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.

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.