SEOContest2008» SEOContest2008 SEO Problems http://www.seocontest2008.com 2nd Place Winner in the UK Webmaster World SEO Contest Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:27:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Thanks for the SEOContest2008 help but please do not overhelp http://www.seocontest2008.com/thanks-for-the-seocontest2008-help-but-please-do-not-overhelp.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/thanks-for-the-seocontest2008-help-but-please-do-not-overhelp.html#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:09:23 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://www.seocontest2008.com/thanks-for-the-seocontest2008-help-but-please-do-not-overhelp.html
  • First of all is, I would like to thank everyone I solicited help in my SEO efforts for this contest.
  • And I guess I have to even thank even more those that voluntarily help without even me asking.
  • And I thank even a lot more those that asked me how they can help before they actually did help me.

    • Now that I have enumerated these 3 groups… I would like to point out number 2.

    For those that gave me sitewide links near the last minute… some people have different thoughts on this, but with my thoughts, a sitewide link is too fast of a link building technique considering the near closing of this contest. I personally fear the sitewide link when the contest is near it’s ending because I have this belief that the link building will be to fast and may trigger some delay filter. An editorial link still in my opinion works best.

    Next is, in the last few weeks, I have see people giving me 301s that I believe were not present before. Although I appreciate your concern in helping out, please be aware that this is a no-301 rule contest. Aside from that, adding your 301s in this last few days is not that effective since it was added at the last minute. I am not fully aware of everyone who did this, but two people I clearly have seen doing this is…

    G. Ortiz and M. Rogers

    As for Ms. Ortiz, I have spoken with her after one of the people on UK Webmaster World asked me about one site. I saw what you did. I appreciate the help. And thank you for taking off the 301 you added at the last minute.

    Now for Mr. Rogers, well what can I say. I never had any plans of talking to you which I believe you already know. And whatever you are doing, which I am not really sure, if you are helping or putting me into disaster. I have seen your site a few weeks back (thanks Eli for telling me about this 301) and it barely had content and now you change it to a 301. Please remove it. It was added too near the end and it will barely help too. Thanks but no thanks.

    UPDATE: I posted this at the spur of the moment and was not quite sure how the tone of my blog post is. I did not wish to offend anyone and did not mean I do not appreciate your help. What I meant was simply stick to editorial post. A blog story with a link will do. And no 301s please, it’s too late in the contest day anyway. Same with sitewide links, just stick with editorial links. That’s all. Again thank you and I very much appreciate your concern.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/thanks-for-the-seocontest2008-help-but-please-do-not-overhelp.html/feed/ 5     SEOContest2008 Problem 10: Dancing with the Sphere http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-10-dancing-with-the-sphere.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-10-dancing-with-the-sphere.html#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:34:28 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-10-dancing-with-the-sphere.html SEOContest2008-Sphere.com has been trading places with me for the number 1 and 2 spots. It has been like a daily unstableness. In the previous SEO contest I have joined, I usually do nothing in the last few days of the contest. Mainly because if you over do it, there is also such a thing as over optimize, that may affect your ranking even more. In the SEO World Championship, in the last two weeks I literally did nothing myself and the results seemed to be more stable then. But for this contest, results change like on a daily basis, where sometimes I am number 1, sometimes I am number 2.

    Team SEOSphere is not Stopping

    As much as I want to stop to avoid any sudden drops, the SEOContest2008-Sphere.com team seems to keep going on. And it seems like their work is paying off. And whatever I start doing now, may not be enough to stay back at the number 1 spot. Aside from that, doing it too much too fast can drop me down as well. In fact sometimes I do not like changing my site that much when I am already ranking high. But in this case, I saw the need to.

    Wild Ride on SEOContest2008!

    James kept me on my toes with only 3 days left, I know I can’t do anything about it. My friend from 55 Brownlow Ave. would sure be happy knowing that I am jittered. I have this book I need to photocopy. And I’ve heard that you have a great Xerox machine over there that can do 10,000 copies per minute. I’m losing hope, thanks for giving me some consolation knowing that you are the champ.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-10-dancing-with-the-sphere.html/feed/ 3     SEOContest2008 Problem 9: Some Datacenters Dancing At #2 http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-9-some-datacenters-dancing-at-2.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-9-some-datacenters-dancing-at-2.html#comments Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:18:36 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-9-some-datacenters-dancing-at-2.html Yup, after checking several data centers after Ed sent me an IM and told me he’s been seeing me at number 2 on some DCs. I decided to check it myself and it has been inconsistent as some show me at #1, some show me at #2 on Google. With 1 week left, it is still anybody’s game.

