V7ndotcom Elursrebmem Contest Information
V7ndotcom Elursrebmem Interview - Mike Grehan
An interview with SEO veteran, Mike Grehan (blog).
Can you give us a bit of information about yourself and your SEO history?
I was raised by a secret band of Ninjas in a mountain hideaway in China. Which is very strange as Ninjas actually come from Japan. But I did notice two Chinese girls acting as Geishas in a movie recently. So who knows what goes on in history lessons these days?!
Anyway, following my training as chief cook and bottle washer, because I was absolute shite with a sword, and the black mask gave me a severe rash under my chin which made me cry very loudly, a lot, I was let go.
There's not a lot of opportunities for badly trained lethal assassins who cry a lot, very loudly, it has to be said.
And then, one day I was taking a walk on the beach and spotted a bottle floating in the sea. I waded out to get it and realised that it was a very, very old bottle. And inside, I could see it had a note.
I quickly opened it and took out the ancient parchment type paper and began to read it. And oh, it was powerful, heady stuff. Written in the last century, it was the original copy of "A webmasters guide to search engines" by the grand master himself, Danny Sullivan.
This was it I thought – I would become the all powerful master of meta tags. I would unleash my meta tag power on an unsuspecting world. And create a special costume which didn't give me a rash under the chin and make me cry very loudly, a lot.
And that, believe it or not, is the absolute truth of how I got started in this business!
SEO contests – good thing or bad thing? What impact do you see this SEO contest and subsequent contests having on the industry?
As far as I'm concerned, the novelty of this type of competition wore off about 15 minutes after the winner of nigritude ultramarine was announced (and off the top of my head, I can't even remember who that was).
I don't actually see it as an SEO contest either. The real SEO contests are taking place every day with companies acting on behalf of their clients. This is about one-upmanship.
Subsequent contests? I have no idea what effect they may have on the industry. People like to have some fun fooling around and that's fine. But personally, I'd like to see a SEM company winning a marketing award from a qualified body for achievements on behalf of their clients.
What’s your take on how Google will view the contest? Some people are pointing out the artificial link building issue – are we going to see some v7ndotcom elursrebmem penalties?
You have to paint yourself purple and set yourself on fire on top of the Empire State building to get Google, as an organisation, to notice you as an advertiser sometimes. Let alone get some attention for a link spam competition.
However, I don't doubt for one second that the effervescent personality that is SEO rock'n'search god, Matt Cutts, will raise the odd curious eyebrow in that direction.
What’s going to win – white hat or black hat?
What was it that Tim Mayer said about "turning up to a gunfight with a knife?"
What’s going to win – established site or new site?
The one which manages to muster up the most publicity and awareness about their part in the competition and the linkage and end user data that goes with it.
What’s going to win – forum post, blog or standard web page?
I'd be drawn towards blog/splog.
Lot’s of people snapped up keyword domains pretty quick (within hours) – after 4 months is this likely to give them much of an edge?
It'll leave a lot of people with rear-view-mirror type domain names – that's for sure!
As for edge, I'll just refer back to my answer to your "What's going to win" question.
If you had to choose, which engine would you prefer to base the results on?
224k results on Google.com for “nigritude ultramarine” – will “v7ndotcom elursrebmem” beat that? What’s your guestimate for the total pages indexed by Google for the term come May 15th?
Come May 15th I'll be too busy counting out a thousand dollars to notice!
Do you have your entry ready?
Hehe! Now that's funny.
If we win any prize money we’re going to donate it to charity based on our forum users votes – I’d like to add the charity of your choice to the list (seeing you’re stumping up some cash n’ all!) – What’s your preferred charity?
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk
Final note – if you have one piece of advice to give the contest entrants what would it be?
Remember, it's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part... Who was it who coined such a load of bollocks as that ? (Bollocks is an English word for, er... bollocks).
Advice? Think of a way to convince me to link to your site from ClickZ (only one very important authority link available for free, I'm afraid!)
Many thanks Mike. And I would like to take this opportunity to say what a pleasure it's <insert kiss arse stuff to wangle a link from Clickz>... ;)
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Related Competition Pages
- Competition Home - our homepage for V7ndotcom Elursrebmem related stuff.
- Competition Rules - rules for the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest.
- Competition History - history of the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest.
- Webguerilla - alternative ruleset for the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem competition.
- Rants - stuff that's doing my head min about the v7ndotcom elursrebmem SEO contest.
- Interviews - interviews with v7ndotcom elursrebmem prize donators.
- Discuss - chat about the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem competition here.
