Busby SEO Challenge by Benj

I join contest in the past mainly to test what I know and in the process learn more. And after doing about 2 or 3 of them, my attitude changed into I am joining SEO Challenges because I want to win! I liked these SEO competitions and worked a great deal into them trying my best to win and so far it paid off. Now it seems that after winning the previous SEO contest I have joined, it has helped promote myself, market myself to the Internet community mainly in the Philippines and other countries outside the US. Then I have seen more and more blog post talking about me (but not linking to me grrrr *LOL*) and I guess with the information out there I have seen a good mash up of information and is pretty accurate with the information about me but this site never contacted me about it. I have a professional profile on the Philippine Government’s National Computer Center. Listed in their Consultants / IT Professionals List. But there is nothing really special about that since they have a pretty long list of Filipino IT Professionals. I am just surprised with the length of info i have that is accurate. But again I am also not surprised since after reading the profile, I know where the information came from, interview blog post, other people I know that blogged about me, I blogged about myself, from my social media profiles, mainly LinkedIn and other stuff. (Wala man lang link papunta sa akin. *LOL*) Read the rest of this entry �

I have been working on an SEO project, that has a lot of navigations using an HTML <select> tag. Which we all know is not search engine friendly. Because search engine spiders, also called bots cannot crawl this type of navigation. So I decided to redesign one and I made one using plain unordered list tags. <ul>,<li> tags that imitated how a <select> tag would behave. And the additional advantage aside from crawlability is the appearance is more customizable since there are many CSS properties that can change the colors of a <select> element but is not cross-browser compatible. With an ordinary list, you can customize appearance that is sure to look the same across all major browsers. I called this navigation the Busby Select Nav and so far the only problem I have is this is not working well on Safari and Konqueror. So I decided to ask help to get it work. Read the rest of this entry �

Active SEO contest competitors know that the French SEOSphere team is a team hard to beat in SEO competitions and they are a current competitor at the Busby SEO Challenge. There were a strong team in previous SEO contest such as the SEO World Championship in 2007 that I was fortunate enough to win this contest. I myself must agree that I received a lot of help from many people who were not competing in the contest.

Just a few months back, our industry SEO friends in the UK organized by UK Webmaster World also ran an SEO challenge early this year, 2008 that ended on April Fool’s day although this was no joke. The SEOContest2008 where I won 2nd place, was an SEO challenge won by the French team, SEOSphere. Read the rest of this entry �

I need help to transfer 75 WHM/cPanel hosting accounts from 1 server to another. I have a PHP1000,00 budget to get it done asap.

Peferrably someone with cPanel/WHM experience. If none, it is kind of procedural as long as you have these skills: Read the rest of this entry �

This news is not new, and this SEO contest ended last April 1, 2008 and it was not an April Fool’s Day joke. UK Webmaster World held an SEO contest that ran from February 1, 2008 to April 1, 2008 and the winner is who ever ranks highest for the keyword: SEOContest2008 that gave zero results before the contest started and I was fortunate to win the 2nd place prize.

The complete winners are: Read the rest of this entry �

just 12 more days before the SEOContest2008 will end. It ends on April fools day although this is no joke. UK Webmaster World is giving away $1,000 to the website ranking number 1 on Google for SEOContest2008. Good luck to all the competitors:

• Your’s truly, Benj Arriola - SEOContest2008 .com
• Eligio Tapiador Jr. - SEOContest2008 .org
• Gary Viray - Euro SEOContest2008 .com
• Garry Baybayan - ItsOnMyTV SEOContest2008
• Ed Canape - SEMLaguna SEOContest2008
• Zaldy Dalisay - SEOContest2008 Winner
• 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 - My SEOContest2008
• Leo Mirabuna - i SEOContest2008
• 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

Everyone listed above are the compiled Pinoy competitors. I am not sure if there are more.

Kung Pinoy ka at gusto mo din tumulong sa mga kababayan, at may mga blog din kayo, paki post na lang ang kwento din na ito kumpleto pati mga links isama ninyo.Mabuhay ang Pinoy SEO!