    My SEOContest2008 Solution #9

    Hmmm, do nothing and pray? *LOL* It is actually hard to make drastic changes just to maintain this position. Sometimes too sudden changes in desperate hopes to stay at a certain position just does bad things. Just considering what could have caused this rank to go down in some datacenters can be 1 in a million reasons but I guess it can be broken mainly into two:

    1. seocontest2008-sphere.com has done something really good to his site to make it pass my current ranking in some datacenters

      or

    2. I have done something really bad that made my site slip and go down a notch.

    If ever the reason is number 1, then what I have to do is catch up. If the reason is number 2, then I will reflect in what were the last changes I have worked on.

    I decided to work on number 2 first. Just before I found out about this, I have made a new blog post comparing 2 SEO Contest strategies. The content is relevant in some way and I had a lot of outbound links in the post. Thinking it had something to do with the outbound links, I decided to place in several nofollows just to see how it goes.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-9-some-datacenters-dancing-at-2.html/feed/ 7     Problem 8: Block 72 Datacenters and Massive Link Campaign Team Work in SEOContest2008 http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-8-block-72-datacenters-and-massing-link-campaign-team-work-in-seocontest2008.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-8-block-72-datacenters-and-massing-link-campaign-team-work-in-seocontest2008.html#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:40:56 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-8-block-72-datacenters-and-massing-link-campaign-team-work-in-seocontest2008.html Just earlier, a few hours ago, although I was not able to replicate this, the 72.*.*.* IP block of Google datacenters was briefly showing seocontest2008.uk.com as number 1. And it seems spreaded among this block showing mixed results with either me or seocontest2008-sphere.com or seocontest2008.org interchanging 2nd, 3rd and 4th places.

    But after a 30 minutes of checking, I could no longer replicate the results I was seeing except for one datacenter I visit having seocontest2008.uk.com as number 1. But I also noticed most of the cache dates seemed to roll back to March 1, 2008 even if a few days ago many results were having the March 4, 2008 cache date.

    Even if my site went back to number 1, signs like these already mean something. Their websites are strong indeed, aside from that, both of their sites seem to talk about a group effort in making their site rank higher. And these two sites uk.com and -sphere have more than 4 times the amount of links I have so you never know when big G might just flip the switch someday before April 1.

    Solution to the SEOContest2008 Problem 8

    Well there are only a number of things any SEO person can do.

    • Build more links: Concentrate on Relevancy and PR or Concentrate on Quantity? What do you think?
    • Show some regular page updates to increase the crawl rate. Not a critical ranking factor, but if you want to see the effects of what you are doing faster in the SERPs, you also want to be crawled faster.

    Well let’s see how it goes.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-8-block-72-datacenters-and-massing-link-campaign-team-work-in-seocontest2008.html/feed/ 0     SEOContest2008 Problem 7: Rank drop in some data centers after domain transfer http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-7-rank-drop-in-some-data-centers-after-domain-transfer.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-7-rank-drop-in-some-data-centers-after-domain-transfer.html#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:43:12 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-7-rank-drop-in-some-data-centers-after-domain-transfer.html The whole point of having these problems started when I moved this SEOContest2008 website to a separate hosting account that used to be parked on top of SEOReligion.com with redirected pages. I lost several pages indexed as well as the benefit of several backlinks that prompted me to fix my site on March 2 to avoid any contest compliance rule conflicts later on and get the Search Engines to see my changes as early as possible so I still have appropriate time to get re-indexed.

    Temporarily Running Without “www” – March 2, 2008

    Since I had an IP change and any kind of DNS change has propagation issues. I myself was not able to see my own site. Now how am I supposed to fix a website I cannot see? *LOL* Since my ISP cached my site with the “www” I started running without the “www” just so I can see my site and fix it.

    Ranking drops 1 spot – March 3, 2008

    The next day my domain was resolving properly on my ISP and I switched back to having the “www” to be consistent with all my links. I saw a drop in rankings by one spot and I saw Eli Tapiador from my view gaining the lead. Although I told myself, shucks, I lost my ranking will it keep going down? I was still cool with it since Eli is a cool guy to be on top anyway.

    After being down several minutes, a “www” site not resolving,  content all changed, links from a previous site all disappeared, and indexed pages gone, I was expecting even worse than a 1 position drop. But still having the confidence it will not be that far because I still have good links from web design sites.

    Ranking goes back to 1 – March 4, 2008

    So far I was happy it was back up, showing that I was still number 1 for SEOContest2008, Still thinking it is due to the links I have built. But I did notice my Google cache date was a bit late. February 29, 2008.

