Autobiography of The SEO Flea

Manila, Philippines: After the launching of the Ituloy AngSulong SEO keyword ranking contest, the Philippine SEO will never be the same again. Many Filipino webmasters have resorted to improving their link building techniques and professionalizing the ways and means of getting relevant links for their websites whom they prompted to enlist in the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest. For this purpose, they are hoping to win the contest and build prestige beside their names as a trophy in SEO.

Posting Relevant Informations:

So many great ideas and tactics with respect to the link building process as the contest goes along had promising effects to webmasters all over the search engine world and world wide web, not just here in the Philippine SEO local scene. One good tactic i have learned from the contest participants is link building by using the most relevant information distribution as linkbait. This is achieved through posting the latest search results and data about the contest keyword, "Ituloy AngSulong" from the big three search engines Yahoo, MSN and Google and regularly updating it in a daily basis to the least. Like the search engines, human webmasters are always on the lookout for any relevant and useful informations in the web with respect to their interests and likings, therefore if they find them relevant and important for their use, it becomes a source for them leading to accumulation of links and popularity for the other party. Specifically, let me mention the site itself (http://www.seobunker.com/) for purposes of reference to future readers of this blog. The site's author was able to archive and pool out data of sites ranking up to a 238 range as of today 11- 27 - 06. The basis of the rankings i believe is by computing the accumulated rankings total from the search results in the big three search engines and adding them up to get the total score (rank) which will then serve as the actual rank of the participating site. Presto! in any contest, a source to look at in any time to be available is a good help and there goes the link and the popularity thing in relation to SEO and marketing.

News as Reference:

Another relevant tactic i find so effective at this point of the Ituloy AngSulong SEO keyword ranking contest is using a site that provides news and relevant and latest happenings in the Philippine SEO community and the Ituloy AngSulong keyword ranking contest in particular. Proof that to this day, news posting is still one of the most effective marketing advertisements and strategy that any link builder has to be knowledgeable in to be able to make it big in the link building industry and in SEO in particular. This tactic also posts as a good and in fact one of the best ways of linkbait effectiveness.

Keyword Stuffing Technique:

But the most interesting of all the observations that i have seen through my regular and intermittent visits with the different Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest participants is the odd but effective way of the old times..."same old black hat keyword stuffing technique". This technique is not actually a black hat's way but tracing from the older ways of how the search engines see the different pages in the web, i guess this tactic is still one of the most effective. It was used before as one of the primary ways to get search engine rankings in the search engine results pages of your target keyword. These days, it was believed to be a long lost myth as the search engine bots,crawlers and spiders of the different search engines have been devised to be sensitive to spamming and on ways to control this attitude by the early webmasters therefore deeming this technique as obsolete and would more likely take you and your site/s that uses it to get banned, disregarded and blacklisted by search engines. It seems that there is no proof to this theory about how the search engine bots, crawlers and spiders behave but it could be accounted for the importance of a site's page that these bots..etc. reads these keyword stuffing schemes somehow as a relevant information for the search engines, therefore seeing it as a relevant website instead of a spam source if the keywords are in its proper places or the keyword density is at a considerable rate for the bots and crawlers.

As an actual experience, i have seen keyword stuffing as an effective way to get the rankings that you need but only in short time or period because sooner or later, the search engines and their batch of crawlers will see your site as spam source leading to blacklisting and drawback the indexing of your sites pages.

MSN Loves Blogs:

This is just my own observation with respect to the on going Ituloy AngSulong SEO keyword ranking contest. As i have observed these past few weeks of regularly visiting the ranking sites in the Ituloy Angsulong contest, i believe and would assume that MSN as a prestigious search engine really loves blogs and its organic chracteristics and is fast at indexing as an engine when it comes to blog sites.

On the other hand...

Google is Fond of Well Optimized Websites:

Yes, Google, unlike the other search engines is the more professional engine because i believe that all ranking websites in relation to the Ituloy AngSulong SEO keyword ranking contest is an engine characterized by professionalism and well rounded and SEOptimized pages with a balanced algo with respect to blogsites and their contents. Furthermore, a sites age factor is very necessary not just for the other two engines (Yahoo and MSN) but would mean a significant algorhytm plus factor with Google making it easier for their Googlebot to se the importance and relevance of any website the more.

And on the other hand...

Yahoo Is The Fastest Link Indexing Engine:

Based on my personal experience, it is absolutely true that Yahoo indeed is the fastest among the big three search engines to find relevant links of all sorts because the engine itself in terms of indexing links has the most numbers therefore making it the fastest to crawl up the link building efforts of every webmaster in the SEO industry. I have said this because not just based in the statistics of the contest itself but also on the websites that i handle as a link builder i have seen the great power of Yahoo in terms of indexing link building efforts, be it from forums, press releases, news releases, blog commenting, deep links indexing, directory submissions, feeds submissions and different link building tactics.

I have built an enormous amount of backlinks in this business site that i have been promoting lately which is primarily in to the microscopes business for a long time. The links below are just some of the derivatives of and product of our link-building jobs for the microscopes company.

