Backup Anytime

Irish SEO expert competition winner.

Congratulations to Paul Savage of blackdog.ie who won the highly coveted Geansai Gorm Irish SEO expert competition. Well done also to the organiser of this great event, Damien Mulley fame. The rules of the competitionproved at times too strict leaving some entrants disqualified. There are no sour grapes however as Paul’s Entry was not just the top placed viable entry but indeed the top placed entry of any type. The time span this competition ran over, allowed for some fun and games with some entrants sailing a bit too close to the wind. There were instances of entrants being banned by Google. One fictitious albeit well humoured web press release made the newspapers fooling experienced print journalists.

On a serious note, this competition was entered by experienced SEO players. Their ambition was to win. The competition results provide an insight in to the working of search engine optimisation for those who can follow it. In addition, entrants used link skills, social media, engaging or amusing content and more to surpass each other.

This competition was also fair. One very important rule was that all entering domains had to be new. This prevented domains with links, prior media exposure or history from being used. This competition was followed and reported in quality Irish blogs. Some took up the gauntlet and chose one or more entrants to support giving a real community feel to the competition.

Damien Mulley has announced that for Web Awards 09 he will include a practical SEO section.

So, now you know who the blue jumper of Irish SEO is. If you need help getting your site seen or want to be found for specific search terms you can contact Paul as per the Blackdog.ie website.

Geansai gorm. What did I learn?
I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Damien Mulley. If you are in Ireland and blog you will know all about him. He is ubiquitous in Irish blogs. Anyway, where was I. I am not a fan. Indeed I have found Mulley strangely unavailable (even to answer a repeatedly asked question) to amateur bloggers like myself but quick to pull the verbal trigger should someone dare to venture an opinion which differs from what he has freely spoken. I consider much of his commentary (such as the Hardwood Restaurant review) to be abrasive and damaging even when people genuinely try to engage and communicate in a positive manner. So much so that I expect many of his apologetic respondents wish they didn’t reply at all. People however are complicated and dismissing them entirely on the basis of specific events or differences of opinion can serve only to exclude yourself from some positives. He can actually be generous of spirit and use his blog to point to social wrongs. God forbid however that the same woman in this story should on the day she received the H.S.E. letter happen to serve up a meal to Mulley with an attitude, in a manner or above a timescale which wasn’t acceptable. An example of something I like about Mulley is his fresh thinking. I much prefer this to his belief in free speech applying to aggressiveness of speech. This fresh thinking coupled with his blog following can (on occasion) be conducive to producing web marvels. An example of this is the Geansai Gorm competition.

This competition interested me as I had never come across an SEO race with a level playing field. The key was the requirement of a new domain and in addition the need to use keywords which up to then would be uncompetitive.

Granted, some entrants will have contacts for links and even control over powerful domains but these tools combined with the knowledge of when and where to use or not use them are surely part of an entrants skill set from a potential client view point.

The results so far are interesting. I considered joining for a while for fun and chickened out. Not because I feared I would not come first. I knew that I wouldn’t win. But because I didn’t like the idea of coming in below midstream. Somewhat akin to lining up against the wall as a kid to be picked for football, not expecting to be picked first but praying you would be ahead of centre. I now regret not entering as any knowledge I gain from the competition is third hand and I can’t engage in any trial and error.

I did however join in to a limited extent by supporting one of the entrants. I showed my hand early on with regard to my support for Paul Savage. My reason for supporting Pauls Geansai Gorm website was his work in resolving a problem I had with Google some time back.

Anyway, less about Paul and Mulley. This post is not to thank Paul. I have already done that and it was a commercial transaction. This post is not about exacerbating or resolving my own issues with Mulley. I want to be neither “Mulleycoddled” nor “Mulleyfied”.

This post is about what I have learned from the competition and a call to SEO experts, participating or otherwise to assist with putting the list of tasks in an order of importance or weighing the relationships between specific tasks or indeed removing them from the list and adding others.

Here (in no particular order as of yet) are the SEO factors I believe to be important.
The individual list entries may be short and brief. This however is no reflection on the amount of work they require.

1. Good content (original)
2. Prevalence of keywords in domain
3. Number of words in domain.
4. Domain extension.
5. Number of links in.
6. Quality of links in.
7. Location of hosting.
8. Use of Google maps.
9. Proper implementation of site maps.
10. General use of Google Webmaster tools.
11. registration with major search engines.
12. Age of domain.
13. Frequently updated content.
14. Correct meta and alt descriptions.
15. Well managed keyword usage.
16. Blog implementation.
17. Use of social media.

