It’s new — so new that I find it virtually useless. Since I presume it’s in beta, I expect more improvements in the coming months. But curious that the panel displays something they call “Domain Rank”.

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Let’s get this straight. Google has PageRank, Yahoo! has Web Rank, Microsoft now has Domain Rank. The triumvirate is complete!

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And of course, I hung out with bloggers Aileen Apolo, Noemi Dado, Juned, Jayvee Fernandez, Anton Diaz and Abe Olandres.

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Let’s get to the speakers. It was interesting that Aaron Wall keynoted the first day, and had a Q&A session right after! Good for us though, because he was able to answer a lot of burning questions about SEO. His wife Giovanna Wall gave a very good talk about how she carved her own niche and made money out of it.

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Jayvee Fernandez gave a talk on Web Copyrighting. IMO, the best talk at SEMCON! Not only was it engaging, it was a wakeup call to SEO’s. SEO isn’t just about optimizing keywords and grabbing links. SEO also entails writing that is compelling and convincing.

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Ok, it’s a two-way tie, because Benj‘s talk on SEO for Megasites is at the top of my list as well. Hmm. I don’t have a pic of Benj in my camera.

Other notable speakers included Rhiza Sanchez, who spoke about creative linkbaiting tactics, Abe Olandres on Managing your Online Reputation, Todd Malicoat on linkbaiting, Google’s Derek Callow on PPC and Adwords and Joel Sangria on Analyzing Google Analytics.

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If you missed the SEMCOM, you can download the audio file of each speaker here.

From my experience of running a web directory and blog directory, I’ve come across dozens of blogs that join these so-called link “trains” to increase their Alexa and Technorati rankings. Some are also in the illusion that it will increase their Google PageRank. At Ratified.org, I know for a fact that a bulk of those in the top 20 participate in such schemes. Had I excluded them, Bryan Boy would easily be #1. What happened to that plan anyway? Well, I decided to shelve it for now.

Anyway, let me say that I find these things extremely self-serving and useless. The only person who directly benefits from this is the originator of the scheme. Imagine this: if I were to start something similar, all I need is to make it sound like a valiant effort and coax a few believers to join in. Then it becomes viral because, who doesn’t want links? Every struggling blogger would jump at any chance to get links, right? That’s why it’s so easy to ask them to join. In the end, the originator gets all the link love while the rest are placed in a link farm.

Speaking of link farms, I cannot support the theory that “riding a train” increases PageRank. Link farms or free-for-all links (FFA’s) are an artificial way of linking. These “trains” aren’t any different. As we all know, for every link on a page, a little bit of its PageRank is passed on. Just imagine a low-PR page with hundreds of links on it. Basically the amount of PageRank granted is next to nil. Even if we consider the multiplier effect knowing that many other blogs will display the same links, they still won’t add up enough to make a real dent on PageRank. Also, the question of relevance comes to mind. I have a blog on cooking and I link to another blog about Hydraulics and to another on Yoyoing. Certainly those links will be considered spam by Google. But probably not in the case of linking only to those two sites. But if you link to a hundred more irrelevant blogs and those blogs contain the same exact links, that’s a totally different story. It’s called spamming.

I hope all the new blood in the blogosphere would concentrate more on developing good, original content, rather than spending hours and hours on shady link exchanges. It’s definitely a virus, the kind that should be cured ASAP.

With built-in talent, good karma and a dash of help from fellow Pinoy SEO’s, Benj ruled the SEO World Championship. No doubt, he deserved it. This will definitely open more doors for him and hopefully this will reflect on the entire SEO industry here in the Philppines. Benj doesn’t just have the right to brag, but he can do it while driving his brand-spankin’ new Citroen C2!

Read more on his win here.

Congratulations to you Benj. You made us proud.

I see Google PageRank as a “please factor’ that I like to look at on my toolbar every now and then. I tend to just work on content and backlinks and leave it to Google to judge if I’m doing a nice job. Other sites link to me not just for the sake of it. They link to me because I give them good reason to — great, original, interesting content. If that reflects on my PageRank, then wonderful. A high PageRank does go a long way in SEO terms — you get crawled more frequently, thus keeping your cache fresh, you get a better chance of ranking higher for keywords you’re targeting and as a result you get higher traffic. I’m an SEO junkie, so don’t blame me for liking PageRank or any kind of rank for that matter.

