Today’s Rockstar Show – SEO Vanity Contest Hints
Todd and I just finished recording today’s SEO Rockstar show. (We had planned on doing a live show, but we are both heading out today to attend MSN’s Searchifcation event).
The show will be broadcast today at 4:00 pm PST. At the end of the show, we spent some time giving out some good hints for some of the tougher plates from my SEO Vanity Contest. So if you are one of the people who decided not to submit answers because you didn’t think you knew enough of them, you might want to give the show a listen.
Looking for a Steady WordPress Designer
We’ve been doing a ton of custom WordPress development lately. Right now, I have 5 or 6 projects sitting on my desk that need custom themes, and several more coming up next month. If you are a CSS/XHTML Guru who can handle cranking out 10-15 custom designs for us on a monthly basis, give me a shout. Please include a link to a portfolio and a per theme rate for that type of volume.
Bodog Moves Again
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the SEO challenges Bodog faced when they woke up one morning and discovered all their domains have been seized. Since that post, Bodog managed to not only reclaim most of their brand specific SERPS, they also have been able to maintain and overall traffic level to the new site that was actually higher than before the domains were seized.
So now the question is, can they accomplish all that again?
Calvin Ayre announced today that Bodog is moving again; this time, to the permanent domain bodoglife.com. While it is certainly a better sounding domain than newbodog.com, it isn’t going to make the process of regaining their SEO glory any easier. Now, all those links that they got over the last couple of weeks are going to have to be redirected to a brand new domain. And that’s going to happen right at the point that those links started generating some traction. Going down that path could ultimately be worse than completely starting from scratch.
It’s going to be interesting watching how Google reacts and how long it takes them to come back. I wonder if they’ve thought of posting odds on the amount of time that will pass before their rankings are restored? That might be something that would generate a few links. 
The SEO Vanity Contest - Win 2 free passes to PubCon!
I’m not sure how it is in other states, but in California vanity license plates are huge. Just spend one afternoon driving through SoCal and you’ll know what I mean. You almost always end up spending the time you are stuck in traffic trying to decipher the clever custom license plate on the car in front of you.
Both Barbara and I have vanity plates on our cars, and both are Internet related. But I’ve never really like Barbara’s. At first glance it’s kinda cute, but it’s also very dorky. So, last Friday, I decided I was going to buy her a new one.
One of the cool features of the California DMV’s website is the fact that you can type in what you want and it will not only tell you whether or not the plate is available, it will also generate an example of what the actual plate will look like. I’m not sure why I was so fascinated with the tool, but I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon trying to come up with an unregistered plate for all of my friends. (And even some other people I can’t stand).
After the master list was created, I realized I had wasted a shitload of time on it, so I thought that the best thing to do would be to turn it into a contest. After all, I just moved my blog from a 10 year old domain to a brand new domain so I need some new links.
The goal of the contest is to identify as many of the potential plate owners as possible. Each correct answer is worth 1 point, and the bonus plate at the end is worth 5.
The lucky winner (which we’ll announce on September 28th) will win two free PubCon passes, plus an all expense paid night out on the strip with yours truly. (we’re going to party Rockstar style)
Click Here to view the plates and submit your answers
Why Sphinn Needs a Dumbass Button
The cool thing about a specialized vertical social site like Sphinn is you tend to get a better concentration of smart people contributing stories to the community. But that’s not always the case. Rose Desrochers posted a link to a story claiming BlogCatalog doesn’t pass PageRank because their links contain OnClick. Her evidence was a SEW post from last year where Matt and Brian made some comments about the Washington Post selling blogroll links.
Andy Beard responded with a great post that explained what was really said (and more importantly, what was not said) by Matt and Brian. He also included a ton of quality researched information that would lead most sensible people to the conclusion that the idea that the mere existence of OnClick automatically prevents PageRank from being passed is probably a bit far-fetched. But Rose isn’t one of those people. Instead of responding to the specifics in Andy’s post, she instead resorted to name calling.
Now normally, I’m not a big fan of Digg’s "bury it" function, but in this case, I think it’s warranted. If we can’t get Danny to give us the ability to make a stupid post go away, then at least give us a big red Dumbass button that will flag the post as one not worth clicking on.