I am beginning to wonder if near complete overall SEO is a financially viable option for small business. Realistically, even with strong management it is very hard to put time weights on these factors as they relate to each other regarding any order of importance.
Even after a generous once off investment one could spent near unlimited time on any of a number of these factors. It would appear to me that strong SEO management from a cost management viewpoint has to be about outcomes and not activities.
In other words, an ambition to achieve a specific page rank for specific keywords may be provided at a reasonable cost but a requirement to keep a site in perfect condition is an ongoing time consuming process rather than an event.

Also (and I am meandering now) is there an example of a “near perfect website” from an SEO viewpoint which most web developers can agree on? Is the measure of SEO simply achieving that number one spot at all costs or are there examples of tacky number one achievers which a worthy web marketer would not be proud of?

I would really appreciate some expert feedback on this. Apologies also for the general usage of the term SEO as I am sure many will see this as one factor and not relevant to many list entries as they may relate to SEM etc. I know I put much of this incorrectly but you know what I mean.

In short. Can you add to the list? Would you remove from the list? Would you dare attempt to list all or some of this list in order of importance?

Go ahead, that’s what I am hoping you will do.

Thanks
John

Is the Tuesday push a closed shop or does Damien Mulley just not like me?

The above is a question I do not know the answer to but I will explain why I ask.

When I first read about the Tuesday push I reckoned (and still do) that it was a brilliant idea. I wanted to be a part of it. I contacted (tried to) Damien Mulley asking if I could be included. There was no quick response but this didn’t bother me as I reckon Damien is busy anyway and the Tuesday push surely took even more of his time.

So impressed was I that I started pushing Tuesday push nominees without being on the list and having any chance of being pushed myself. See http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/08/05/thumbs-up-to-pixie/
As a consequence of how impressed I was with pix.ie we subsequently invited Marcus Macinnes to join our “Who’s who in data”. See http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/whos-who-in-data/
 and his interview on http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/09/13/interview-with-marcus-mac-innes-of-pixie/
At this stage I felt very much involved and paradoxically out in the cold. I wondered if I had somehow offended Damien. I got paranoid to the point of going through our blog to see if I could find any negative comment pertaining to Damien (whom I do not know but know of (as everyone does) as a consequence of his name as a pro blogger) and could find nothing negative. I did find his name on our blog in a supporting post which linked to his site, see http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/10/01/irish-web-awards-11-october-dont-miss/
At this point I tried to contact him as per his own provided contact details. The first time I tried to skype him I didn’t get through. The next time I got a voice recording (standard skype one I think) which explained (not verbatim) that the person may be non contactable or have blocked me! I don’t know which is the case but I wasn’t feeling much better.
To date I have tried the following.
email Damien.
Skype Damien
Fill in Tuesday push form.
Leave comment on his blog.

Despite all of this, no word back. At this point I went searching the wider web to see if there was any evidence of Damien being unhappy with me.
I found this.
http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/05/15/are-ifoodstv-clueless-web-20-spammers/
Damiens comment is down towards the end and just a couple of comments below mine.
Is this why he doesn’t return my calls? I see three possibilities.
1. His contact details are all wrong.

2. He has not responded to communications from many people and there is nothing peculiar about my case.
3. He does not like me.

There may be other reasons. I’d like to know.

Irish web awards 11 October. Don’t miss.

The Venue for the Irish web awards is the Radisson Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin. The awards take place sometime after 7pm on Saturday 11th October. This is year one of the web awards. Any previous web awards you have read about are likely not to be of the standard expected this year. 

As far as I can recall, just about every previous web award hosted (pun not intended) in Ireland came in for significant community and public criticism before and after taking place. It would appear that this years event is not suffering the same fate.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is that this is very much an inside industry event so the nominees are not governed by commercial interests. In addition, Damiem Mulley is the man behind the awards and this lends itself to the awards being based on merit and also attracting a higher calibre of candidate. 

There are still some tickets available bt not many. There are also some remaining sponsorship opportunities. For full details hop over to Damien’s site or the web award site.

Are we in it?

Unfortunately there is no category this year entitled “Best online backup provider on the planet ever” but maybe next year. We watch with interest however a nominee in a vector of our industry whose CEO  we have had the pleasure of interviewing as part of “Who’s who in data” in the recent past. Best of luck to Pix.ie who are in the category “Best Practice sponsored by Lightbox Multimedia”. We believe Marcus and Pix.ie are most deserving of the nomination. Our first look at pix.ie was as a consequence of the Tuesday push which we participate in when we know who is to be pushed but don’t actually know if we are listed in it despite registering.

Anyway. Lets hope this Irish web award will be the first of many of a different type to what we have had run by outside industry sources in the past. I think webmaster participation is the key and I can’t find any negative posts regarding this year so it should be a good one.

Best of luck to all involved.

The backupanytime team.