Playing Around with ZenPhoto, iFoto and Plogger

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.

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Paradise Philippines – The SEO Contest

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.

SEO World Championship is Over

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

SEO Friends in San Diego

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

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

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.

Tensed SEO World Championship

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.

What I need to do before 2007, and what I need to improve on in 2007

Before 2007

  • Finish all client projects – Probably one of the toughest, but I will push through with it.
  • Answer client calls – I still have many pending issues, either by email, voicemail, or our support ticket system. Projects are overwhelming and just taking over the time of everything.
  • Fix up room – Due to all client projects, this is what is also delaying everything else in my life.
  • Greet everyone – I am not done with all my Christmas greetings. It is still a long way to go but I have partially sent all my ecards already.

In 2007

  • Get back in shape – Especially in cardiovascular endurance. It is more of a psychological war to me than a physical limitation since I tend to compare myself to my physical abilities in the past when I was competitive in various sports and I tend to compare what I can do before and what can I do today and this has depleted over time. Which sets frustrations in. Unlike if I was just starting and was unaware of my past, it would be easier.
  • Concentrate on customer support – I am considering on adding a good CRM system, and concentrate more of the production processes than doing production itself.
  • Develop production teams – And since I am not going to concentrate on production, I will develop production teams of my own. Sometimes I can never be contented with the code and I am strict with the code. So hopefully, I get to find the right people to do it that has nice and clean code.
  • Fix computers – Basically my workstations, I have 1 windows PC running and 1 laptop, both on dual monitors. My Mac is temporarily not used because of the convenience I get with dual monitors on my PC and I have no monitor for the Mac. I have 2 more PCs that are not running that I will fix where one will be my Linux workstation and the other I will give away or sell.
  • Sell printers, scanners and photocopier and maybe my fax machine too – I will buy a 4-in-1 color laser printer, copier, scanner fax machine probably, it will be a space saver in my small office-home office setup.
  • File management – if my room is a mess, so are some of my files. And have a better organized backup system.
  • Watch more movies – Mainly not for recreation, but awareness of trends. Awareness of the market. I will just probably sign up with Netflicks and watch at home.
  • Attend tradeshows – This can be expensive, so I will probably just attend 2 or 3. I am targeting Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo and maybe Webmaster World’s Pubcon.
  • Go to church more often – Although I have my own meaning of the church, my own definitions, my own belief, I believe I am not in conflict with the teachings. I may even augment and strengthen my faith, but if I share it with others, it might just confuse other people and they will say I am weird or something. So i do not share my belief, but my belief is basically having my religion entangled with science and they are actually united in a way and are not divided as some people may think.
  • Get a new video camera – The Internet is all about video next year. More Internet marketing activities will involve a lot of rich media, so I need a video camera, and will start working on some video editing skills, and if time permits it, try working with some animations as well.
  • Get a new lens for my digital camera – Maybe a lens with a better aperture and some F-stops and will try to do some magic with my amateur photography skills.
  • Speaking engagements – Will probably talk more in mini shows, mini conventions, small training seminars I can arrange. Probably both in the US and in the Philippines.
  • Buy some VOIP hardware setup – This is for better customer support as I will have someone dedicated to work for me on the other end of the world for my US customers, who can also immediately implement some technical help needed. With this setup, which I do not plan to abuse also, but I can use after office hours for cheaper calls to my family by installing a VOIP gateway as well on the other end.

So far I only have those to do. Maybe even more but I haven’t planned it out that well yet. Let’s see.

Google knows Benj Arriola

If you try searching for Ariola on Google, you get some results.

If you try searching for Aryola on Google, you also get some results.

But when you search for Benj Ariola or Benj Aryola, this is what Google says:

Did you mean: Benj Arriola

There is really nothing special here. No special SEO technique involved. This just shows the the word Arriola occurs many times in the Google database with the word Benj. Thus name corrections like these can, in some way be a measure of online popularity. 😀

Alexaholic – Nice way to compare traffic

You can enter up to 5 websites and see the graph of their traffic based on Alexa superimposed over each other. Pretty cool. Check the traffic of my entries in the Isulong SEOph contest compared to my blog ActionOnline.biz as a control.

Geeks Manual Comparison Geeks Manual Comparison Isulong SEOph About Isulong SEOph News on Isulong SEOph SEO by Isulong SEOph Tools found – Isulong SEOph Isulong SEOph About Isulong SEOph News on Isulong SEOph SEO by Isulong SEOph Tools found – Isulong SEOph

Oh Crap, My Personal Crap is Getting Exposed

Yes, if you found out somewhere that I am one of the new writers of an SEO blog, oh no… and you are looking at my personal crap blog. *lol* My main blog is still ActionOnline.biz, but of course my name on that blog is still my name. Hmmm… Maybe I need an alias like the others, but I think it’s too late. I should have made some name for some branding effect. Oh well, what the heck. I don’t care. I still like my blog as it is, but if you are looking for SEO topics I post… sorry most of them are not here. You will probably find them in ActionOnline.biz or Isulong SEOph.