SEO Tactics Are Working

I was greeted by a pleasant email this morning from Gary Korn who runs Maine.Info (an amazing collection of resources about Maine). He's one of the many webmasters helping me out with the Ted Leonsis SEO Contest. The email simply said:

#8 this morning on my machine! That is on GOOGLE.

Yesterday, my page for the contest was showing up in spot #22 so Google's been quite busy overnight. I didn't think they'd be doing anymore updates before the holidays. There might still be more fluctuations before the contest ends on 12/31. Here's a current snapshot of the top 10 on Google for the [ted leonsis] phrase:

Ted's Take
ted.aol.com/

Ted's Take - AIM
ted.aol.com/index.php?id=167

Ted Leonsis - Washington Capitals
www.washingtoncaps.com/team/leonsis.asp

Ted Leonsis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Leonsis

Ted Leonsis
www.wolf-howl.com/seo/ted-leonsis/

iMedia Connection: Q&A with AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis
www.imediaconnection.com/content/6622.asp

Ted Leonsis Takes a Sharp Turn
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000026.html

Ted Leonsis SEO Contest on Squidoo
www.squidoo.com/ted-leonsis-seo-contest/

johnon.com - John Andrews - » Ted Leonsis is an SEO, too
www.johnon.com/167/ted-leonsis-aol.html

Digerati: The Marketer: Ted Leonsis
www.edge.org/digerati/leonsis/index.html

Of the 10 URLs, 3 are "owned" by search engine marketers: #5, #8, #9. BTW, if by chance Mr. Leonsis happens to read this blog entry, I do apologize for "polluting" the search engine results for your name. This is transient. I'll take down links when the contest is over. I figured if SEOs are going to "pollute" the SERPs (search engine results pages), I'd get a positive URL in the mix. It's also worth noting that nobody "owns" the SERPs. Only Google controls them. It's all UGC (user generated content) after all. Clearly, it's worth investing time and money in SEO and PPC efforts to influence those SERPs, however.

BTW, I concentrate more on PPC work than SEO work. If you're serious about SEO, Graywolf's SEO Blog (yep, that's Michael Gray of wolf-howl.com who "owns" #5 in the above SERP) is mandatory reading. Read his top 100 posts if you're new to his blog or want to learn more about SEO. If you want more background on this SEO contest, read my last entry on the subject, PPC Advertising Comedy.

Technorati tags: ted leonsis, search engine optimization, seo blog, graywolf, michael gray, maine info, google, ppc advertising, squidoo