Drumroll please……

Team Eric!

Eric Blackwell and his merry band of SEO’s/bloggers truly proved the spirit of SEO - it’s all about the relationships.  Jennifer Karlan, Greg Swann, Ken Smith, Wayne Long, Judy Orr, Cal Carter, Mike Damman, Charles & Jacqueline Richey, and Matt Scoggins all need to take a collective bow.  Through the use of teamwork and some very strategic use of assets they individually & collectively own, they were able to control #1 from the second month of the contest to the finish line.

There was a LOT of stiff competition here.  Ardell DellaLoggia ran it tight all the way to the finish line.  Greg Boser was in it, and then disappeared off the map w/ a few weeks to go — everyone was anxiously waiting for the SEO Dark Lord to pop his head back in at 11:59 on April 30th.  The guys at newhomessection.com finished #5, w/ Mike Damman’s site PropertyHogs.com, Ryan Ward, Justin from hismove (ranking well, though he dropped out early,) and then Jay Thompson rounding out the top 10.  Wouldn’t you know it?  My post ended up at the top of page 2 - the story of my life.

I’d like to thank everyone for participating, and especially thank Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters for sponsoring the event.  Team Eric has decided to auction off the prize & donate the money to the Eco Preservation Society of Costa Rica (a favorite of Mike Damman’s.)

A few things about the determination of the winner.

1. We used multiple datacenter sources via the SEO Datacenter Tool.  We then verified this using SEO Tools datacenter check.  Team Eric was number 1 in every DC.
2. Do you see different results, or did you see different results?  Look in the top right of your Google page and see if you are logged in.  Google plays around w/ personalized search, and will serve up different results when you’re signed into Google based on your browsing history.
3. I have screenshots of the search results from each DC.  If you would like to see them, please email me, or leave a comment.

My friend Lydia Taylor at the Elegant August Real Estate blog just put together a really fun blogging contest. If you get a chance, check it out, and participate. I’m trying to decide what to submit. Should be a lot of fun!

I’m throwing my hat into the ring for this one! I came up with the idea, but Morgan Carey from REW has the clout to make it happen. Take a look at the rules for the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest. I’m planning on using a combination of social media campaigns, traditional article campaigns, and some good, old fashioned blogging to make this happen! I will update this blog w/ commentary on techniques other agents/brokers are using to go after this keyword, and I what I think of their techniques. For now:

1) Eric Blackwell - this is viral at its best. He’ll have to continually promote this, but if/when he catches a foothold with it (and he has the microphone to do so) he stands a huge chance of winning. After all, a team of agents working is much better than just one. They have a great chance of winning the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World competition!

Google recently acquired 25k square feet of office space in downtown Austin. They have been advertising for engineering positions, and expect to employ 125-150 people. Personally, I think that Google & Austin are a perfect fit…Austin, as a city, encourages creativity, and Google does the same.

I’ve noticed that more than a few commentators are leaving 3 mediocre comments & leaving. I’m assuming this is to get the link juice. So…I’m bumping up the LLL settings to 4. This will make it even more obvious when people are just trying to game the blog for PR, and it will also add the nofollow to people who’ve done it in the past.

I appreciate all the genuine comments, and to the spammers, “please go away!”

Alright…I’m jacking w/ another new theme now - Mandigo.  It has tons of backend features, but it’s a little more complicated.  It’s definitely going to be jacked for a few days (unless I find more free time.)

I’m messing with a new theme for the blog - Cleaker - and am trying to tweak the new header correctly.  It will probably be a bit jacked for a few days.  Sorry…

Pop the champagne!  We sold our first bottle of lotion today!

I haven’t blogged about this yet, but it’s been in the works for a couple of months. We’re finally launching (as in, it’s live) so I thought that I should introduce it. First, let me state one important fact:

I am still 100% focused on real estate - this is what I specialize in, and this is what I love (not to mention, it’s what I’m good at.)

With that said…I’ve partnered with two good friends from college to launch TanTans.com, an “ultra-premium provider of tanning products at discount prices.” Basically, it breaks down like this: One of my good friends is a phenomenal graphic/web designer, another owns a kickass tanning salon, & I’m OK at web marketing. So…we decided to join forces.

We’ve been working on it for about 2 months & we’re already ranking 10-11 for “tanning lotion,” among other terms, and we have ~30 uniques/day. I’m very interested to see where this goes. It will definitely be a learning experience, but if we’re able to make it mildly (or wildly) successful, it will make for a fantastic template for future projects.

Let me know what you think of TanTans!!!

I haven’t blogged about my tanning lotion project yet, but I will in the very near future. I’m teaming up w/ 2 of my good friends from college to pull it off - and it’s going to be killer.

I’ll get into the details later, but I wanted to write about how easy it is to put together a super custom myspace profile. I searched around for less than five minutes & found this great squidoo lense on how to put together custom Myspace designs. It’s ridiculously easy…I don’t have it 100% down yet, but I was able to put this design together for my tanning project. Let me know what you think!

More on this later…