coolest guy on the planet: who's who in the SEO
wacky races for pole position

There's been a race going on for a couple of years now to decide which
SEO owns first place in the SERPS for Coolest Guy on the Planet
and its probably not news to most people in the SEO industry that Brad
Fallon has been there for quite some time. Anyway, let's have a look at
the run down of who's competing to be The Coolest Guy on the
Planet. I've been pretty general in my analysis here, just a
quick look at Google Web, SEO for Fire fox and a quick glance back end,
so I haven't looked in any detail at link relevancy, who's linking in,
keyword spread, or many of the more nuanced high-hitting techniques I
could have done with world enough and time. As a final caveat, links
showing on SEO 4 Fire fox seem to have been as erratic as hell for the
past week or so; apologies in advance if these figures are wildly out.

So who is the alpha SEO on Google Web ?

& 2: Brad Fallon holds the first 2 places with around 13000 links
going to his homepage which gets the top result. According to Brad's
website he fell off the face of the planet for this phrase for a
little while and then shot back in at numero uno again. Anyway,
seems like Brad has held this position just about forever.

1st coolest guy on the planet

It's Brad Fallon too.

2nd coolest guy on the planet

Jonathon Leger gets in 3rd place behind Brad with only 600 links
pointing at the entire site, goes in there using mainly basic white
hat techniques that are open to anyone, and claims to do it to the
letter of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. There's a lesson in there
for all of us. If you tack into the wind rather than against it, the
going is always easier.

3rd coolest guy on the planet

Using not much more than the title tag, a couple of h1 tags, an
h2 tag, meta desc and 6000 odd inbound links Russell Brunson comes
in at number 4. Nice job (close the chevron on the meta description
tag though). Russ also takes no, 1 spot for coolest guy on
the Plant, which is cool in its own way.

4th coolest guy on the planet

Mike Fulsome comes in at number 5 for coolest guy on the
Planet. This guy is not an SEO, but a mate of Brad Fallon's
who wanted to get in on the action. Well done Mike. With only around
90 inbound links obtained through article submission, the perfect
domain name (a babe at two years old) and keywords sprinkled through
the page nested in good semantic mark-up this is a really
respectable job.

5th coolest guy on the planet

While aiming to be 3rd Coolest Guy On The Planet, Garrett Boon
inadvertently comes in at no 6 for the coolest guy on the
planet, which is fairly cool. Garrett has about 200 inbound
links to that webpage; although I notice a PR0 which just goes to
show how much PR matters. Apparently, Sky strider is a character
from World of War Craft and not some sort of SEO software as I first
assumed.

6th coolest guy on the planet

With a PR5 and 2300 inbound links to this webpage no 7 only
needs to tighten up his onsite optimisation in order to become a
much fiercer competitor for cool; as he admits himself. With some
attention to meta data and some more strategic use of semantic
markup we could have a contender here - I'd suggest taking 'July 28,
2007' out of H2 tags and maybe putting, mummy, the coolest
guy on the planet in there once or twice (just a bit of
editing blog source code needed here).

7th coolest guy on the planet

At No 8 Peter Drew is in here to prove a point. Jonathon went in
with White Hat and Peter decided to don a Black Hat for this project
to see how he would do by comparison. Peter's BH shenanigans look to
have got him 35,000 inbound links to his blog, but its hard to be
sure with Blog Spot.

8th coolest guy on the planet

James Schriamko treated this one as a project and outlines a
cohesive project plan for getting where he got. With around 400
inbounds landing on this page, James too only needs to step on the
gas with the onsite relevancy to get some extra edge. More semantic
markup, and less content nested in div tags and we may see some
movement.

9th coolest guy on the planet

Patrick holds 10th place with around 200 links pointing at him
and a domain that's been around 2 years. There's a few coding probs
in here that need fixing such as h2 tags nested in p tags, unclosed
p tags and non-breaking spaces nested in h3 tags. I'd clean these up
and see what happens. I'm having trouble myself solving a p tag
nesting issue with Bloodspots at the moment - whatever I do a bloody
superfluous p tag creeps back in and nests my entire content.

10th coolest guy on the planet

So what do most of these cool guys share in common - well a few of
these coolest guy contenders have some pretty dodgy photos. Okay so in
my photo I'm hiding behind shades and look like I've just emerged from
the bushes after an illicit liaison with a squirrel, but really.

So who is really the coolest guy on the planet, is this just SEO
testosterone, shameless self-promotion, is this just a case of all us
SEO sperm competing to get into Google's golden egg, or is there a
serious point? Well of course there is. When SEO come head to head like
this and pitt their strengths against each other it really sets the
benchmark for the calibre of companies that will work with them, the
fees they are worth and their prestige within the industry. It doesn't
really matter whether they are competing over the phrase the
coolest guy on the planet or who can fit the most
frozen peas down their shorts. Ok so there is some implicit
kudos loaded into the term coolest guy on the planet.
But its also a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun as well; there's nothing
really cool about being cool these days and SEO have to be able to laugh
at themselves in order to prove to the outside world that we are not an
esoteric bunch of juju vendors who belong to some sort of exclusive
mystical coven of Inter-nerd warlocks. And even more importantly, to
prove that we do not take ourselves too seriously.

I might be tempted to go for silliest sod on the planet'
or daftest bugger on the planet. Maybe I should even go
for the most flatulent guy on the planet. I wasn't
nicknamed the Phantom Farter at school for nothing.

Anyway, enough for today. I've just put out my billionth cigarette of
the day, I smell like a skunk-mayonnaise sandwich and I'm going to dive
in the bath.

So who is the coolest guy on the planet right now?

coolest guy on the planet

Sunday, February 10, 2008