Happy Holidays!

I promised myself I wouldn’t touch my WP admin panel during the Christmas holidays but I just had to get the word out that 1) I’m on vacation and 2) I intend to have a SEO and blog-less vacation ;)

So here’s a list of stuff I wrote in 2005 which you might want to read over the long break. Call it my Top 20 posts of 2005:

• In Your Face - I ‘won’ a Yahoo! contest.
• Dead End Jobs - one of the few rant-y posts I wrote this year.
• Practical AdSense Tips 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 - this series of posts was meant to serve the growing interest of Pinoy bloggers in blog monetization via AdSense.
• Pinoy Blog Idol - interview with American Idol and all around entertainment blogger Rickey.
• Low Hanging Keywords Fun - something to brag about…not.
• Expired Domains and SEO - my contribution to the global SEO community.
• Thanks Pinoyblog - got featured in Pinoyblog.com’s Blog of the Week
• The Sassy Lawyer on Blogging - interview with Pinoy power blogger, Connie Veneracion
• S is for Sophie - my own brand new Civic!
• Puerto Galera 1 and 2 - one of my travel related highlights for 2005.
• AdSensing Atenista.net - helping another blue brother out.
• Practical SEO Tips 0 - expanded the Practical Tips series to SEO (at least tried to hehe)
• Pinoy Netrepreneur with a Heart - interview with Abe Olandres, Pinoy power blogger.
• The Quest for Diana Zubiri - one of the more successful group SEO experiments.
• PinoyTopBlogs and 302 Redirects - linkbait for Abe ;)
• A-Listed - courtesy of Jeremy Zawodny. Sweet.
• I’m on Threadwatch - sweeter!
• Ask Marc: Should I Move to a New Domain? - got to know one of the bloggers over at Fine Fools
• Welcome to the Philippine Travel Blog - not so successful SEO experiment; invites are still active,so join now!
• Road Trip: Cabangan, Zambales - the sand, the waves; can’t wait to go back.

Have a merry Christmas! See you when I see you :)

Just so everyone knows Greg Boser’s opinion on Zawodnygate:

15. I think it is sad and pathetic that any search engine has to run around threatening site owners in order to get them to conform to their idea of what sites should or shouldn’t be trusted.

This will be the last post on this subject. Promise :)

One more reason to include Wikipedia in your SEO arsenal from Oilman:

So far in our limited research we’ve found that ‘information’ and ‘info’ searches seem to trigger Wikipedia entries at #1.

Rand talks about SubmitExpress and how its 315,000 backlinks is powering its domination over the tightly contested SEO SERP space.

Just one example of the filthy linking rich getting richer.

WMW’s Brett Tabke has started a blog in one of the most unlikeliest places, http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt, using one of the most advanced blog CMS around. And yes, the blog’s actually searchable from Google, sorta.

You may now kiss the bride.

Under the strategic alliance, Google and AOL will continue providing search technology to AOL’s network of Internet properties worldwide. The agreement’s broad range of new features for users and advertisers include:

• Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google’s advertising technology - enabling AOL to sell search advertising directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties;
• Expanding display advertising throughout the Google network;
• Making AOL content more accessible to Google Web crawlers;
• Collaborating in video search and showcasing AOL’s premium video service within Google Video;
• Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met; and
• Providing AOL marketing credits for its Internet properties.

What a joyous day for Google and AOL shareholders.

Again, sorta. But pretty convincing proof courtesy of DaveN. All we need now is a Top 10 TrustRank Factors list.

Sorta.

How does Google decide what result goes at the top of the list?” Here, from quality engineer Matt Cutts, is a quick primer on how we crawl and index the web and then rank search results. Matt also suggests exercises school librarians can do to help students.

A prospect approaches you and asks that you do SEO for his site. Simple, straightforward request, very black and white: get him up there to increase site traffic within 3 months. It’s when you decide which methods to use that the whole world turns gray (even black for some). Do you focus on being the holistic marketer and concern yourself with qualified leads, conversations and all around whitehat techniques? Or do you go bust the algorithms and reverse engineer to death?

Whose choice is it? Yours or your client’s?

Is there a ‘conspiracy’ in here somewhere? I’m seeing different sponsored link font sizes. Look at this IE screenshot and then compare it with this one from Firefox. So, got any conspiracy theories for me?