Isulong SEOph Winners and SEO Philippines 1st Anniversary
By Benj Arriola - Posted on Wed Oct 11, 2006The 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
17 Responses to “Isulong SEOph Winners and SEO Philippines 1st Anniversary”
Leave a Reply
October 11th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
nuh, my wife beats me now coz I was in the 4th place and didn’t have the top spot… now she’s looking for more seo contest for me to join…haha!!!
October 12th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
[...] View the winners of the Isulong SEOph SEO contest! Now on to Vorgermilten. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
October 16th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
[...] Congratulations to all the Isulong SEOph Winners. Now that the contest is over, what do you do next to your Isulong SEOph website? That is an easy question to the SEOs. With all that link juice you have been working on, of course keep it. But there is just one more reason to keep those sites online. An 80GB Apple iPod will be raffled and given away to the lucky winner. Here are more details of the Isulong SEOph Contest Raffle Mechanics. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
October 17th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Testify! Feel the power of Google flow through your site like a clickstream of clear intention!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
[...] I can’t believe I wrote nothing on this blog for Isulong SEOph. Now I am using this blog and I will write something about Vorgermilten. Now that Isulong SEOph is done and already has winners, and there is no time to work on Ambatchdotcom, I just read the Vorgermilten SEO Contest rules well since the Vorgermilten SEO Contest prizes looks good. Imagine $10,000 first prize! Let’s get it on! [...]
October 20th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
[...] Last September 25, 2006 to October 9, 2006, I spent a vacation in the Philippines to attend an SEO Contest awarding and also meet up with my family as well. It was cool but there was 2 major typhoon storms and trees were falling down due to the strong winds and made some areas of Metro Manila to down south of Luzon in the Philippines powerless with on electricity as some electrical post fell down. 2 weeks was a bit short and the storms made my vacation even shorter. Now I’m back in the US and it is getting cold again. Here in San Diego, people love weather since it is not as cold as other places in the US. But I grew up in the equatorial country of the Philippines and it is pretty hot over there, way hotter than San Diego. And when I look for a vacation spot, I like the warm areas as well since even the cold months of being in southern California is too cold for me. [...]
October 31st, 2006 at 8:11 pm
[...] Elymar Apao, aka Jozzua, Isulong SEOph 7th place winner, is the creator of the SEOComics. His entry, had the SEOComics that served as the perfect link bait to many SEO professionals worldwide. And what made it perfect was, it was really funny that SEOs can really relate to with his SEO humor that reflect common everyday SEO events. [...]
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:33 am
[...] Isulong SEOph was the first contest of SEO Philippines that lasted from June 1, 2006 to the Isulong SEOph awarding day or September 31, 2006. And Ituloy AngSulong is the 2nd SEO Contest of SEO Philippines. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
January 1st, 2007 at 9:32 pm
[...] Since I have invested some time into this entry, and I just did not make it a site for the contest alone, and has been adding in content that would interest SEO/SEM professionals from all over the world, I have decided that this website will be my permanent SEO/SEM website. This website initially started as an entry to the SEO Contest Isulong SEOph, that has ended already. Hence the domain isulongseoph.com.ph, and this SEO contest was made for Google.com.ph and not for Google.com. so a .ph domain was registered. And now, the second contest is Ituloy AngSulong and this time, I got the dashed domains for a .com and .info. But I still kept my home page isulongseoph.com.ph mainly because of the the work I had on that domain. Changing it might just make things worse, and since this site will be my permanent SEO/SEM blog, the work on the site I guess it worth it. The question now is… after these contest, and this will be my permanent SEO/SEM blog, I believe isulongseoph.com.ph is very hard to remember for the non-Filipino. So far all my traffic from all over the world is from some other link or from search results. But to have good return visitors, remembering my URL might be a tough one for them since these words have no meaning to them. So I looked into my box of parked domains, and was going through every park domain that is SEO related. So far I made SEOSearchOptimization.com go to a ranking page, and I think that is still not a good domain name. So I have decided to use SEOReligion.com instead. I think that will have better recall. And it is January, and I estimate this month to be PR update month, so I better do some work on this domain and point it in the right direction. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
May 13th, 2007 at 7:39 am
[...] not win anything. Ranked number 11 on Google.com.ph when the contest ended. And these were who the Isulong SEOph winners were. For this contest, I was using the domain [...]
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 am
Hi All,
To all companies looking to hire a good seo expert to work for them, please beware of *** ******, he is a snake. He does know how to honor agreements, got paid and no work done.
We may be one of the many companies he got money of and provided less quality work.
Be aware of him.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:13 am
Oh well, I guess every SEO person has their share of deals gone wrong. I myself had my share of these. Sometimes it’s the client, sometimes it’s just me and we learn from our mistakes and improve later on.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:52 am
Benjie, if you are a decent man, why have you not deleted the post before your post?
August 11th, 2007 at 4:44 am
[...] was browsing the web and I accidentally came into this page which is owned by Benjamin Arriola, the world SEO champion, whose nationality is a Filipino. I [...]
August 11th, 2007 at 4:52 am
To the anonymous Concerned Citizen… If what you are saying is true, then at least have the integrity and professionalism or a bit of decency to include your name and some necessary facts and not just throwing false accusations ANONYMOUSLY! (talk about being a snake..)
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm
How much do seo cost? I paid someone to optimize my page for $10,but they ran away with the money…
How long does it take to get results?
April 15th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Run away for $10? LOL
Optimizing for $10???? Be real!