Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

After hearing about Nathaniel Broughton’s PubCon drinking game, I became obsessed with the concept of drinkbait.  In a prior post on the subject, I took a somewhat obnoxious (I prefer the word funny) approach to presenting the idea (complete with pics of Fonzi, Darth Vader, Vanilla Ice, and Mr. T).  However, in typical Chris Hooley fashion, I’ve taken the idea a step further than it truly needs to go.

I looked at the SEO drinking contest like some SEOs look at a search engines. I analyzed it to find a way to game the system…  

Enter the DrinkBait.com personal drink spamming campaign.

The rules of the contest state I must buy reputable SEOs a drink, and take a picture of myself with said SEO to attain points.  The person with the most points wins the contest and make a few hundred bills (and probably gets a few links from SEO bloggers too).  It did not stipulate that I needed to be in a bar, drinking, or even ask said SEOs if they want a drink.

I developed new “technology” (ok, I actually just bought the domain “drinkbait.com” from moniker and pointed it to my blog) and printed out a sheet of paper with the domain name printed all over it.  I bought about 40 nips (various flavors) and after cutting the paper up to create tabs with the domain name printed on it, I taped a tab to each bottle. 

Now all I need to do is go to the conference today with my big bag chock full of nips. Each time I see an SEO on the “list” I can run up on them with the drink I bought for them, AND I can even do drive by picture taking if said SEO is not fond of my drink spamming campaign.

This is so gonna rock.  As the self proclaimed “Frat Boy of SEO” I have a falsified reputation to uphold.  I will not let more deserving people with more refined social skills, more experience and / or industry relations, or more brains beat ME in a drinking game.  It just aint gonna happen baby.

I am headed off to the conference to give away some free drinks. Wish me luck!

Chris Hooley isn’t exactly a common name.  I think there are maybe three or four of us on this planet.  Narrow that set of results down to all the Chris Hooley’s who are SEOs and you have an even smaller set (consisting of one).  I figured owning this term was a slam dunk.

Wrong.

Believe it nor not, I actually had to build a few links.  I actually had to write some content… I actually had to work a little for it!  Finally that little bit of work I put in has paid off.  I have the trifecta: #1 on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  (Ask is taking a bit longer, though I have that #1 for a different one of my pages)

What’s more interesting is how long each engine took recognize and award the top spot, and what factors weighed into the results.  Check out this neat little timeline.

• February 2006: spent much of the month trying to convince this guy to sell me his domain
• February 18, 2006: bought chris-hooley.com instead, launched blog, and wrote my first post
• May 2, 2006: still no rankings.  Self linked from a very relevant page (which ranked in the 1-3 zone on all engines).  Wrote a page obviously designed to get some hub love.  Interconnected most of my social networking sites, and even threw up a few gross cheapo blog posts (#note: MSN loved this)
• May 12, 2006: All engines now recognize the site.  #1 on Yahoo! and MSN, #3 or 4 on G
• May 12 - August 2006: Did a tiny bit of link whoring, submitted site to a few major blog directories, posted a few tidbits (no spamming mind you) on forums I frequent, etc.  Saw ranks stabilize on G at #2 during this period
• August 2006 to Present: Stopped working on SEO for this site and figured Google loves colllege, just blogged here and there for as I felt the urge.
• October 27, 2006: Finally got that #1 spot on G.

So your asking yourself, what did I get from this timeline?  Here’s another neat list.

• Google loves .edu type sites
• There IS a Google sandbox on domains AND links
• Yahoo! likes big links (”big” in this case meant “very relevant”)
• MSN loves virtually any crappy link you can throw at it

Nothing new there.

I guess the moral of the story is, a website, no matter how relevant, will rarely automatically rank itself.  You still gotta put a little effort into every site, even if it seems like the easiest phrase or vertical.