After seeing a bunch of photos on my hard drive, most of which I planned to post online, but I never seemed to be able to since 2004 as I have been just busy. I have been using ZenPhoto for some time on other websites and has tried iFoto and Plogger. I did not do a real good comparison of the three but I just did ZenPhoto for a client before and I tried installing iFoto for personal testing which I never did again. And I just tried Plogger for photos uploaded by my sister-in-law and I found it nice but did not take the time to create some good template for it. Read the rest of this entry �

I started in the hosting business in 1997 and to give you an idea of the hierarchy on how this goes, it runs this way:

Read the rest of this entry �

I get several random instant messages from various people from SEO Philippines. Simply asking me, what is my entry in the Bayanihan SEO contest Paradise Philippines. Problem is I am so busy that I can barely work on my SEO contest entry. And even if this is my super honest answer, they tell me something like: “Yeah, you will just try to catch up later and overtake us all.” And actually I honestly do not picture it that way. With so many projects to work on, some web development, some design, some project management, some SEO, I think I can barely work on the SEO contest Paradise Philippines. So if you are all worried I might catch up with everyone, well that will depend if given the time to catch up, but right now, I do not see myself working as hard as I did with GlobalWarming Awareness2007.

UPDATE: Yes it’s official - I won! Thanks to GetUpdated/EastPoint for the contest. Here are the official list of winners.

Previous post below, before winners were declared….

Although my GlobalWarming Awareness2007 entry was the current number 1 site when the contest ended, they say they will come up with the final results after 24 hours. So to make it official, I guess we will have to wait.

A few things I can say about this contest in my own opinion:

1. Content is still king! Good content keep people stay, come back and spread the news in a natural manner.
2. Design is still important. Not that it has to be really superb, but at least it does not look bad that people will not trust you nor trust the content of your website. Make it clean and presentable to help drive more traffic, world-of-mouth promotion and more effective website link baiting.
3. And SEO is a pay-it-forward type of industry. The more help you give out to other people, the more help you receive when you need it.

SEO contest is a test of one’s skill to rank for a certain keyphrase in search engines. But the real SEO work is really much more than that. I happy I was able to showcase my skills in this contest and was victorious, but I have high respect for all the other competitors since it was not an easy win. I was still worried and nervous up to the last minute of a come-from-behind win from the other competitors. I would like to add that 20% of my efforts in getting the top spot in this contest were through the help of the many SEO professionals in the Philippines. This win is not completely my win. It is a win of SEOPhilippines. Where competent and skilled SEO professionals are, SEO professionals in the Philippines have high reliability in off-shore SEO outsourcing.

While waiting for the official winner announcement, in the meantime, I have prepared my long list of thank you’s already and tried to make sure I left no one out. Arranged in no particular order, but trying to do it chronological as how I remember it.

SEO Philippines Community

• Jason Torres - RoR,AJAX,PHP,MySQL,XHTML,CSS rich talent.
• Mike Lopez - PHP,MySQL expert
• Whin Clores - Internet Marketing Consultant, On-page Optimization Expert
• Mia Carmel - SEO Cebu, but seems to love programming more.
• Riz Sanchez - SEM, Guitarchic, PinkSEO
• Alfredo Palconit, Jr. - Filipino Web Designer
• Mae Paulino - Designer/Blogger
• Gio Castro - SEO, Link Builder
• Abel Quitoriano - SEO/Designer
• Rostom Hernandez - Expert Domainer
• Eli Tapiador - WickedWP, up and rising SEO.
• Neil Maranan - Kapeng Barako Viral Videos/Website Joker
• Leo Mirabuna - SEO for Newbies
• Philip Tiangson - Monetize Blogger
• Almer Viloria - SEO Blogger, LinkHealer, with an Article Directory and talks about Mayon.
• Jun Macarambon - Our brother from the South, Wyzemoro.
• Andrew Dela Serna - Alleba Blog DotA Allstars Strategy Darn Slick Gadgets
• Roland Lacre - Naypi
• Muller Tambis - IT Consultant
• Zaldy Dalisay - Major Kontrapelo - Online Money Maker
• Mito Pontillas - SEO, Link Building Expert
• Marvin Arceo - SEO Pinoy
• Marhgil Macuha - SEO contest winner, blogger
• Marc Macalua - Mr. SEO Philippines
• Elimar Apao - Jozzua on Pinoy Entrepenuershi

SEO Friends in San Diego

• Mikhail Tuknov - SEO/PPC/New Media Manager - Astone Agency
• Jesse Morgan - Web Designer/Developer
• Mike McCarthy - Web Designer
• Shawn Hilt - Web Designer

Marko Nikolic, Dru Kelly, Glen Batuyong did not help me in this contest but they did in the past in another SEO contest. Maybe this is still a nice time to say thanks to them also.