Speaking of ranks, my new directory Ratified.org ranks the Philippines’ top blogs using data from Technorati.com. A Google search for Ratified.org now returns 13,000 results, up from just 7 before Aileen blogged about it. I have been doing my homework people. From the looks of it, not everyone likes the idea of Ratified.org. Blogging purists (if there is such a thing) say that rank should be based on quality of content and readership, not on links alone. I agree with that notion, but it is simply impossible to grade content, right? People have different levels of taste. One blog that you praise oh so highly may be disliked by another. My message to you “purists” is: Don’t leave links out of the big picture. Like I said above, you’re being linked for good reason. Bloggers read blogs too you know. If you don’t believe me then ask everyone to stop linking to you and see what happens. It’s high time that bloggers should learn SEO.

Back to Ratified.org, I am working on the readership factor, but it is quite difficult given that not all blogs are on Feedburner right now. Pinoy Top Blogs is another directory that ranks blogs based on traffic. I love Pinoy Top Blogs, but to those questioning Ratified.org, does it also do justice to ranking blogs? I am happily ranked 39th by the way.

Just like PTB, the way that Ratified.org ranks blogs is totally unbiased. I simply took data out of Technorati and then ranked them accordingly. Just like you, I’m particularly surprised to see Yuga at only #12. Abe pointed out some factors that would give undue advantage to some blogs over the others specifically theme and plugin authors (ouch) and other schemes meant to game the system. I am seriously considering that, and would be willing to un-rank myself in the process.

I watched Spiderman 3 yesterday. The movie felt like it took 3 hours to finish (it was about 2). The script was blotchy and predictable. Spiderman 1 is the still the best. Watch this one with some reservation, or you’re in for a big disappointment.

Take for example this query made in my search engine:

Initial query:

Freindster

Follow-up query:

Freindster pics

Then:

Freindster pictures

Freindster freinds

I doubt the poor guy found what he was looking for. Misspellings such as this (freind) are more commonplace than you think. About 10% of all search queries are misspelled. That’s why Friendster, like it should be spelled, also bought the domain Freindster.com before them domaineers can snap it up. I have read here and there that optimizing for wrongly-spelled words may also improve traffic, but I tend to disagree. It may increase traffic but definitely not improve it. One of the things I look at in sites such as blogs is the credibility of the writer. Are his posts useful? Do his posts help me make a good decision? Does he spellcheck before publishing?

I go OC (obsessive-compulsive) when it comes to correct grammar and spelling. And I do beat myself up every now and then when I see errors in my posts. While reading a blog, misspellings are like potholes on a road. If you’ve bumped into too many already, you never come back.

In SEO, practicing correct spelling is a plain and basic given. If you’re positioning yourself for a certain keyword, having everything spelled correctly helps to define the semantics of a webpage. Inserting a misspelled word, whether accidentally or deliberately, reduces the relevance of your content and thereby pulling down its search engine rankings. But then again, it all boils down to the credibility issue. Google’s new Agent Rank puts importance on the reputation of the author rather than content alone.

From Google’s patent application for Agent Rank:

When all content from a resource is under the control of a single agent, the reputation of the agent can be directly related to the content of that resource … Identifying individual agents responsible for content can be used to influence search ratings (and) the identity of agents can be reliably associated with content.

That is why I encourage you to proofread before publishing a blog post. You can ask anyone around you to do it, or a couple of friends over IM.

On a side note, I heard from Janette Toral that one of her latest members at Digital Filipino is a company who is recently positioning itself as Singapore’s Top SEO.

This is a sponsored post from Digital Filipino Club.

A list of my pages and the number of external links pointing to them:

By clicking the number in the External links column you’ll see backlinks pointing to the page:

All the other tools included in Google Sitemaps are there too. Let the obsession begin!

On the web: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog Announcement

Link love: (don’t forget my coffee and dessert guys)

Ituloy Angsulong – Seobunker
Ituloy Angsulong entry by a Proud Moro

These rankings are at best preliminary. There’s still 19 days to go. Anything could happen then! Good luck everyone!

Last minute link bubble bath for my SEO ‘bro Mito in Cagayan de Oro:

Ituloy Angsulong

Pastillas ko ok?

Google’s Country Representative, Aileen Apolo, made an interesting presentation about Google and its plans for the Philippines. Unfortunately, setting up a real brick-and-mortar office isn’t included in those plans. But who knows. But, she encouraged everyone to be GAP (Google Advertising Professional) certified and rounded up the benefits of doing so — you get recognition from Google and basically a great career ahead of you. Demand for Adwords is picking up in the Philippines so getting certified is a no-brainer if you’re a brooding SEM. Marc mentioned a while back that he wants to be the first Filipino to be certified. Hope he gets it so many others will follow suit!

Aileen is also visiting the South, particularly my city Davao! Yeah! I look forward to helping her out in her gigs here.

Pics after the jump.

With Main Man Marc Macalua

With Blogging Guru Abe ‘Yuga’ Olandres (Argh, I look so harassed!)

With Google Rep Aileen Apolo