Busby SEO Test

In real life, with other things than websites, seo, sem and other competitive keyboards activities, I often go to my small place of desert in south of Morocco.
It’s another way of life. I have internet connection only when I go to one of the Internet coffee place, in the “mainstreet” of the village.
I concentrate of making photos, and finding information that I will later use on my websites.

So my involvement in the Busby SEO challenge will of course change, at least in the beginning. My other internet challenges are also demanding, and they are for customers who are paying me money to appear on the first page of Google, exactly as we search to do it on this Busby competition.

Read » Taking Busby to the desert

The Busby SEO Challenge finishes in exactly 30 days, and all Busby SEO Challengers in the Sphereteam, know that this is the last straight line to the Busby Challenge podium… Our efforts will now become more intense than until now, and while we are all focusing on our task to defeat the evil (just kidding my friends, this is a “motivating speech”) Indonesian team, and give Google what it wants to eat, and new shadow, or maybe a new glory is arising… Its name ? Kabonfootprint !

Kabonfootprint… Kezako ?

Kabonfootprint is the friendly name of the Seocontest2.0 SEO Challenge (remember we won the first edition?). As Seocontest2008, this contest is organized by UK Webmaster World (SEO & eCommerce Forum UK). This aim is to be placed on first position, on Google.com, on October, 1st, 2008, at 1pm (UK time), on this weird request : “Kabonfootprint” (I still don’t know what a Kabon is, but I’m sure, some people will figure it out, and clarify this point soon). The winner will get $2000, as soon as he (or “they”, since teams are allowed) don’t use cloaking, hiding text or blackhat, and if their challenging domain, directory or subdomain is brand new (no cache nor backlinks) and in English.
I think that some of those rules are quite strange, but, you know, the organizers are British, so it’s worthless to try understanding them

Read » Busby SEO Challenge vs. Kabonfootprint

Looking at the current results in the Busby SEO Challenge results I was wondering what it meant, from a SEO point of view. It seems obvious that the first page is more or less squatted by two teams, and, imho, that a single person has absolutly no chance to get the prize.

Though I could be wrong, of course…

Nevertheless, when we compare that to older competitions, like the “Mangeur de Cigognes” (Stork Eater… who would eat storks ? Their flesh is hard and taste foul fish), most of the winners were individuals.

Doesn’t that represent how much things changed in the SEO world ?

Read » The future of SEO competitions ?

Being first is at the same time boring, and a position where you feel always stressed, specially in a long competition like this Busby SEO one.
Being second is a position where you have a goal to reach, and everyday, you can have a great surprise.

Something finally changed in the Busby ranking on Google, and we are pleased to see a very good SEO Competitor being first.

Read » Finally some changes

Well, this is the Zepo’s Busby SEO Challenge Interview …

Zepo ” Nemo and black Mamba = Z ” is also member of the Big Guild SEO-Frouzienne of SphereTeam.

st : would you like to answer some questions on the occasion of this Busby SEO challenge ? It is a ritual for this big seo magical mystery tour : we produce an interview of each of the Team’s members …

z : Okee for an interview !

Read » Busby SEO Zepo Interview

What a shock this Monday! The 21st of July at exactly9 am we discovered on Ranks dot fr (unofficial leaderboard for Busby Seo Challenge ) that not a single website was listed in Google’s SERP !

Damned ! The Busby Seo Challenge was dismantled by a terrorist attack!

Please, do look at the only evidence we have of it by yourself:

SphereTeam has conducted its investigations to understand what happened and how it was possible and especially why none of our competitor realized it?

Read » Busby Seo Challenge under attack!

We had a great time with Sphere Team while they were interviewing me. They asked me a lot of questions, and I tried to answer as seriously as possible.
That was obvisouly not really the type of comments this great SEO challengers expected, and, as a retorsion measure, they pretended they lost their notes in the trip back from my home to their headquarters, where they prepare all the actions to rank as well as possible on Busby SEO Challenge query.

Or may be it’s beacause they wanted to taste again the more than delicious cakes and refreshments I offered them, included my most secret recipe of pisang ambong and other things cocktail.

Or maybe it’s just my cocktail.

Nevertheless, that was a sad moment for me, because I realized if you ever wanted to hear about me, I would have to write all the text myself.
So I took my best keyboard, the black one, where I can see my cats’ hairs before it’s too late, my biggest courage, a capuccino instead of the pisang ambong cocktail (lessons learned, don’t do the same mistake twice) and here we go !

Picture yourself in a small town in middle Germany. You have woods all around, and the kind of houses you would expect in a Heidi movie. You’re quite lucky, because it’s a sunny day, and my place is the rainiest one in Germany. A sound at the door, my cats freak, after more than five years, they still fear the doorbell, and here we go :

Me : Hello Sphere Busby Team, how are you ?
SBSCT : Hello Marie, how are you ?Read » Interview of Marie-Aude for the Busby SEO Challenge

Benoît XVI joined the young Catholics of five continents, collected in Sydney today for World Youth Days, and he exhorted them to avoid the illusions of the consumer society.

The pope has then to exorter all the webmasters has to help the French team of Busby SEO Challenge.

Read » The pope greets pogung

Let’s stop the endless questionning about this funny adwords campaing. Nothing was false in it, we did it.

We advertised for Busby SEO challenge and for Pogung.

We wanted to test some things.

The urban legend that adwords have an impact on ranking … you know the ” I’ll get more visits, and Google will know it, and it will rank me better, because my site is better”.

Come on guys… Matt Cutts said it several times, Adwords have no impact. Do you really think Google, with all its technical power, is not able to tell these very visitors came from Adwords and exclude them from stats?

Read » Yes we did it.

Let’s continue with the interviews. This week : Yakamo !!

Sphere Team :Hi Yakamo. How do you do ?