    Ranking way to inconsistent, site disappearing in some datacenters – March 5, 2008

    Right after Temi manually refreshed the rank standings displayed on UK Webmaster World. My site was not listed which prompted me to check the datacenters. Aside from that, on the thread where I asked other people what SEOContest2008 results they are seeing on the forum, Elmer was one of them to show one result where I did not seem to be on top.

    After checking using various ranking tools, like these ones:

    • SEOCentro: Showed me as number 1 but mysteriously, I was also number 1. Number 1 had the www, number 2 had no www.
    • SEOLogs: 27 Datacenters showed me as number 1, but without the www.
    • Mcdar: A large majority of the datacenters showed me as number 1 without the www. A few still showed me as number 1 with the www. A few showed me as number 5 with the www.
    • iWebTool: 35 Datacenters showed me a number 1 but some with the www and some without.

    One thing I noticed, the cache date on all rankings without the “www” were March 2, 2008. And the rankings with the “www” were March 4. And just an update as I finish this blog post, in the middle of typing this blog post, as I type away and keep checking the datacenter, many of them started updating already where the number 1 results were no longer seocontest2008.com and were showing www.seocontest2008.com.

    As I am about to end this blog post, I have some confidence in the results since the one with the www on the number 1 spot has a newer cache date. Although I must be cautious also even if only a few datacenters showed me at rank 5, that may still mean something. So I should not be too happy, and still concerned. Although I am also happy since the content in my cache is already my current content and not my SEOReligion content. Meaning with the large content change, my site is still on top.

    My SEOContest2008 Solution to Problem 7

    Well everything is pretty much done already. The www domain resolves properly. The non-www redirects to the www. URLs consistent with my XML sitemap. Preferred already set on webmaster tools. So all I have to do is wait and see if my ranking dips. Wish me luck and good luck to everyone else in the contest.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-7-rank-drop-in-some-data-centers-after-domain-transfer.html/feed/ 3     SEOContest2008 Website Down – Problem 6 http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-website-down-problem-6.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-website-down-problem-6.html#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:00:56 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-website-down-problem-6.html Now I kept my DNS the same to avoid any sudden ranking changes but I made the nameservers resolve on a new IP separate from SEOReligion. Right now I know some will see the www.seocontest2008.com to be either server not found, some configuration problem with a cPanel error page, error 404 or still the old site. I’m expecting this site to be fully resolved within the next 24 to 48 hours.

    SEOContest2008 Solution to Problem 6

    Not much solutions. This is simply a time factor where ISPs should be refreshing their cache. So all we have to do is wait. :(

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-website-down-problem-6.html/feed/ 2     Problem 5: Error 404 on Many SEOContest2008 pages http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-5-error-404-on-many-seocontest2008-pages.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-5-error-404-on-many-seocontest2008-pages.html#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:45:45 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://seocontest2008.com/problem-5-error-404-on-many-seocontest2008-pages.html This site has several indexed pages when it was still parked on SEOReligion.com. Now the pages no longer exist. And when Google sees this, such a massive change may trigger some red flags thinking the site no longer exist or is owned by someone else and resets the ranking. We do not want that to happen.

    My Error 404 Solution for Search Engines and for Usability

    For search engines

    I will check all pages indexed already and create manual 301s to redirect to the homepage. This is internal 301s from this domain seocontest2008.com to the same domain. Just redirecting pages that seem to exist already that have now disappeared.

    For Usability

    Just in case anyone has linked to internal pages within seocontest2008.com and they visit the links and they get Error 404s and get disappointed, as they get redirected to the homepage, I will place a static link on the side bar saying: Looking a missing page? It might be on SEOReligion.com. Hopefully that helps people still be able to find what they were originally looking for.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-5-error-404-on-many-seocontest2008-pages.html/feed/ 1     Problem 4: Lost Links From SEOContest2008 Relevant Site http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-4-lost-links-from-seocontest2008-relevant-site.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-4-lost-links-from-seocontest2008-relevant-site.html#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:14:51 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://seocontest2008.com/problem-4-lost-links-from-seocontest2008-relevant-site.html Come to think of it… search engines do not know what seocontest2008 meant in the beginning of this 2008 SEO contest. Which is the reason why there were zero results, and there were no related results too. Google like other search engines, really do not know the meaning of words and they simply “learn” in a way using semantics. Maybe many of you have heard of LSI already or Latent Semantic Indexing and Google did not buy the company Applied Semantics for nothing a few years back. As we continue and progress with this SEO contest and more and more websites are using the keyword: SEOContest2008, and Google will get a better meaning of this keyword in relation to the other words it commonly co-exists within a page and see how the word is used in relation to other words. Taking note of flow patterns and hierarchical structure as well.

