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**Dustin07** · 09-03-2006, 09:21 PM

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hey just so you know Tim me and Dustin are the owners of linkfor.us (the domain is registered at sixty6domains.com and hosting is by me

-> Sixty6 Hosting - cPanel and Plesk Web Hosting)

I don't think Dustin is online, but I'll put up my E-Mail address in the footer for a day!

LOL, I was building links all the way up until this last week and then somehow completely forgot about the contest... been camping for the past few days.

Congrats to the winner though, it's been an interesting ride. And it passed MUCH quicker then I expected it to!

**emory7** · 09-05-2006, 01:58 AM

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Originally Posted by vangogh

Congratulations to everyone, both the winners and the participants. Any chance we can get some of you to share some of what you learned about what worked and what didn't. I'm sure we can all learn quite a bit from your efforts.

Thanks again.

Here are some things I did and didn't do.

Built a static site for the most part
Links from directories - not many and most early in the contest
Tried to come up with content that someone would want to link to (not sure if that worked so well).
Wrote some SEO articles and submitted to article sites.
Some links from blogs, bookmark sites and maybe one friend or two's site.
Made an RSS feed and submitted it to some feed sites.

Did not use a blog script for the site - wished I had, though.
Did not use the coop network - my greatest fear was getting knocked off by coop.
No reciprocal links.

Some people may believe that because the domain I chose used syllables from the contest keywords (retsamb and char), it may have given the site an advantage. It's possible, but I don't think that "stemming" helps rankings. Google talks about it here, but it seems to be more about findability than rankings. If anyone knows anything about this, please post.

**Dustin07** · 09-05-2006, 02:32 PM

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Some people may believe that because the domain I chose used syllables from the contest keywords (retsamb and char), it may have given the site an advantage. It's possible, but I don't think that "stemming" helps rankings.

I agree with you. I'd say 90% of our efforts were based upon linkage. I posted some articles and did a lot of 3-site exchanges. The articles were somewhat random. Probably got into an article mood once a month since the beginning of the contest to kind of jump start a few more links here and there.

I think blogging helps a lot. You cover far more content and as you pointed out, hopefully you post something of interest that gains some natural linkage.

**vangogh** · 09-05-2006, 03:53 PM

Thanks for the info emory. i don't think the domain stemming would make a huge diiference either. Given that the keywords have comparatively low competition I would think on page factors might have more of an impact than they would for many other terms. I think Dustin is right about the links playing the biggest part.

I think it's interesting that you stayed away from reciprocal links since Google has reduced their weight in the alogorithm. Dustin the three way links you used aren't far off from true reciprocals and I think Google can spot those well enough.

**Dustin07** · 09-14-2006, 05:30 PM

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Dustin the three way links you used aren't far off from true reciprocals and I think Google can spot those well enough.

That's probably true on some of them. I know once we slid out of 1st we never really regained that much traction. Not much of the strategy really changed either so that could be why. Just kept doing the same thing for the most part with the random article submissions every once in a while.

I should have bought paid for high-PR directory links but never really thought about it. Those have given me great results outside of the contest.

**vangogh** · 09-14-2006, 08:48 PM

Sometimes it's hard to adapt your strategy I know. You get busy and just keep doing the same old thing. I wonder if the time when you dropped out of first was due to Google discounting some of the three-way links. Something like that would probably make it harder to rise back up.

Cool though that you got to 1st place at some point.

**Dustin07** · 09-15-2006, 09:01 PM

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Cool though that you got to 1st place at some point.

it was temporary, I think it was because we jumped on it so quickly that we beat the crowd so we held it for a while.

Personally, I think age is important to Google. I've noticed aged sites seem to gain rank for me quicker then newer ones, so that may have helped hold some ranking for most of the contest too.

I tried my hand at that carcasher contest, but I tell you... I hit first place a couple of times... one time I had it the night before a checkpoint too. woke up the next morning to find that I was dethroned by midnight

**vangogh** · 09-15-2006, 09:26 PM

I think it's trust more than age that Google likes, but they use age in their measure of trust so older domains will probably do better. Registering a domain for more than a year also garners some trust.

I wonder did anyone in the contest register their domain for more than a year?

The contest here had to be a new domain though I did notice that all the top sites registered shortly after the contest started. Maybe it was the extra couple months of age, but it could also have been an extra couple months of link building.

Where did you end up finishing in the carcasher contest. I remember you getting the site up pretty high in the results for awhile.

**Dustin07** · 09-15-2006, 10:20 PM

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I think it's trust more than age that Google likes, but they use age in their measure of trust so older domains will probably do better.

that's a really good point.

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Where did you end up finishing in the carcasher contest. I remember you getting the site up pretty high in the results for awhile.

still top 10 in Google and Yahoo. Fluctuates between 4th-10th

MSN was the easiest at first and then I fell off the map there, LOL.

**astrojith** · 12-03-2006, 01:59 AM

Well, I was kinda unfortunate since I was late to know about this contest *sad*. When is the next contest anyway ?

**Webmac** · 12-22-2006, 09:53 PM

There was contest and I missed it?
lol!

**roy77** · 01-27-2007, 03:19 AM

i read all apges, and i guess missed it - who was the winner? i am asking because i want to know the best se optimizer here - give him some seo jobs, ill enter the next contest. You guys shuld pik a realy keyword next time, as google had changed something with their google linkbot - go to the google blog and see what i am talking about.