For the very last time, a quick recap: one month ago Oscar Carreras wrote an interesting post on his blog claiming that off page techniques counts a massive 75% in terms of ranking factors. I didn’t agree and I challenged Oscar in this funky SEO contest: he tried to rank as high as possible for the keyword Davide Corradi using only OFF site SEO techniques, while I was trying to rank as high as possible for the keyword Oscar Carreras using only ON site SEO techniques.

After one long month of intensive spamming link building from on side and extreme On Site Optimisation from the other, Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner is…

The final Ranking Report:

The keyword “Oscar Carreras” on www.seobloom.com

• google.com: 1st page, position 5th (no change)
• google.co.uk: 1st page position 6th (was 5th, lost one position)
• google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 3th (despite the site is hosted in Italy) (was 5th, gained two positions. This week only 1 out of 6 images in the images result are showing my pretty face. They were 2 out of 8 last week)
• yahoo UK 1st page position 3rd and th (was 2nd, lost 1 position from last week)
• yahoo.com 1st page position 5th (no change)
• bing.com Not Ranking (was 47th)

The keyword “Davide Corradi” on www.europeanseo.org

• google.com 1st page, position 7th (was 10th, gained 3 positions from last week)
• google.co.uk 1st page, position 7th (was 9th, gained 2 positions from last week)
• google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)
• yahoo UK not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with another page that can’t be considered ’cause it is slightly optimised.
• yahoo.com same as above: is not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with the optimised page
• bing.com not ranking (was 18th)

Ok technically me and my on site techniques won but…Shall we call it a draw?

Contest takeways:

- Google is crawling, indexing evaluating pages at a terrific speed. It took few minutes to get indexed for both the pages and less than 24 hours to start ranking.

On page techniques are giving consistent results but the Search Engines (mainly Google) are “live creatures” keeping changing. Your competitors are changing. The people searching for your products are changing the way they are searching. Don’t stop monitoring and adjusting your site! It’s a false myth that On Site SEO is a one-off activity and once your pages are done there is nothing else you can do. Your pages are the playground where you can freely test, change and eventually improve your site performance. Work on it constantly. It will pay off.

Google.com ranking evolution

- External links are the quickest way to get your site ranking: off page activities are powerful but need to be constantly performed. Your competitors will take advantage and overtake you if you stop. Don’t.

- Google is deciding the location of a website using these 3 criteria (in order of importance):

• Google Webmaster Central Geographic target
• TLD
• Hosting Location

- Google is giving lots of weight to Social Media. But social media result are effimer: they don’t last. Still nowdays you can’t live without them. They are the quickest way to get the immediate visibility you need.

- Yahoo! gives lots of weight to On Site elements: My page it’s stable, ranking at the top of the SERP. Oscar’s link supported page disappeared when a better optimised page show up.

- No Follow links are followed. Big time. The vaste majority of the links that Oscar built (according with Yahoo Site Explorer) are no follow.

- Bing: No Comment.

Conclusion
On Page and Off Page SEO should play together. I reckon that as a ranking factor in Google Links count a good 60-65%. On Site Optimisation 35-40%. Social Media is something completely different. They boost your visibility not your ranking. Yet. These percentage may vary considerably: depending on the industry, the competitiveness of a certain keyword and the quality of a link, OFF Site factors may count up to 75%.

Conclusion #2
hire both me and Oscar!

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It’s been 3 long weeks since we start and this are the result achieved so far:

The keyword “Oscar Carreras” on www.seobloom.com

My article is keeping ranking in a pretty good position. I haven’t managed to enter the top 3 result in Google yet but I can’t complain.  Still ranking very high in Yahoo! with 2 pages in the top 10 results and (hurrà! better later than never!) I made my first appearence in Bing!