SEO Rockstars Returns!
The most common question I got throughout the summer was “What happened to the Rockstar show?”
The answer is that it went on hiatus for awhile do to scheduling conflicts. No matter how hard we tried, Todd and I couldn’t seem to come up with even a two week chunk of time where we would both be available to do the show.
But I’m please to announce that things have calmed down a bit and it looks we are going to be able to resume the show beginning on September 25th. (We will be returning to our original Tuesday time slot).
Between now and then, I’d love to hear any suggestions regarding potential topics or guests you’d like us to have on.
The Patent Troll Dance Contest
Things have heated up a bit in the Bodog domain dispute case. Since I posted about it last week, Calvin Ayre entered into a North American licensing agreement with the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group.
The agreement turns over control of the Bodog trademark as well as all Bodog domain names to MMGG. That means any future litigation over the ownership of those domains will be between the patent troll Scott Lewis, and the Mohawk nation. It’s also being reported that 1st Technology might not have even properly served Bodog. If that’s true, I’d hate to be Scott Lewis right now.
To celebrate his new partnership, Calvin has launched a new contest on his blog. Just fire up your video camera and record yourself doing your best Deliverance impersonation and you could win $1000.00 plus a new iPod!
Bodog’s Battle of the Brand
Early last week, Bodog Entertainment lost control of over 3000 domain names, including bodog.com due to a default judgment in a patent infringement case. I’m not going to delve into the specifics involving the suit, or the potential ramifications to the web as whole, because that has already been covered in great detail in other places.
Instead, I think there is some great value in taking the time to look at the SEO implications of last week’s domain seizure. In terms of organic search, Bodog has been the 800lb Gorilla for quite some time. Not only did they dominate the SERPS for popular generic gambling phrases, they also enjoyed an extremely high level of search traffic from branded terms. Even to the point that Google returns the word “bodog” as a related search for “poker” and “online poker.”
Now, if you’re new to the SEO game, it’s important to understand that getting to a point where the world’s largest search engine thinks your brand is synonymous for the two most coveted generic phrases within your space is pretty much the equivalent of reaching SEO Nirvana. Obviously, the volume of search traffic being in that type of position produces has a positive impact on the bottom line. But the real question is will the loss of that traffic be as devastating to Bodog as many people are suggesting?
For many other companies in Bodog’s space, I’d say the answer would be an absolute yes. But Bodog has a huge advantage over everyone else, because no one understands how to build and maintain a brand better than they do. Bodog is much more than an online gambling company. They are a digital entertainment company that has successfully established their brand in several different verticals in an extremely short period of time. And they also have an incredible understanding of how to leverage the web.
While they may have lost temporary control of their branded domain names, the plaintiff in the case can’t seize control all the other places on the web where their brand is deeply entrenched. (MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, etc.)
All of that, combined with an extremely proactive PR team who jumped out in front of the story so that it could be leveraged in their favor has put them in a position that will make it fairly easy for them to weather the storm.
In just a little over a week, Bodog has been able to establish over 43,000 links to their new domain.
That has helped put them back in the top 20 for the term “bodog” despite the fact that Google hasn’t even come close to purging all the pages from the original domain, and dozens of opportunistic affiliate spammers are coming out of the woodwork trying to rank for Bodog’s name.
Within the next couple of weeks, I think you’ll see Bodog regain most of their branded SERPS, and then generic phrases will begin coming back as well. It just isn’t possible to suppress a brand with the level of momentum Bodog has for very long.
Retiring the Guerrilla
Monday marked the official end of summer, which means my self-imposed blogging hiatus is now complete. Going over 4 months without regularly reading any blogs or blogging myself was quite enlightening. The biggest thing I learned was how much time I actually wasted drifting around in the blogosphere every day. Not starting the day firing up Google reader left me quite a bit more time to focus on some projects that have been sitting around on the backburner for quite some time.
New York SES Itinerary
I’ll be heading out for New York on Monday morning. I’ve had several people ask me what my plans were regarding evening parties, so I thought I’d just go ahead and post what I’ve got lined up for the week.
(these are the places we’ll be when we’re not hangin’ out at the Old Castle Pub around the corner from the Hilton. )