Shawn, any thought to changing your mind and promoting the Time2Dine entry instead. I have remained a consistant 1-3 over the course of the competition so far. Very early days I know, but the likes of the http://www.internet-marketing-research.net and other forums are putting their weight behind certain entries. Some support would be appreciated.
Google has had some problems recently with listing new domains = sandbox effect. People have reported that some new sites are sandboxed/not listed for a period of months, while new pages on existing sites are able to be ranked well. It will be intesting to see if this happens with any of the new domains, or if the shear bulk of links negate this effect. I vote the Time2Dine entry for Shawns links, but then I am biased.
Something I found interesting involving this contest - Yahoo, as of this morning, only show 129 results total for the term Nigritude Ultramarine. Google has over 7,000. The Yahoo bot must need to pick up the pace a little.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=nigritude+ultramarine&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta= Hooah for Hexed in #4 (maybe I'm a bit biased..) Hexed
The keyword tracker is the perfect tool to track the competition... So I setup a little sub-routine within it to track the top contenders automatically... Of course, it will look more interesting as time progresses... If anyone wants to use it on their competition page, feel free... Link portion is not required, but would be nice (the x and y values are the size of the chart). <A HREF="http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/" TARGET="_blank" BORDER=0> <IMG SRC="http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/nu.php?x=400&y=250"> </A> Code (markup):
BTW, I meant to ask earlier, I've seen some of your PR7 sites, but which ones are up to PR8 now - go Shawn! alek
Has anyone noticed that Google suggests the alternative spelling Negritude Ultramarine for Nigritude Ultramarine Searches? Right at the start of the contest there was some old Italian guy ranking number 1 for that term. I believe his family is called Negritude and he runs an ultramarine shop (I didn't pay much attention at the time). Now his site has been lost behind mis-spelled competition entries. I should imagine he was relying on people finding him on the net. He will probably starve now. He'll have to sell his children and live on the streets. I hope you are all ashamed of yourselves. Does anyone remember his URL? I would like to send thousands of links his way just to say "sorry old Italian bloke for messing up your life". PS - I'm new here, so sorry if I've lost the plot.
There's still a few sites left that aren't misspellings, but I think it's really funny that people have misspelt at all, when the spelling is the key to the whole thing. I'm also assuming that most will remove their pages at the end of it, or change the context, and very quickly drop out of Google. But why I'm posting today... I've been challenged over my ethics for "promoting" the competition. "Promoting" is over the top, but here's the post, you judge for yourselves: http://forums.regnow.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=301098324&f=011098324&m=264100381 Sarah Supporting the kiwi effort http://www.time2dine.co.nz/nigritude-ultramarine/nigritudes-ultramarines.php
Hi, For the moment I have the highest ranking non-english Nigritude Ultramarine site. It is a page where I inform our (norwegain) visitors what the competition is about, and to promote http://www.nigritude-ultramarine.com I currently see it as #10 of 22.600 results. Would the page have ranked higher if it had been written in english, it is very moderatly optimized. I do not even have the competition keyword in the h1 heading. And there is only a few hundred forum and low PR links to the page. Does the page rank well because it is not written in english. the URL is: http://www.sorvoja.no/Nigritude-Ultramarine/ or is there another explanation?
Hi Shawn, Do you think that could be the reason ? I do not think I got that many links that fast, and most of the links are either low PR or from forums.
You are correct. But I think Shawn's got the story correct when he says that there were too many links too quickly. Hexed
Hi all. Thanks for your continued support Sarah and others. Held position Interesting to see that I have held my position. Thanks for the interesting link about ethics. I find it fascinating that people talk about "no backlinks showing" and no "PR" showing, even the "too many links too fast". Everyone has got "too many links too fast", the only people that have backlinks and PR listed are people that have changed the themes of existing sites. Yet, with the current algo of Google I have kept consistantly in the top three. Freshbot The freshbot effect ranks new pages higher than "they ought". But if that new page also has high PR links to it as a foundation, by the time the freshbot effect has worn off, Google has found the foundation links, and you keep your position. New Domains I first mentioned the potential issue of a new domain - some are doing well, but there are not many new domains in the top 20. Where is nigritude-ultramarine.com, yet it has all the power of Digitalpoint pointing at it. Tactics Three ways of competing - change contents of existing site, set up new pages in existing site, have totally new domain. Included in these is the brute force method of the forums that can have not very well optimised pages. To do well in SEO you have to either have the brute force, or to do everything right, have a community of "believers" that will help you along the way, or purchasing of links via that community. Pure SEO is building relationships with a large number of groups of people, keeping active with the latest tools and forums (Digitalpoint, Webmasterworld, Webproworld ...), and being highly analytical. SEOinc.com is top for "search engine optimization" because of the thousands of links to it with those words. Why should the algo be any different? Alternative Spellings I happened to do a mispelling and so am ranked for "Negritude Ultramarine", shortly I will be top for the term for my main "Nigritude Ultramarine" page - something fun to do. Apart from this competition, you aim to be the top of everything that moves related to your topic, you continually tweak for mispellings, plurals, reversed phrases, keywords with a separator between them. Generally one page can be top for several of the terms. So lets be top for the alternate spelling. Great chart Shawn, you should be finding it on the Time2Dine entry in the next while. I like this competition in that it is again raising the profile of what SEO is. The abilities across the whole community of SEO should hopefully be raised.