• google.com: 1st page, position 5th (was 7th, gained 2 position from last week)
  
• google.co.uk: 1st page position 5th (no change)
• google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 5th (despite the site is hosted in Italy) (no change. This week only 2 out of 8 images in the images result are showing my pretty face. They were 3 last week )
• yahoo UK 1st page position 2nd and 3rd (was 3rd, gained 1 position from last week)
• yahoo.com 1st page position 5th (was 7th gained 2 position from last week)
• bing.com 5th page position 47th (new entry)

The keyword “Davide Corradi” on www.europeanseo.org

Oscar’s page is pretty stable in Google and Yahoo! where, as we saw last week he is not ranking (and probably he won’t anymore) with the targeted page but with the page about what he did to make my name rank. He’s ranking in second page in Bing but with the wrong page (the homepage, where the optimised article is)

• google.com 1st page, position 10 (was 9th, lost 1 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk 1st page, position 9th (was 8th, lost 1 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)
• yahoo UK not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with the slightly optimised page
• yahoo.com not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with the optimised page)

• bing.com 2nd page position 18th (new entry – with the wrong page.)

This week takeways:

Internal links from the homepage or even from fresh new pages are a good way to push your landing pages. When you are on the top of the SERP you can stop optimising your site: the Search Engine are changing, your competitors are changing. Keep monitoring and adjusting your site! 
Same as above: OFF SITE activities need to be constantly performed. Oscar told me he was doing some dodgy work this week to push his page. Let see if it will pay off next week!

Bing: Still quite bad isn’t it? There are a bunch of really irrelevant pages ranking in the top results. A curiosity: Oscar’s website is ranking in 2nd AND 3rd page with the same Url! What a stupid thing to do Bing!

Final update tuesday 9th of March. It would be fun!

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Once again, a quick recap: two weeks ago Oscar Carreras wrote an interesting post on his blog claming that links and off page techniques counts a massive 75% in terms of ranking factors.  I didn’t agree and I challenged Oscar in this bizarre SEO competition: he will try to rank as high as possible for the keyword Davide Corradi using only OFF site SEO techniques, while I’m trying to rank as high as possible for the keyword Oscar Carreras using only ON site SEO techniques.

24 th February 2010 – Third Ranking Report

I have to admit I’ve been quite busy this past week, so busy that I haven’t paid too much attention to this blog. But as you can clearly see from this week ranking report all the tweaking of the first week is finally paying off!

Oscar Carreras on www.seobloom.com

Google is recognising my target page as the most relevant for the keyword Oscar Carreras: the website is not ranking anymore with an archive page  or with the home page.  I guess this may be one of the reason I jumped up to the first page in all the monitored version of Google.  Still ranking very high in Yahoo! where I’m loosing some positions but now I boast 2 pages in the top 10 results.

• google.com: 1st page, position 7 (was 21st, gained 14 position from last week!)
  
• google.co.uk: 1st page position 5 (was 15th, gained 10 position from last week!)
• google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 5th (despite the site is hosted in Italy) (was 7th, gained 2 position from last week. Funny: 3 out of 7 images in the images result are showing my pretty face lol)
• yahoo UK 1st page position 3 (was 2nd, lost one position)
• yahoo.com 1st page position 7 ( was 6th, lost one position)

Davide Corradi on www.europeanseo.org

Oscar is gaining positions in Google: his site is back ranking with his target page in the first page of google and google.co.uk. We have to notice a little problem in Yahoo! where he is not ranking anymore with the target page but with the page about what he did to make my name rank.

• google.com 1st page, position 9 (was 13th, gained 4 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk 1st page, position 8 (was 13th, gained 5 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)
• yahoo UK not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with the slightly optimised page
• yahoo.com 2nd page position 17 (was 14 lost 3 position but is ranking in the first page with the optimised page)

Both the pages are still not indexed in Bing and this considering the quality of the pages ranking, dear Bill Gates, is  quite embarassing.

Half way takeways:

Google is a “live creature”.  On page techniques are taking more time to pay off but if you have a little patience they do. Off page activities need to be constantly performed. I don’t think Oscar have done any link building this week. Let see if the idea of having to pay me a dinner will push him to fight back!

Yahoo! definately gives more weight to On Site elements: Oscar’s target page is disappearing while the better optimised page is coming up.

Bing: helloooooooo! Speechless.