Established as a microscopes dealing cooperative based in the U.S., Truevisionmicroscopes.com is a combination of a business and an organization at the same time that helps the scientific community by providing cheap prices of different microscopy equipments and gadgets from just the ordinary student microscopes to the most sensitive industrial microscopy equipments like the electron microscopes.

I have been the link-building outsourcing team leader for the cooperative for just about three months now and i can estimate that the job i have done for their busines is at a certain point where we have already built enormous amounts of backlinks just by directory submissions able to achieve high rankings in the SERP's of Google, Yahoo and MSN or the big 3 search engines.

By searching for the keyword microscopes alone in any of the search engines we were before nowhere to be found in their SERP's but to this date, we have been able to achieve better visibility in competing for the microscope keyword alone. Hardwork of the team has contributed to this point of our link building efforts and hopefully, by the end of the year, we are targetting to be on the top page as the #1 result in every surfer's search for the keywod microscopes where we are competing with about 1, 155,125 in MSN, 9,670,000 in Google and 3,870,000 in Yahoo.

McDonald's hires PR agency

to invite Fr. Ben Moraleda and Gary Granada



On the evening of October 17, I got a call from Ms. Bonjin Bolinao. She said McDonald's was sending a letter to Kaalagad, inviting us to a dialogue. She also asked me if it were possible to indicate in my website that McDonald's already sent a letter to Kaalagad (we received the letter the following day). I promised her that I will publish her letter in my website (http://garygranada.com). I believe the only way we may have an honest to goodness dialogue where public concern is concerned is for the public to know the facts. So I'm publishing and circulating this letter, as well as my reply to Bonjin, in fairness to everybody.



If you haven't yet, please read for a backgrounder

My Ordeal with the Arrogant Managers of McDonald's



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16 October 2006



KAALAGAD

Attention:

Fr. Ben Moraleda, Spokesperson

Mr. Gary Granada, Volunteer



Dear Fr. Moraleda and Mr. Granada:



On behalf McDonald’s Philippines, we would like to invite you to a dialogue with senior McDonald’s representatives on Thursday, October 26, at 9:30 AM at Top of the Citi restaurant, 34th floor, Citibank Center, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City.



McDonald’s would like to discuss with your group their efforts in addressing the various issues that you have raised. They would also like to formalize their commitment to your cause of reducing the use of harmful substances in the quick-service industry.



Thank you for your attention. Please confirm if you are available on the said date and time. Should you have further queries, please contact Mr. Stevie Martinez at 889-8332 loc. 131 or 0918-9258163.



Thank you.



Sincerely,



HCN Bonjin Bolinao

Managing Director

DDB Phils.

Ad Verbum PR



--------------------------------



And here is my reply to her letter (thru e-mail):



19 October 2006



Dear Bonjin,



I just read your letter dated 16 October, 2006. Thank you for the invitation. Because we are a consultative community, Kaalagad is currently consulting its members and staff as well as our partners in order to come up with an appropriate collective response.



Offhand, I would like to share with you my personal view. (Kaalagad is drafting its official position.)



I am of the opinion that your letter is insincere, insensitive and mercenary. It is insincere because you write as though October 6 never happened. No mention of the incident, no need for apology, no need to explain why McDonald's acted the way it did.



It is insensitive because you picked a venue which is one elevator ride from McDonald's's bosses' office, while we have to commute all the way to Makati from Quezon City. To add insult to injury, you picked the very same building where we were harassed by your security people and shabbily treated by your managers.



It is mercenary because I see PR written all over the page. It is not even signed by McDonald's but by an ad agency. We are not a 'market' that your college advertising textbooks may have taught you to regard. We are not a 'segment' of the market that you can simply 'sample', 'profile' and 'contain' if need be.



Don't treat us like we are a PR problem. I cannot take this veiled insult sitting down. So, to cut the crap, I will excuse myself from any possible dialogue with you or your client.



I have a very simple, doable and straightforward suggestion to you though. Why don't you and McDonald's use everything within your enormous financial and media clout to discredit what I am saying:



DON'T BUY MCDONALD'S BECAUSE:

1. McDonald's is arrogant - don't make them more arrogant.

2. McDonald's uses styrofoam - don't encourage them further.



I urge you to publicly discredit those two statements. And I shall be very happy, even eager, to be discredited and proven wrong if you really mean what you say. Show proof in all your stores and offices that contrary to what I am saying, McDonald's is a humble giant that puts public welfare above profit. That way, we all win!



I will publicly broadcast those statements. I know it sounds laughable for I can't even afford to pay for one column-centimeter of news item. A little-known folksinger versus a transnational ad agency of a transnational megacorporation is a like playing chess blindfolded with one rook less. On the other hand, I believe there are lots and lots of people who simply seek goodwill and solidarity. And I suspect many of them are fond of spaghetti and brewed coffee.



This will be the last time I'll write to you regarding McDonald's, hell I don't get paid for writing letters like you do.



Lastly, please do not take this letter as a personal affront. Like you said over the phone, we have common friends. I hope we are on the same page then, for instance, in taking the illegitimate Arroyo government to task over the specter of state-sponsored summary executions and brazen political opportunism that has become the norm in this country.



