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The Winner of the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World Contest Is
By Eric Bramlett | April 30, 2008
Drumroll please……
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- I have screenshots of the search results from each DC. If you would like to see them, please email me, or leave a comment.
Topics: Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate News, Web Design/SEO |
May 1st, 2008 at 12:15 am
An amusing little contest and I’m impressed that such big players like ARDELL and Greg Swann decided to play. A nice gesture by the winners to donate the prize.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:44 am
On behalf of Team Eric, congratulations to ALL of the competitors. This was a fun experience and we learned a lot. More importantly with our team, we developed friendships that will hopefully last a lifetime.
That is more important than winning the contest!
May 1st, 2008 at 8:26 am
It’s interesting that even with a team we were never sure if our #1 position would last. In fact, there were fluctuations along the way. This in itself taught me the true importance of an authority site where one post with lots of comments was our biggest competition.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:47 am
It was an interesting experience. Met some very nice people and learned some new things.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Congrats to team Eric! Nice work guys, a force to be reckoned with for sure.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Congratulate Eric! It was an interesting experience.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
This was a cool contest to watch from start to finish, I ended up finding a bunch of great blogs including this one.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
nice job. If you would like to fix the warning errors on your site, please let me know.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:18 am
People keep asking me why I think we won, so I termed a new phrase … Link Spreading.
http://searchfeature.com/blog/link-spreading/
May 15th, 2008 at 6:31 am
I think used house salespeople should be out selling houses instead of doing SEO.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:36 am
@LucidCrew - Thanks for the offer! I’m going to hack around with it until I figure it out - it’s the only way I learn.
@Lou - Thanks for the well thought out response. Should we avoid online marketing altogether, and just “go out selling houses?” Makes a lot of sense!
May 15th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Congratulations, I know you guys worked hard at it. I was rooting for the hometown boy, Ryan, however, I have to respect the team that won. Great job.
Kevin
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
@ Lou, thank you for your great advice. I’m all over it.
The contest was actually pretty fun, congratulations to Team Eric.