Next update tuesday 3rdth of March. Stay tuned…

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After one week of tweaking this site and one week after Oscar Carreras started his off site activities to his page (in all fairness we need to say that he temporarly paused his link building activities to see how long it takes for the page to go down) here are the results:

Oscar Carreras on www.seobloom.com

my main landing page is well indexed in all the monitored version of Google but despite I made some changes to the content is not been visited by Googlebot since the very first time (9 Feb 2010). The website is ranking with an archive page (in google.com and google.co.uk) or with the correct page (google.co.uk page from UK). The Home Page is not ranking anymore in Google. New Entry: Yahoo! WOW! I am ranking with the correct landing page in 5th position in Yahoo! and in 2nd (second!) position in Yahoo! UK. Impressive!

• google.com: 3rd page, position 21 (was 22nd, gained 1 position from last week woop woop)
  
• google.co.uk: 2nd page position 15 (No variations from last week)
• google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 7th (despite the site is hosted in Italy) (No variations from last week)
• yahoo UK 1st page position 2 (new entry)
• yahoo.com 1st page position 5 (new entry)

Davide Corradi on www.europeanseo.org

Oscar Carreras is losing positions in Google: his site is not ranking anymore with his landing page but with another page in Google.com and is ranking in the second page of google.co.uk (we need to say that he wrote an article about what he did so that my name appears in more than one page and, at least in one of them, in some key areas such as title tag, heading 1 etc). Similar to me he made his first appearance in Yahoo! in quite a good position.

• google.com 2nd page, position 13 (was 9th, lost 4 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk 2nd page, position 13 (was 7th, lost 6 positions from last week)
  
• google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)
• yahoo UK 1st page position 9 (new entry)
• yahoo.com 2nd page position 14 (new entry)

Both the pages are still not indexed in Bing which is something really disappointing.

First week takeways:

On page techniques are giving more consistent results. Off page activities are powerful but need to be constantly performed. Your competitors will take advantage and overtake you if you stop. Don’t.

My website is a .com hosted in Italy but is ranking well in Google.co.uk (page from UK): this make me think that Google is deciding the location of a website using these 3 criteria (in order of importance):

• Google Webmaster Central Geographic target
• TLD
• Hosting Location

Google is giving too much lots of weight to Social Media. One of this spam site retwitting services republished a tweet about this competion and now is ranking for my targeted keyword higher than my original page!

It seems that Yahoo! gives lots of weight to On Site elements: I frankly found my current ranking exagerated but that’s something to consider and monitor with attention. I wonder if next week we’ll see different results…

Bing: helloooooooo! it’s been one week dudes!

Next update tuesday 24th of February. Can’t wait…

Quick Note: After literally 3 minutes I’ve published this post I jumped up in position 18 in Google.com: Google is bloody quick!!

Quick Note #2: Different Google datacenter in the same geographic area are giving pretty different results (up to 4 or 5 position difference).

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More or less 24 hours after starting working on my landing page and 24 hours after Oscar Carreras started his off site activities to his page (cheating a bit if you want cause he put a internal link from the homepage and this should be considered ON site SEO…Carreras: tarjeta amarilla for you!!!) here are the first results:

Google
my page is already indexed and the website is ranking with the homepage for the term Oscar Carreras in:

• google.com: 3rd page, position 22
• google.co.uk: 2nd page position 15
• google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 7th (despite the site is hosted in Italy)

Oscar Carreras made the actual deep page with my name ranking even better (apart from the cheating bit we have seen before check it out how he did it):

• google.com 1st page, position 9
• google.co.uk 1st page, position 7
• google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)

Both the pages are still not indexed in Yahoo! and Bing which is something quite disappointing.

First 24 hours takeways:

Google is crawling and indexing pages at a terrific speed. It took few minutes to get indexed for both the pages and less than 24 hours to get to the first or second page.

Internal links with good anchor text are a great way to push internal deep pages.

External links are the quickest way to get a high ranking. I wonder how long does it take to the Search Engines to analyse the relevancy of these links and maybe devaluate the importance of some of them… Lol! We’ll see in the next weeks what happen.

Next update tuesday 17th of February. Stay tuned…

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