongseoph.com.ph.

Alfredo Palconit seems to be untouchable in his overall first place position. I could probably come up with more link baiting post, and do some social networking, but I’m too lazy to do that. I can do link development, do forum post and all those other stuff, but, I’m too lazy to do that. What did I do as a real quick fix? I choose 3 domains I have that have a significant amount of links, regardless of the link text they are targeted for. For all 3 domains I do 301 redirects yesterday, and what happens next?

Here is the bad news, Yahoo and MSN drops we way down, real way down. Both search engines drop my rankings from page 1 to page 4. The change was too drastic I guess, since all backlinks from the existing domains will be considered as links to where it forwards to. The addition of links then was way too fast. But surprisingly, Google doesn’t seem to care about it right now. But this drop can be due to a recalculation, or it can be a ranking penalty. And in the past history above, it took 6 to 7 days to get back on track after fixing some problems. And the first day of my ranking dip is today, February 11, 2007. Thus who knows by February 18, 2007, the ranking might go back to the high spot as recalculations are done. But if this is a ranking penalty, then I might as well remove the 301 redirects. But how do I find out if this is a ranking recalculation or a ranking penalty? Actually I really don’t know. *LOL*

But since based on the past history, I got about 6 to 7 days before I see changes the Ituloy AngSulong contest ends on February 23, 2007. So If the site is still at the low end by February 16 to 17, 2007, then I guess it is safer to just remove the 301 redirects from my sites.

Attack on me – Does it have an effect?

My site went down twice. Mostly due to some files deleted in the wp-contents folder. I do not know how you guys do it. And I also don’t know if they are competitors in the contest or some random hacker. And most of the occurence, someone sends me an IM right away and I am able to remedy it in a few minutes so I guess that will not really affect my ranking. But the links from bad neighborhoods, I do not know who you are and I do not even want to figure out and investigate. Did it affect my rankings? Hmmm I am not sure. But I also have no control over it so I just try to overpower it.

This is how not to do SEO – Do not follow what I am doing for your own SEO clients

I am just doing this because this website is not mine and is not my SEO client. Most of the optimizing I have been doing here is:

• To increase the content and lessen the code, I actually hide the code, you can try to figure that out. Even some outbound links are hidden too. I will not elaborate this.
• To get more links, I just pull a few switches, that suddenly gives me a burst of links. Maybe not a good idea since they are obtained too fast. how is this done, I will also not elaborate on this.

It is also not worth knowing what I am doing since these techniques are not nice to use on SEO clients anyway. They are quick shortcuts, but they are also quick drops in the SERPs as well. And for some crazy reason, it seems Yahoo and MSN seem to drop my site down the SERPs than Google does. If my sites don’t come back in Yahoo and MSN, then I actually get no prize.

I am also tagging Alfredo Palconit of palconit.com and Gio of isulongseophil.com to share their experience of what they did and why. Jason’s post was a good one, very detailed, but it pretty much did not work on Yahoo and MSN. But still a good post.

I won’t be surprised if some come-from-behind overall wins come just before February 23, 2007.

• If isulong-seophil.com gets a boost in Google, you can be very competitive for the overall win.
• blueseo.com and pinkseo.com are just having problems in MSN, if they get a boost from MSN just before the contest ends, they can be in the top 3 overall too.
• And never under estimate the power of Whin Clores now running pinoyseo.com. He has barely worked on his site because of the major storm that hit the Bicol region and they had no electrical power for a long period. He just got back online in January and is currently ranking low in Yahoo only. If Yahoo suddenly increases his rank, we might see a come from behind win again just like how he did in Isulong SEOph where he was 2nd place and came out of nowhere.

I am taking part in the highest paying Search Engine Optimization Contest to date. The contest is sponsored by Ares. Ares is a free peer to peer file sharing program that let’s users download unlimited free files. Please help me win this contest by giving me a link on your site.

Where in this website, OfficialAres.com is an imitation website of AresGalaxy. Ares software is a spyware-free and adware-free peer-to-peer file sharing program that is open source. And OfficialAres.com is giving away a modified version of Ares pretending to be the latest version. And with this version comes along with its own nuisance adware.

Clearly, OfficialAres.com does not seem to be a legitimate company, although it claims to net $23,000 a month and was even selling the website on DealASite.com for $550,000. If this site makes good money, why sell it? The offer on DealAsite.com has expired already on September 22, 2006 with no buying offers. But imagine of someone did buy the site in September, and based on the Vorgermilten contest rules, the SEO contest started June 1, 2006 and ends on December 31, 2006. Who is going to continue the contest? Why sell the site in the middle of the contest? It seems the contest was created to increase the popularity of OfficialAres.com to increase its value so it may be easier to sell.

Meanwhile on the McAfee Site Advisor website, many of the Ares downloadable files from OfficialAres.com are marked as adware. According to McAfee, AresLite.exe, AresMusic.exe and AresP2P.exe are the nuisance-free software. But Ares.exe, AresGalaxy.exe and AresLite.exe are the software that contains unwanted programs which are the modified versions of the former 3 mentioned.

If the Ares software of OfficialAres.com really seems to be a fake software, many other people are saying the SEO contest is a fake as well. The Vorgermilten contest claims to be giving away $10,000 and a 1 year SEO contract to the website ranking 1st place on Google.com. Although anyway you look at it, contest sponsor OfficialAres.com is distributing the fake Ares software, but does that mean that Vorgermilten is a fake SEO contest? If his website really earns $23,000 per month, then $10,000 should not be a hard price to pay to the first place winner of the Vorgermilten SEO contest. For the competitors, it will probably be a gamble for them. Even if they get a winning spot, they are not really sure if they will get their prizes. For some SEO contest competitors, they are not giving full attention to the contest and are just going with the flow and checking where the rankings lead them without any pro-active effort in improving their rankings. If ever they go up to the winning spot, they will just consider themselves lucky if ever they do receive their prizes.

I am also currently puzzled with MSN’s behavior and has created an experimental Ituloy AngSulong page just for MSN, but it seems the real problem is MSN also seem takes a lot of time to index it. While some sites seem to rank high in MSN, these sites are down on Yahoo and Google, except for the site of Marhgil.

And this was not the case with MSN before. With many of my SEO clients, I basically just optimized my site for Google and Yahoo and I never had to check MSN, and I just know my site will be on top. But today, we are seeing something different with MSN. But this may not necessary mean MSN search algorithm is different, it can also mean maybe their crawling of new pages is slower? Or maybe crawls are done fast, but whatever initial computations MSN does in its algorithm before adding the site in the indexed search results takes more time this time? Maybe all these changes all have to do with MSN’s transition to MSN Live? I really do not know.