What did we learn in the last SEO Contest?

The SEO party last Friday was great. Got to meet a few more people outside the blogging circles. I could not link to any page for the contest results and forgot who won the top 3 prizes though Anton has some pictures of the contestants on the front page of the SERPs here.

A couple of people I talked with had somewhat the same nagging question — what did we all learn from this contest? Even Gio (don’t know his last name) who won the grand prize couldn’t explain what strategies or techniques he did that gave him an edge over dozens of SEO practitioners, consultants and professionals that joined the contest. Ok, he did mention something about comment spamming. *hehehe*

I wanted to venture an answer to the question but what if the real answer was “there’s no lesson to be learned”? Maybe that was it — none, nada, nil, zilch.

Remember that this contest was cooked up to test the waters — if indeed there was enough local interest in the SEO/SEM industry and if 1,070,000 results in Google for the keyword is an indication, then we can categorically say that the experiment was a success. Yes, by the looks of it, this contest was more like a marketing experiment than an academic exercise.

Hopefully after this, Gio gets a lot of inquiries for consulting gigs and seo projects. That would truly be a testament of success.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

20 Comments

Manuel Viloria says:

18 years ago

Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? :-)

It’s hard to believe comment spamming was all it took. Maybe there were a bunch of other techniques.

Or perhaps he was just lucky in the sense that there was no formulated strategy — all he did was build a web site better than the rest, and Google rewarded him with the number 1 slot in the SERPs?

I wonder if those who ranked #2 to #10 have anything to share with us regarding SEO. :-)
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Manuel Viloria says:

18 years ago

I wonder if this is part of the winning strategy of Gio Castro:

1. Create article directory or article submission sites (i.e., ArticleWheel.com, BreezyMouse.com)

2. Put a link from those 20,000+ articles pages to your isulong seoph site.

Does automation spell SEO success? :-)
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giovanni castro says:

18 years ago

[..]no i never said anything about â€œcomment spammingâ€. what i said at the awarding was â€œmagaling lang akong spammerâ€, which is a joke. But in a way it can be true.[..]
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EJ says:

18 years ago

Congrats to the winners! Actually I was following the linking strategy of isulongseophil.com of gio which mostly came from forums and that made our site to top 4 during the first week of aug.. But unfortunately our site got penalized during the last45 days of the contest, i think because of over optimization, and was hoping to bounced back but google just wont.

Anyways the contest’ result shows that it is the no of links that decided the winners…
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seoluv says:

18 years ago

Berlin here reporting on the Isulong SEOPh contest:
This is a very special shout out to the winner of the Isulong SOPh contest Gio and his Family from me and my Family nanayonting here in Cebu.
Congratulations for winning the Isulong SEOPh contest. You are indeed the # 1 BLOGSLINGER in the Philippines. Truly an honor and an accomplishment.
Also from Cebu, congratulations to your Family and especially youâ€™re Mama. Kuya seoluv came back from Manila and promptly reported to all of us here, multiple times, how impressed he was with your demeanor and your manners. He relayed to our large Family here the fact that you personally approached him and thanked him for coming. He also relayed to our large Family here in Cebu that he thought that you had the loveliest manners of any young man that he had met in a long time. All of my Aunties of course immediately placed the credit for this toward your Mama and youâ€™re Family for raising such a fine, polite, well mannered, and talented young man. You are the pride of the Philippines Gio, and a role model, keep up the good work
http://www.seoluv.com/blogslingers/.html
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wyzemoro says:

18 years ago

what i learned from #6 place? hehe. what matter is.. from zero knowledge of SEO now.. i have at least know the basics and i’ll be coming a long way to be a professional SEO. :)
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Marc says:

18 years ago

I learned that SEOs are people too :)
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giovanni castro says:

18 years ago

mukang na inlab ata sa akin si lolo seoluv ah..heheeh. :)
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selaplana says:

18 years ago

what i’ve learned from the winners?
1. Content
2. Spamming and Backlinks
3. Twicks
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deo duey says:

18 years ago

pre first prize ka pala ah now ko lang nalaman nung mkita ko itong site na ito…..
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isulong seoph benj says:

18 years ago

I personally think Whin Clores did good in catching up from no where to chase everyone to number 2.

Gio and Rostom got in there early and was maintaining it.
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Christine Layug says:

16 years ago

When i heard seo i was thinking that this job is very hard for me as an ordinary user of computer,I can’t believe for what i have learned since i was working as s staff in SEO…
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