About SEOContest2008

Doing SEO for clients alone is a tedious task especially if you have many clients already. For the first time SEO practitioner and their first time SEO client, work can be exciting. But when the workload comes in, sometimes even in other hobbies that you love, once they become a job, you do not start to like them. Doing SEO for a website and not getting paid, should even be harder since it is like a free SEO job, optimizing and not getting paid.

So what benefit can you really get from joining the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest?

I guess various competitors will have various reasons. But for me, here are my reasons:

1. The Learning Experience - Isulong SEOph alone has opened my eyes into more insights on Google, and even given a deeper understanding on country specific Google.com.ph and how the SERPs differ with Google.com. Now, Ituloy AngSulong is a contest that includes Yahoo and MSN, which is already showing me some differences in indexing rates in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
2. The Earning Potential - If I am going to work on an SEO contest entry and optimized it well, this will increase rankings, increase page rank, increase the websites overall popularity. And a popular website has earning potential as long as you know how you will monetize it well. Win or lose in the SEO contest, trying to win in the contest is worth the learning experience already. And at the same time, might as well maximize the time spent in optimizing your website and adding in good content. This gives the site better longevity as you develop your own community and monetize it from there. If you made an Ituloy AngSulong entry and after the SEO contest, the site is worth as trash, I suggest do something else to it so that your hard work has gone somewhere into something productive.
3. The SEO Experiment Laboratory - In way still part of the learning experience reason I mentioned above, SEO professionals all know the SEO basic practices, but this is a progressive learning experience, as SEO techniques today, can be way different to the SEO techniques of tomorrow. There are already many SEO techniques of the past that are totally outdated today. As search engines get better and better, SEO techniques change correspondingly. Some techniques can be a bit shady and considered banned by some search engines, although they give you a better understanding of how the search engines work. These shady techniques also known as Blackhat SEO, can be on the borderline, or beyond what is permitted by the search engines. But doing Blackhat SEO teaches you more lessons on search engine behavior, but doing this is on client website may not be worth the risk. Getting your client banned in Google, Yahoo or MSN/Live can mean losing a client and losing business. Having a separate website can be used as your own SEO experiment laboratory. Not necessarily meaning I do all Blackhat on this website, but experiments that may be near the borderline of what is allowed can be tested without the risk of losing a client. And as I suggest, if you find a way to cheat the search engine, I do suggest on reporting it to the search engines instead of abusing it. And after reporting it, then blog about it so you gain the credit and credibility of discovering the search engine flaw, but you report it so it will not be abused and you gain you good rapport with the search engines.
4. The Branding and Cross-Promotion of your other Services - I have a business and technology blog, where I used to post some of my SEO discoveries. I have a finance/business/investment blog. A personal blog and more blogs target to smaller niches. I have not created a blog dedicated to SEO/SEM alone, and I believe my Ituloy AngSulong entry will be my permanent SEO/SEM blog and develop it’s brand to be an SEO/SEM resource. Although there are many SEO/SEM blogs with higher authority as they have been in this business longer that I ever knew SEO, SEO is still a progressive learning experience. Things change as search engines change and new techniques will come out, and that brings everyone on an equal playing field. The more news worthy your SEO/SEM blog has, the more popular it will get as an SEO/SEM resource. And this is where you develop your brand around it and try to become an authority in the field. Ans as you start to get this authority, you can even push for cross-promoting your other services that you believe your target audience may also be interested in.
5. The Contest Prizes - Now this is the last reason. It is just an added bonus. If you win in the contest, you get all these Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest prizes. Aside from the money, you get the recognition and is a definite plus to your SEO resume. Without these contest sponsors, there would have been no prizes:
   • Boris Kerbikov of Lakeside Technologies
   • Itay Kaul of CPays.com (2,400.00 USD)
   • Wilson Chua of Philippine WebHosting (20,000.00 PHP)
   • Benj Arriola of Action Online Technology and Business Blog (10,000.00 PHP)
   • Junelle Caravana of Intiendes (5,000.00 PHP)
   • Rhea Ong Yiu of Photography by Rhea Ong Yiu (3,000.00 PHP)
   • Carlo Roxas of Tech News & Reviews (3,000.00 PHP)
   • Giovanni Castro of Free Web Content (2,000.00 PHP)

   Without them, the prizes will not be as attractive as they are today. Thanks to all Ituloy AngSulong contest sponsors who support Ituloy AngSulong. You have been truly a help of the development of SEO in the Philippines and the world over.

What are your reasons to join Ituloy AngSulong? Have you joined already? Or you are just planning to join Ituloy AngSulong? It’s not too late.

Something different this time compared to Isulong SEOph, Ituloy AngSulong offers prizes not only ranking in Google, but in Yahoo and MSN as well. And a special Triple Jackpot Prize is also awarded for having the highest cumulative rank in all three search engines. Not only that, if on Google are are only on the fourth page of Google on the awarding day, no worries. You still get a prize, of 1,000 PHP. This is probably the best SEO contest in South East Asia.

Triple Jackpot Prize

• 60,000.00 PHP for the contest entry with the highest cumulative rank
• 35,000.00 PHP for the contest entry with the second highest cumulative rank
• 15,000.00 PHP for the contest entry with the third highest cumulative rank

Main Contest Prizes

Consolation Prizes

In addition, we have the following prizes to be given away:

• Best in Design Award - the contest organizers will select three finalists. The final winner will be selected via an on-the-spot poll during the awarding ceremonies and will receive 10,000.00 PHP.
• Google Bonus Prize - 1,000.00 PHP each for sites Rank 11th to 40th in Google (sponsored by Boris Kerbikov)

Yesterday I spoke with a Director of Business Intelligence for an Interactive Advertising and Marketing company based in San Diego, California. And we had an interesting conversation on SEM and SEO. And within the long conversation, the topic went to the SEO contest. And without even mentioning he was a Filipino, based on his name and appearance, I knew he was but I didn’t ask and he said:

I came here [to the United State] when I was 2 [years old]. I don’t really speak Tagalog, but what does that [Isulong SEOph and Ituloy AngSulong] mean?

What is Isulong - Root word of Isulong is Sulong which means improve, develop, move onwards, advance, or get better. When a letter I is placed before a word in Tagalog, the Filipino language, this is like adding the word to before it. Thus Isulong means to improve, to develop, to move onwards, to advance, or to get better.

What is SEOph - SEO is what we already know. And PH is the two letter ISO Country Code for the Philippines. The words were just put together to make it a fresh word in the search engines.

What is Ituloy - The root word Ituloy is Tuloy which simply means continue. Thus Ituloy means to continue.

What is AngSulong - Ang is the article the. And Sulong as I have already defined above is improve, develop, move onwards, advance, or get better. Thus AngSulong is the development. This again is actually two words that were place together so that the word becomes unique in the SERPs

So what is Isulong SEOph? It means to improve SEO of the Philippines. And what is Ituloy AngSulong? It is to continue the development.

Isulong SEOph was the first contest of SEO Philippines that lasted from June 1, 2006 to the Isulong SEOph awarding day or September 31, 2006. And Ituloy AngSulong is the 2nd SEO Contest of SEO Philippines.