Yakamo : How do you do Mr Sphere ?

ST : Can you tell us a few words about you ?

Yakamo : “a Few words about me“… Shit … Once I have written it, I realized it’s not as funny when write as if we speak… nevermind … So I’m Yakamo, Knight of the “Vanne Pourrie” (a typical French term that you can translate in “stupid joke” … I’m a specialist of not-so-funny jokes and other puns of another time (some people even say that they’re not from this world to be so lame ) … Otherwise I am the worst SEO ever and I’m always complaining about my bad results :D.

ST : And so you joined Sphere Team to take part in the SEO Challenge organized by the Australian company Busby. Why did you do that ?

Read » Interview of Yakamo for Busby Seo Challenge

The Busby SEO Challenge is a very interesting contest… As all other SEO Challenges (Busby or not), the success relies on many different things. The most obvious ones are content and links, but those don’t do everything… In order to win, you need to have a little something more than just fresh & dense texts and numerous & juicy backlinks, since most competitors (so called Busby SEO challengers) can have both. The fact is that the Sphere Team has a lot more than content and thousands of incoming links…

Some could say, we have the number, since it is well known we are a team, composed with about 30 people (= busbies). Well, I would say, yes we do. But it is mostly a bad excuse used by some people to explain their “unsuccess”… Many other teams are at game against us (we hail them, by the way, as we hail all those who challenge by themselves). Number doesn’t mean success, and believe me, coordinating thirty Frenchmen is a harder task that winning a SEO Challenge
While it’s obviously easier to get a lot of backlinks (since most of us are passionates or professionals, having our own knowledge and networks, and because we have a lot of friends), it is mostly harder to get the right strategy, and to all go into the same direction. We have the huge advantage of being friends, to know each other pretty well (many dinners together around a drink render things easier), and mostly, not to give a damn about the money. What we all want has nothing to do with dollars - since we won’t use it personally -, and even has nothing to do with glory - since most of us will remain unfamous and far from the “spotlights” after our winning -. We just do it for the fun, and that makes a big difference with several competitors of the Busby SEO Challenge.
But that’s not what I wanted to explain on this article… So let’s come back to my initial question. What is this little bonus that will make us win this SEO challenge ?

Read » Busby SEO Challenge - Psychological warfare

The funky message of Sphere Team at the SEO (Spammers) Community and Busby SEO Challengers. The future is in your hands, link us for humanity

Then as it, the team would make use of the Black Hat? Thin, I did not know… If need be, a few Pink Hat, nothing more according to me. Well, I know nothing of it, it is not my job. I am only playing in Busby SEO Challenge. I really don’t give a damn.

A few contents re-used against insults? Not very intelligent from both sides, ok…

The purpose is all the same : to be first on the request Busby SEO Challenge and on Google, then so much to use what we know.

Make some contents in English (not my strength, but I try, of the other one are more skilled), links, we should manage with our thousand links, and Pink Hat, we manage!

Thanks to Google to trust us again, being stucked in seventh position is boring.

Not too much, not too little…
That’s what the motto of a good web optimizer, and that’s what we have to do in this Busby challenge

What would be too much ? Blog that would speak only of the keyword, not a spark of something else. Parroting is not ranking, parroting is not genuine content. And in that respect, it’s interesting to see who are the competitors ranking the highest.

Content is king, isn’t it ?

What would be content in this challenge ?

We can speak of the different meanings of the term Busby, and that’s what we did. But is that really content ?
But if we don’t speak about it, then we don’t rank, and our pages go deep down in the abbyss of SEO and SERP.

The semantic of ranking, of positionning a web site high on a word is quite specific. And I think it was not so necessary to refuse websites with any of the words Busby SEO challenge in the domain name.

Come on, we know now for long that the advantage linked to the domain name is just the natural anchors, the one people make just with you site name. And would we have such anchors in this Busby competion ? No, everyone knows how to link on the right words.

Therefore, whatever the domain name, we’d be equal, methink.

Open Busby competition

The nice thing with the rules is no black hat. So everything my competitors do, I can have a look at it, find it if I’m clever, and use it to pass them on the magic words Busby SEO challenge

Nevertheless, it is necessary to be clever. SEO is not only “one” thing, it’s a lot of actions together. And copying one of them without understanding the global figure might put a Bubsy challenger deep down the list.

That’s indeed a question.

One of the problems of a webmaster creating an international website in english is to decide which version of english his target visitors speak.
In case of a local site, this is quite easy. Somebody in the Wales will speak plain british english (actually he can also speak welsh), when somebody in Canberra will speak australian english.

Ranking differently on different SEO results is also a question of language

Of course, Google is quite good at finding synonyms and related words, nevertheless, british english and american english is different. Some words will be written differently, like aeroplane in british-english or airplane in american english.

And you can observe that the query on Busby airplane and the query on Busby aeroplane dont’ bring the same results. Read » Which english does Bubsy speak ?

Well, that’s it, we have spent our first month of competition, trying to rank our page as high as possible on the Busby SEO Challenge sentence.

It is a third of the competition, and we might consider that most of the participants are known. Maybe a few webmasters will hear about the Busby thing, but it is doubtful a lot of them will decide to enter.

Clearly, we have a lot of very good competitors, and things are getting tough for us… as well as the others on the first page.

A little review of the challenge first month

Busby competitors are very different

There are more than 300 pages registered. As some people can register several pages, that does not mean we are so many, but that’s already a competitive query, isn’t it ?
Participants have various background and experience level. We are not the only French ones to compete, far from it, and there is at least another big French team.
Some of us have a lot of experience, even professional, in the world of SEO, some of us are quite new to the field, students or just people who enjoy the web and want to have fun.
Isn’t that great ? Read » First month of Busby competition