Services I got from our friends on Digital Point

• Mas Dini Muzammal - Blog Poster from Malayasia
• Arvind Srivastava - Manual Directory Sumissions from India
• Col Crawford - Blog Poster, SEO

I did not ask for the services of other friends in India Robin Gupta’s Directory Submission, Sunil Submitshop in this contest but these two guys are cool tool. They helped me out in earlier contest I joined with their services.

Clients

• Roda Novenario - Web Designer
• Geri Barcelona - Raredog - Blogger, Scooterman, SEO TAIJI fan

If ever this list is incomplete and I failed to remember you, sorry, I’m just human, it’s sometimes hard to remember everyone.

I did a backlink check as well to help remember some people. I will not mention diggers and people that fell for my link baits since I really don’t know you anyway. *LOL* And for those that added my site to the Cialis and Viagra sites all on different domains that all looked the same, I don’t know if you were helping me or doing the opposite. *LOL* Peace out guys. I understand that competitions are really like that.

Of course thanks to my family and people in my company who were patient with me as I went through the contest as well. I love you all.

I never thought this will make me a bit tensed. This is just a contest, what I would say with the Isulong SEOph and the ItuloyAngSulong, SEO contest and was mainly playing around and learning at the same time. But in the Vorgermilten… I was a bit serious since the top prize was supposed to be $10,000. Eventually I got the top rank in Google but unfortunately it was a hoax. No money for me.

Now here comes the SEO World Championship and is now giving away a brand new car as the first prize. Carribean cruise as the second prize and a Sony Plasma TV as third. I thought I would have the same feeling like in the Isulong SEOph and Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest. Where I would say… this is just a contest and not feel tensed at all.

But for some reason, I feel tensed. I currently have the number 1 spot in the SEO contest with my GlobalWarming Awreness2007 entry. And being the number 1 site, I feel a bit tensed. Knowing that FredrikMH of eglobalwarmingwareness2007 and Mr. Monkeycolo ecoloband is just there and any drop I may get could move them forward.

Yes it’s just a contest, 1, 2 or 3 spots are all cool. Yes I know, but once you are up on the number 1 spot… you want to stay there. And I’m just hoping to stay there for the next 40 hours when the contest ends.

We SEOs all know the story of Jim Westergren when he was not the winner of the V7N SEO contest but after 15 minutes, he was already on top after the winner was declared. He lost by 15 minutes.

40 hours is such a long time to say that I already win the contest. Maybe in an hour or less my ranking can go down. Considering Yahoo and MSN sometimes mixes it all up. Hopefully not. If they mix it up at the same time, oh no, that is double Jeorpardy.

I am pretty competitive in the things I do, although I am no sore loser as well. In the things I get into, I like competiting and in my early teens, I was into BMX racing, I competed in races. In mountain bike races, I competed as well. I got into several martial arts and has competed in Taekwondo competitions. But most of the time, these were local, or at the highest level I got was national competitions. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. And win or lose, I am having fun.

But for some reason, I feel so tensed with this competition. Simply because it is global and this is something that can give worldwide recognition, but if search engines play around which is not impossible, it will just be part of a dream in the past and I will be totally unknown.

Somtimes I feel it is better to lose with a big lead, than lose when you were already very close to winning and at the last moment, you lose it all. Now that is the tensing part. It’s because I am the current leader and still feels uncertain on the stability of some search engines.

Hopefully, everything stays the same after 40 hours. As for the other competitors, ecoloband and eglobalwarmingawareness2007, it was a good contest and I have high respect for your efforts. I hope I get to know you guys too and just share ideas probably via IM in the future.