Is all that hard work Ted Leonsis did blogging about to be put to the test? It is if the Ted Leonsis SEO Contest gets any traction.
Ok here’s the history John Andrews blogged about Ted Leonsis being an Uber SEO, I saw it and threw a monkey wrench into the Ted Leonsis works, a few days later some alert people on Threadwatch picked it up and finally a I started to rank for Ted Leonsis. After some backroom chatter the Ted Leonsis SEO contest was born.
Yawn yea Gray this SEO contest thing has been done before, so what makes this one so noteworthy? I’m glad you asked the base prize is $500, however if all of the spots Ted Leonsis controlled before the whole thing started get knocked out of the top 10 the prize money doubles to $1000. So for those of you who didn’t catch on this is actually a SEO reputation management contest. You can parter with some friends and boost them up, drag up your enemies just to increase your prize money, or be the big kahuna and try and take them all yourself.
So Gray what kind of hornswaggle are you pulling on us you get a two week headstart and then open up a contest, that doesn’t seem to fair! Yep I’m inclined to agree. So even though it wasn’t my idea to start the contest, if I do win I agree to donate any and all money I might win to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and since John is 100% correct that Ted’s taking the abuse it should be donated in his name.
So Gray I mean didn’t you say contests were stupid, and isn’t this one ever so high school all over again? Yep on a certain level contests are stupid, there’s no need to expose your best tricks that are working just to win the prize money. However what this does present is an opportunity to try that whack-a-doodle looney idea you had, but didn’t want to risk your money maker on (just don’t connect it to your network mmkay).
What’s the deal why am I picking on poor old Ted, and is it right to pollute his SERP? Well Ted’s all ready a multi-millionaire and like Elmer J Fudd he probably owns a mansion and a yacht, also Ted is retiring in 2007 so I’d say his name really isn’t a commercial term. However the #1 reason is Ted dissed the trade, he made it seem like any trained monkey sitting in front of a keyboard could rank in Google, and there was no skill involved in SEO. Well every so often you have to take some one out to the woodshed and I think Ted said the wrong thing, at the wrong time and it got noticed by the wrong people. Now if was to come out and say “I could run AOL” or “I could run a pro sports team” somebody should absolutely take me to task for it, because well I wouldn’t have a clue of what the hell I was doing.
Now you’re on a short deadline for this one as the contest ends on Christmas Eve, so I’ll give you a few pointers. Unless you’re on a old, strong, or very trusted domain go parasite SEO. Find some people to partner with and use different services. Promote and link to any of the sites that are already ranking, they are your best shot at knocking those two AOL spots down. Lastly be creative and embrace all things Web 2.0.
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{ 17 comments }
Holy crap! You are the Don King of the blogosphere. Thanks and good on you for pledging any potential winnings to charity.
One of the few non-search execs to pay attention to reputation management and search on a personal level, and you decide to pay $500 to chop him off at the knees for showing an interest? Cold, very cold.
Another way to ask it: if you weren’t in the search industry, would this contest give you more of a negative impression of SEO or a positive impression of SEO?
It’s kind of like auditioning for American Idol, you may get your 15 minutes of fame, but if you are also taking the chance Simon and most of the audience think you are “simply dreadful” and put you in your place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Jievrt_Y8
For whatever reason this contest just seems giggleworthy to me. I don’t take any SEO contests seriously and this is no exception, but it is still pretty funny. I mean, the dude gets a writeup for being a top CEO who kindof “gets it” as far as the importance of reputation management, but I also think that he made the whole practice of SEO sound easy or trained monkey stupid. It’s cool that his site is getting traffic now, but this contest if nothing else will surely prove that while his efforts are noble, if someone wants to do anything with your reputation, they can if they have big enough link artillery. Quick, someone point 5,000+ links with the word ted leonsis as the anchor text to a .edu parasite page and you win! Wait, double word score if you make the page a mesothleoma AdSense spam page!
LOL…you are a dick but I still love ya! =P
Bull shitting with your buddies in your skybox about how you pwned google is one thing, making a big deal about it in the newspaper where the whole world can read it and somebody might prove that you’re wrong is something else entirely.
Matt, I don’t think just because you own some SERPs, you have to trash the guy. For all I care, you could rank a Ted Leonsis Fan Page and get the same point across.
And, just to be perfectly candid, most people don’t know how organic search works and think it’s fascinating how you can compete for position.
What if paid $1000 to a every SEO who put an informative, useful Viagra page on the first page of [buy viagra]? Hey, maybe that’s the future. If spammers are polluting SERPs, sponsor a contest to clean up a query. Or maybe a telethon. Whichever.
All in good fun. Seriously.
Agreed. I’m in.
Well, I do have a domain from 99 or 2000… lol, maybe I can leverage that.
I’ll think about it.
Do you get any points for being the #1 result for an image search?
It is really difficult to check the relevancy of such SEO contests. May all those who participate enjoy doing it instead of thinking of the end result.
Wonder what Ted is thinking about your contest.
I’m in.
Funny thing is, I ranked a Ted Leonsis fan page using parasite seo (spaces.live.com). It worked great, I got indexed nice and quick, I was #35 in Google for “Ted Leonsis” and #5 for “Ted Leonsis blog” within a week, with little-no effort. Now I’m no longer indexed anywhere except in MSN, where I don’t even register on the “Ted Leonsis” radar. I think Google didn’t like the spammy on-page stuff I was doing and I got borked as a result, either algorithmically or by hand job. Since it’s pretty obvious that certain Google higher-ups pay attention to both wolf-howl.com and Threadwatch, my advice to contest entrants to be as “whitehat” as possible because this SERP is getting attention. It’s nice to rank high, but if your entry doesn’t have staying power (or at least enough plausible deniability to satisfy Mr. Cutts and his team), you will have sunk a lot of energy into a turd page that won’t rank.
OK, have fun storming the castle!
>Another way to ask it: if you weren’t in the search industry, would this contest give you more of a negative impression of SEO or a positive impression of SEO?
…One of the few non-search execs to pay attention to reputation management
Probably one of few non-search execs that KNOWS about SEO. Either way SOMEONE has to talk about it. I’m not in the “no publicity is bad publicity camp” by any means – but I think having someone like Ted even ADDRESS the issue of rep mgt. is probably a good thing for SEO, and for anyone practicing online reputation management.
I would guess that if someone is big enough not to notice and respond by now – he’ll either:
a. have a sense of humor about it – and give a candid response
b. up the ante
c. help explain to others the importance of being proactive with the blogosphere
d. be pissed and do his best to ban us all from aol:)
Either way – I really hope people within the community will not approach this as an attack – I’m sure Ted is a very sharp guy to make it to where he has. I think it’s great that he’s been proactive with SEO – and I’m promoting this to increase the exposure of SEO – rather than any personal diss on Ted.
Great stuff…
Fair play to Ted for coming on here and kinda seeing the funny side.
One of the funnier things about this contest is that the top result is currently a 404
Competitions like this are great to show what strategies are working well these days.
I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Ted’s a good guy (I don’t know him personally but did work at AOL for six years). How many other C-level types would roll their sleeves up and even attempt their own SEO? I think he’s the wrong person the SEO/M community should be going after.
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