    Just my common sense guess, I believe Google already treats the keyword SEOContest2008 to SEO and of course, also contest as more competitors are all talking about this competition. Please also take note, of this common SEO knowledge that relevant links help a lot in SEO.

    Just a few days back. this domain was parked on top of seoreligion.com. The topics on SEOReligion was relevant and Wordpress was responsible for all the 301s from the old domain to the new domain. But this was considered an invalid technique that were out of bounds of the SEO Contest rules.

    Aside from the benefit of having this redirecting situation, I was running a site on several subdomains. Which were:

    • about.seocontest2008.com
    • news.seocontest2008.com
    • downloads.seocontest2008.com
    • seo.seocontest2008.com

    All had relevant content in some way and all linked to my contest entry, www.seocontest2008.com.

    Now having the 301 rule not in place, seocontest2008.com now is a standalone blog separate from the website that was seoreligion.com.

    With the lesser benefit of the 301, I can still link my whole SEOReligion site to seocontest2008.com and get the link love. But would it not be even better if the site was specifically about seocontest2008 so the link in relevantly stronger? I also believe that a relevant site with a domain containing the keywords would benefit a little more to some extent in my opinion. Now all of that is lost, I will still link my site SEOReligion to my official contest entry seocontest2008.com.

    My Solution to the SEOContest2008 relevant links

    I am going to use the domain seocontest2008blog.com on seoreligion.com. seocontest2008blog.com is NOT my official SEOContest2008 entry. Just in the same way seocontest2008online.com is also NOT my official contest entry. But it can be used on other sites like SEOReligion to make sites seem more relevant linking to SEOContest2008.com.

    Now this is compliant to the SEOContest2008 contest rules.

    • I still have a standalone contest entry separate from seoreligion.com
    • I made seoreligion.com more relevant to the targeted keyword by changing it’s domain to seocontest2008blog.com to make it have a higher relevancy.
    • I linked to my site seocontest2008.com from seocontest2008blog.com.

    Ok now let’s see how it works. Give me a few minutes to implement this well.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-4-lost-links-from-seocontest2008-relevant-site.html/feed/ 0     SEOContest2008 Problem 3 – Useless Topbar Navigation http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-3-useless-topbar-navigation.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-3-useless-topbar-navigation.html#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:26:15 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-3-useless-topbar-navigation.html The topbar navigation is based of another site, SEOReligion. Now since we are having this as a separate site, the top bar navigation makes no sense and gives deadlinks. Solution is simple, delete the topbar navigation.

    ]]>     http://www.seocontest2008.com/seocontest2008-problem-3-useless-topbar-navigation.html/feed/ 0     Problem Number 2: Wordpress Default Settings http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-number-2-wordpress-default-settings.html http://www.seocontest2008.com/problem-number-2-wordpress-default-settings.html#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:22:33 +0000 Sulumits Retsambew http://seocontest2008.com/problem-number-2-wordpress-default-settings.html Not everything on a fresh install of Wordpress is exactly what I want to have in SEOContest2008. Some settings are not ideal and you might want to check out my list and copy what I do and probably help you out in your ranking too.

    •  Updated my Pinglist: Wordpress can ping several blog search engine. On every new blog post, it can ping these search engines and I decided to update the ping list.
    • Valid XHTML: WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically. Why? Because I just want to. :) My template is valid XHTML with tableless CSS design. Some SEO’s still think valid XHTML helps in ranking but it is really not the case. Invalid HTML code can still rank high and the valid XHTML code has been debunked already by many SEO professionals. So don’t ask me why I am adamant about doing this, you can figure it out just thinking about it well and investigating further.
    • Summary on Syndication Feeds: My RSS should not be the whole article. I don’t want automated splogs copying everything.
    • Preferred Permalink: No real SEO explanation. Just a personal preference. I chose a custom permalink of this pattern: /%postname%.html
    • Delete Default Blogroll: Matt Mullenweg is probably one of the coolest people in the blogging world with Wordpress but sorry, I have to delete the whole default blogroll.
    • Delete Default Pages: The default about us page had to go.
    • Update Akismet Plugin: Even if my WordPress is the latest, Akismet was not updated. I don’t want to be annoyed with spam so I make sure Akismet is running fine.

    In the previous problem, I have fixed everything well so far except for the default domain to have the “www” because if I add it, the DNS changes have not propagated well yet and I can’t even see my own site myself! So I am working without the “www” first.

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