Ambatchdotcom Seocontest! Isn't Christmas Still 3 months away?

3 months and 1 day from today it will be Christmas Eve. My apologies in advance for those of you who are reading who could care less about this commercial Christian holiday but my guess my rant about the Christmas push would mirror the feelings of non Christians as well!

I had to change my clothes this morning. On the first day of fall I ventured out on my deck expecting the same chill in the air that has been present for the past week. I was pleasantly surprised to find it WARM outside.

Grasping for a few more coffee on the deck mornings, I quickly grabbed my mug and the newspaper and positioned myself on the deck for my morning wake up.

A while ago I headed out to pick up a few things at a local big box store. I expected the Halloween products adorning the store. It's only 5 weeks until the children get dressed up and beg treats from the neighbors after all, what I didn't expect was the Christmas cards, Christmas lights, Christmas decorations taking up 4 aisles of the store! THREE MONTHS! there are still 3 months until Christmas people... give it a bloody rest already!

If I was an organizer type I'd be trying to organize a boycott of these stores that start shoving the holiday season down our throats in September. There is nothing good about it... NOTHING.

My kids start santa talk way too soon, it takes up valuable store space, it enhances the whole commercialism of the season, and frankly, I just get way too tired of Christmas before it even arrives when I am forced to look at it every time I go into a store for months in advance of the season.

Don't get me wrong, I love the holiday. I enjoy all the family around, I love decorating and planning, I love buying for family and friends and trying to pick out the perfect gifts, I love the sentement of the holiday, the feeling of warmth and love seems to wash over even the most hardened of people and I would like it if it didn't take a holdiay to bring out the best in people but starting Christmas in September does not make people warm and fuzzy in September.

I have other things to think about. I have the Ambatchdotcom Seocontest to think about, I have work to think about, I have a host of birthdays in the fall season. My daughter, oldest son, husband, neice, nephew and my birthday all take place from September 15th to Novemeber 9th. Then there's ThanksGiving right in the middle of all that (yes, Canadian Thanksgiving is in October), and then Halloween. After that I'll think about Christmas.

This Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Entry Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

Ok, not the WHOLE site but the main Ambatchdotcom Seocontest site page is. The blog isn't, well, because the template isn't and while I have modified the template slightly to suit me, I don't think I'm going to mess with it that much. After all, I have messed up this site several times over the course of the seo contest and at this stage, with only 5 weeks left to go, I'm not ready to rebuild the whole thing yet AGAIN.

Interestingly enough, this is the only time I've successfully validated a page. I have made several attempts but found the number of warnings and errors on WC3 overwhelming and easily became discouraged and gave up. After all, my sites looked fine, why bother?

This time however, Joey's comments on the Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Forum got me thinking about it and I decided that every little bit would help. So, if Google ever adds validation to their algo, I'll be all set. But considering that Google doesn't validate, the chances that it will help in this competition are minimal. I'm guessing though, it can't hurt.

Other Top 10 entries in the Ambatchdotcom Seocontest SEO contest that validate:

Well, there are none.

Edit: Just me and Tiger in the validated ambatchdotcom seocontest camp - top 10 wise anyway. Tiger let me know his page is now up to snuff so as promised, showing his url without the spaces!

netdeveloppeur.com/referencement/ambatchdotcom-seocontest-article105.html says it is but it is not Tiger probably made a change to his Ambatchdotcom Seocontest entry and didn't notice that it produced warnings. He'll either have to figure it out himself or read my blog to find out.

Tiger, if you're reading, fix your errors and I'll take the spaces out of your url

Speculating on 'what if's' is truely a waste of time but as I sit watching my ambatchdotcom seocontest seo contest entry bounce between 3rd and 2nd position I got to thinking. What if. What if I'd had a keyword rich domain name with the words ambatchdotcom seocontest instead of my broken up version ambatch-dotcom-seocontest.com?

I've been pretty steady in the number 3 position and Age Magician has dominated number 1 for most of the contest but what if I'd had a better domain name?

I checked a few variations on the key phrase and interestingly enough, this is what I found

ambatchdotcom - 1st position

ambatch contest - 1st postion

ambatchdotcom seo - 1st position

ambatchdotcom seo contest - 1st and 2nd position (indented)

ambatch seo contest - 2nd position (after ambatch)

ambatch.com seocontest - 2nd position (after ambatch)

seocontest - 7th position (the first ambatchdotcom seocontest entry in the list - the others are carcrasherdotcom seocontest entries)

I don't know if this all means I'd be in first spot if I had the ambatchdotcom seocontest domain name - but what really irks me is that I did buy a better domain name after I started with this one but didn't promote it. I think it's too late to start now!  I am now convinced that a good SEO practice is to ensure your target keywords are in your domain name.

I Am Canadian!

So what's in a country? Well, in Canada there are 3 entrants in the ambatchdotcom seocontest. That I know of.

Michael of the only .ca entry, is currently ranking 4th over all or 3rd. That depends on if I'm in 2nd or 3rd place and that depends on where you look!

However, if you search google.ca Michael is in second spot. Here in Canada we don't play favorites - that's why the only .ca entry still only ranks 2nd in the Canadian version of the great search engine. (I however am ranking #4 there!)

Take a look at the 'results from Canada' option and you'll see that there are only 13,800 results and Michael's entry gets to rank number 1 there. But number 2? jim westergren? I didn't know Jim was Canadian??

I don't think I'm even in the results on the Canadian results, not that I can see anyway and if so, it's way behind sites that just have links to other entries and some other seo contest links so, being that I AM Canadian (those of you who are will get that) and proud of it, this particular ambatchdotcom seocontest entry is just to see for myself if I can get into the Canadian results. It doesn't help with the Ambatchdotcom Seocontest but it will make me feel better.

Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Finishes 3rd in Round Two.

Well Round 2 is completed and I managed to hold on to my number 3 position in the contest.

I was starting to believe that I am destined to stay in the number 3 spot, sort of like I've been crazy glued there, but last night and tonight I've seen this entry in the number 2 position in several data centers. Not enough to say I'm in the number 2 spot but enough to give me hope that if I do go somewhere, it might just be UP! However, If I'm going to be crazy glued anywhere, the top 3 is fine!

There was some discussion on the Ambatchdotcom Seocontest forum about link trades among the contest holders. I had been toying with the idea myself and was happy to see that several ambatchdotcom seocontest participants seemed to also be thinking it might be a good SEO move. I guess we'll see over the next several weeks what, if any effect it has on the rankings.

In the mean time, I'm working on some off site SEO trying to nudge this entry up a spot or 2.

I have made a few changes on site as well and I'm waiting to see how that plays out as well.

Ambatchdotcom Seocontest 2nd Round - I Can't Watch!

There wont be any SEO or Ambatcdotcom Seocontest - ing this weekend for my ambatchdotcom entry. 15.5 hours before the end of the second round and I will be sitting by the campfire toasting marshmellows with my kids instead of hitting refresh on the google search.

However, because I don't think I could stand not knowing until Sunday - I'll have my husband check the results and call me on the cell phone - if it works there!

So, to all the seo contest contestants, good luck in round two. I suspect that there is a shakeup coming to the top 10. Will it happen tonight? No one knows. It's a good weekend for a shake up - the last long weekend of the summer, labor day, back to school on tuesday and last night, the temperature in my neck of the woods dropped to single digits - oh, and google backlinks are updating!

Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Backlink Update!

I've been getting some alerts from google on links to my websites so I started looking for information on a backlink update.

At digitalpoint I found a thread talking about one (at least) data center that is updating so I checked http://64.233.187.104 for backlinks on this site and found that yes, google is updating backlinks.

Here are the results for the top 10.

1. Results 1 - 10 of about 28 linking to http://ambatchdotcom-seocontest.blogspot.com/

2. Results 1 - 10 of about 68 linking to www.ambatchdotcom-seocontest.name/

3. Results 1 - 10 of about 74 linking to ambatch-dotcom-seocontest.com

4. Results 1 - 6 of about 32 linking to www.ambatchdotcom-seocontest.ca/

5. Results 1 - 1 of 1 linking to ambatchdotcom.seocontest.seo.googlepages.com/

6. Results 1 - 10 of about 288 linking to ambatchdotcom-seocontest.workboxers.com/

7. Results 1 - 3 of about 4 linking to www.estebanpanzera.com/ambatchdotcom-seocontest/.

8. Results 1 - 10 of about 266 linking to www.ambatchdotcomseocontest.us/

9. Results 1 - 10 of about 40 linking to www.netdeveloppeur.com/referencement/ambatchdotcom-seocontest-article105.html

10. link:seo-ambatchdotcom-seocontest.blogspot.com/ - did not match any documents

So I'm checking across the datacentres to see if this has spread and I see that the results are in 9 of the centers - at least 1 in each of 6 c blocks. (those results were not the same the second time I looked - more google dancing!)

What will this mean to our contest? If Backlinks are the key to getting a high position then things should change in drastic measures. Of course, I have not checked the quality of the backlinks but based on numbers alone, and not counting the backlinks that those not in the top 10 might have, our new top three would look something like this...

1. ambatchdotcom - seocontest . workboxers . com/

2. www . ambatchdotcomseocontest . us/

3. ambatch-dotcom-seocontest.com

1 day + 23 hours to go in this round... let's see what happens!

Back-up Your Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Site

There really is a purpose to making regular backups of your ambatchdotcom seocontest site!

4 Days from the second round end of the SEO contest and yet another glitch in the blog software.

All I did was create a new entry and make a change to the display properties and ZAP! It was all gone. The software lost all the settings, including the database and was starting a new installation. That was 9 hours ago.

I think I've got all my ambatchdotcom-seocontest content back now thanks to Google Cache and cut and paste but I wont know for a few days if this has had any disaterous effects.

So now I have a static page which links to this ambatchdotcom seocontest blog - and along with that some other on site changes and, unfortunately, a few lost entries I believe. I also have a backup system in place - just in case.

It's probably more than 'just in case' since this has happened twice now. I will be prepared if it happens again.

So now I'll just wait and see what happens. By the way - I did loose all the comments that people had left - Sorry.

New ambatchdotcom seocontest home page

Entry found for ambatchdotcom seocontest.

Entry Word: ambatchdotcom seocontest

Function 1: adjective

1 causing wonder or astonishment <the sheer immensity of the ancient ruin known as Stonehenge is ambatchdotcom seocontest to behold>

Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Entries on the Move

Well it looks like Google is really shaking up the top 10 and the
top 3 appear to have been demoted! This ambatchdotcom seocontest entry is showing around number
5 in many of the data centers. I'll post a full update tomorrow after
the dust settles.

In the mean time I have an announcement.

1st of all, I've created a new offshoot to this site and that's a Web Directory. You can find the "Ambatchdotcom Seocontest Directory" link at the top of the page - visit to submit a free link.

I
have no idea what effect this will have on my SERP but I have to wonder
if it's a coincidence that my search engine ranking dropped right after the directory
was indexed. However, given that the top 2 also dropped, I don't think
we can blame the directory yet.

In any case, at this point I plan
to keep this site after the SEO contest, I suspect that the PR update will
bring good news and this will be a good promotional tool for any other
site I start up.

Thats all for now - I have a big day of soccer with my son tomorrow so I have to get to bed early. No midnight oil tonight!