Tell you what, I hang out at Conspiracy (Visayas Ave, Quezon City, across Shell, beside Equitable Bank, landline 4532170). My favorite singers Cooky Chua and Noel Cabangon (who by the way once did a commercial for McDonald's) perform there. Our mutual friend Conrado DeQuiros is a regular. You might want to check the place out. Please let me buy you a beer, no scripts, no agenda, but as real persons in a real way.



Sincerely,



Gary Granada



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And please forward this information if you find it relevant and
appropriate, salamat po~~

Have you ever seen interesting posts about Mc Donald's? here's one from the social and environmental activist Gary Granada who used to sing those wonderful melodies of songs and jingles of big multinational companies like the popular jingle of Baranggay Ginebra (Pagbigyan Nyo na Ako). This post i was able to obtain from other blogs and by virtue of the wanting for the truth to prevail i can say that i feel sorry for those people involved in this controversy from a blog post i read.


"My Personal Ordeal with the Arrogant Managers of McDonald’s"

"5 seconds"

"My name is Gary Granada, I am a Kaalagad volunteer, and I need 5 seconds of your time to help reduce the use of styrofoam in fast food chains."

"What was meant to be a nice and simple Saint Francis Day motorcade-march to McDonald’s yesterday turned out to be a nightmare. We were rudely treated by McDonald’s, to put it mildly. Weeks before, we already sought a dialogue with them to reiterate our concern for their reluctance to reduce their use of styrofoam, despite their pledge to seriously attend to it during our dialogue in 2002! (Jollibee said the same thing, and while we are not satisfied with their response, at least they made some effort to shift to other packaging and serving materials.)"

"We sent them a letter, went to their office, made follow ups, waited for a response. The most we got from them was ‘you wait for our call’. They never called, never wrote back, but verbally said they will assign representatives to receive our motorcade’s representatives."

"When we got there, their representatives turned out to be the Citibank Building’s security detail. Ill-mannered and impolite, they told us that they were told by McDonald’s that they were not expecting us. One of our staff went up to their 17 th floor office to find out whether they were willing to sit down and talk matters. Told to tell us to wait, we waited. The giant that it is, the bosses of McDonald’s apparently regard little children, nuns, mothers, priests and concerned consumers as their employees. We asked how long we were supposed to wait and got no straight answer. Finally they sent word for me to come up, just me, no one else. I thought these people must have seen too many spaghetti movies, perhaps they thought they had a hostage crisis. I was led to a conference room that could easily sit six or seven people and was greeted by two bright boys."

"Think about it. Naglakad kami papuntang McDonald’s, at pagdating namin doon, wala man lang bumaba para kausapin kami ng maayos. At pinatawag ako nitong dalawang batang managers!"

"It occurred to me that there were far more basic issues that plague McDonald’s than styrofoam. Like common courtesy. So I explained to these rich young rulers that the courteous thing to do was to go down, greet the delegation and ask how they may be of help. I even asked them where they were schooled, because in the public school in an obscure town where I came from, they manage to teach such things in Grade One. Their bloated bright brains must have taken up the space that was meant for their ears. It felt like talking to an electric fan."

"Meanwhile I insisted that somebody from Greenpeace, the Ecowaste Coalition, Franciscan Missionaries for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, and the JPICC of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (our partners in the activity) be present as well. They said they can only accommodate three people at most. Fine. So I said I and our staff will go down and we will send three people up. But at the lobby, the three representatives we sent were barred by security people from proceeding, again upon McDonald’s instructions we were told."

"It looked hopeless."

"We decided to wrap up the program when out of nowhere a condescending woman materialized and introduced herself as the media relations officer of McDonald’s. She said, ‘Why don’t you go to Jollibee instead, they’re number One.’ To which Father Ben Moraleda replied, ‘We did, and at least they are doing something."

"On the side, irked by her audacity, Fr. Ben quipped, ‘And please take that hand of yours off my shoulder, I don’t like you."

"And all that commotion for a very simple and very reasonable plan: that McDonald’s reduce the use of styrofoam by 50% within one year. McDonald’s has once again demonstrated its arrogance and incapacity to appreciate the sincere and constructive efforts of common folks to protect our environment. Unlike them, we do not make money doing what little we can to help make things a little better for everybody."

"5 seconds, that’s all I ask of you to help reduce the use of styrofoam. Sa mundo ng mga mayayabang, papansinin lang nila tayo kung tayo ay maninindigan. Take 5 seconds to think twice before choosing where to dine or order food."

"WHEN YOU HAVE A CHOICE, DON’T CHOOSE MCDONALD’S"

"I feel sad for that woman and those two young managers. So young, so successful, so ahead of their game, so privileged; so rude, so arrogant, so lacking in character, so bland. And I have since stopped wondering why their burgers taste the way they do."

———–<>————


It will take a bit longer than 5 seconds, but it will go a long way if you can email this page to friends. Thank you for your time~
–Gary Granada ( http://www.garygranada.com)
7 October, 2006