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How I Conquered Yahoo!.. And Google na nga rin… :)

seo yahoo googleThe recently concluded SEO contest by Marhgil taught a lot of bloggers a thing or two about keyword optimization and SEO in general.

More than a handful of bloggers joined the contest. I’m not sure how many but I know there’s a lot to keep all of us on the edge of our sit right up to the end of the contest.

Some bloggers gave us their technique, lesson learned and their game plan on how they approached the contest. Let me share what I did that put several of my entries on page 1 of Googel and page 1 number 2 in Yahoo!

Here they are:

On Page Optimization

The very first thing I checked when I did join the SEO contest was my blog itself. Before competing with the rest of the blogs out there, I have to first optimize my blog – On page optimization

Here are the things I considered changing and did changed during the contest run:

  • Title Page – My blog was titled “Everything Eli” (of course) before I joined the contest. To make my blog more visible on the search engines, I changed that to “Marhgil Macuha”. I should have changed it to “Marhgil, Macuha, Marhgil Macuha …. ” for the over kill. :) Search engines gives a lot of points on Page Title.
  • H1 tag – Thanks to the SEO contest, I found out that my theme was not using an H1 tag on the title post, bad Bob! :)I had to change that. I changed h2 to h1 on my CSS file. Remember, after the Page title, H1 tag is the most important thing for search engine optimization. Google and Yahoo! always look for those. Put the keyword to optimize on the H1 tag.
  • Keyword Positioning – Most blog layout do this. On the H1 tag, the title post should always be on the top left of your page. Search engines reads your blog from top to bottom going from left to right (not considering the columns.. ;).
  • Bold, Italized, Underline – Once the post was written, I applied ‘bold’ font on the keywords. Though not a lot, these are still being considered a factor by search engines in ranking pages.
  • Image ‘ALT ‘ tag – An ‘alt’ tag on an image will also help search engines to index your blog post. I placed Marhgil’s car (changed it to Wii), but both image has and “alt” tag that contains the keyword being optimized.

Off Page Optimization

There are two types of search engine optimization. The first one is what we discussed above, on page optimization. The second one is, of course, off page optimization.

If you’ve done all the stuff mentioned above, doing the off page optimization will make a big difference in search engines’ SERP.

For off page optimization, these are the links coming from other sites that points to your blog post.

For Offpage Optimization, I did what the rest of the bloggers did.

  • The Blogroll Technique – If you have a number of blogs with good PageRank, it will really come in handy. Lucky for me, I have several blogs so I put my entry on their blogrolls.
  • Blogpost – Aside from onpage optimization (by making follow-up blog posts on my main post entry), I also made several post about the contest and my entry on my other blogs. Also did some comments on other blogs who joined the contest (of course using the keywords and my post entry URL)
  • Friendster and Multiply – I’m really not sure if Google follows links from Friendster (no, I’m sure they don’t) but heck, I have several friends there and traffic is traffic, right? But in Multiply, I can see several links coming from some multiply sites. What I did was comment on most of my contacts with the keywords being optimized. They probably thought my name is Marhgil Macuha… It’s a signature on each and every comments, hehehe

Tricks Learned on SEO

That’s basically it boys and girls. That’s what I did. If that worked for me, I’m sure it will work for you too.. If not, it’s just probably because Yahoo Loves Me. :)

Here are the things that I didn’t know that could have help me a lot during the contest..

  • Feeds! – I should have included a link or two on my feeds!
  • Forum signatures – though I’m not much of a forum/message board guy, I do have membership of several sites like Philmusic, Airfagev, and some linux forums… Probably will use that next time.

My Prize!

Not only did I get the $50 award money, the real prize I got from this SEO contest is having new friends and new blog reads!

Those who joined the SEO contest will sure have one new reader on their blog… ME! (well at least those in the first few pages of Google and Yahoo)… I hope someone makes a list of all participants.. :)

Happy blogging guys!

8 Responses to “How I Conquered Yahoo!.. And Google na nga rin… :)”

  1. congrats! thanks for sharing ur super technic :D

  2. Allen says:

    Thanks for sharing. I’ll include this in the compilation. :)

  3. joy says:

    congrats papa eli :)

  4. Elizar says:

    salamat joy! :)

  5. jay says:

    cool! very informative. :D

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  7. paulette says:

    I’ll take it fromyou. As i was reading your article it made me realize and say why not do such techniques. They really are effective. There’s no harm in trying anyway.

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