Dave Pasternack: SEO Target
Dave Pasternack has decided to rile up the SEO followers again, and this time they are determined to return the favor… at least from a SERP point of view. Pasternack conducted an interview with DMNews titled Is SEO Rocket Science, which pretty much opened the metaphorical floor up to thorough blasting of the growng industry.
This time, however, there appears to be some repercussions Pasternack is going to have to face extending beyond mere blog post responses. Threadwatch, by the behest of Aaron Wall, is holding an SEO contest to see who rank the highest for the keyword set of “Dave Pasternack” (oddly enough, his about me page from Did-it.com didn’t even make the first page of Google… and that’s before the Threadwatch competition).
Concerning the competition, the webmaster for the who ranks in the first position at 12pm EST on March 1st wins $1000. Not content to stop there, Threadwatch will also reward $100 to whoever has “the most interesting” PPC ad for the same keyword set. Gentleman (and ladies) start your SEO engines.
Speaking of blog post responses, IncrediBILL has posted a scathing response to Pasternack’s DMNews article. In his post, Bill takes a look at the keyphrases Did-it should be targeting and checks to see where they rank in Google. The results, from an SEO perspective, were quite poor:
It appears Did-it wants to be known for “search engine marketing news and resources” yet isn’t anywhere to be seen in the top 100, then using quotes you only get sites not even related to Did-it. The shorter version “search engine marketing” does show up in the top 100 when you slap quotes around the phrase and it’s down in the 80’s. Now they are in the top 10 for “paid search optimization” which is in their title, but take out the word paid and they vanish.
Apparently, the lesson here is, “don’t make outlandish claims if your own work doesn’t remotely back them up”. We’ll keep you posted on who wins the Threadwatch competition.
[…] Web Pro Blog, a part of Web Pro News, is now covering the Dave Pasternack SEO contest, they’ve got a post that shows up in Google News. […]
I didn’t realise it was a competition - the gang at webworkshop are putting in an effort to rank for Dave Pasternack too.
Has anyone given thought to the chef who has the same name as the guy that wrote the SEO articles?
He is about to drop off the rankings for his own name through no fault of his own, perhaps Aaron could ask for good faith and get the links repointed to the chef’s website for week or so to undo the damage.
Just a thought
>Has anyone given thought to the chef who has the same name as the guy that wrote the SEO articles?
This concern is a legitimate one, and it’s one reason why my latest articles in DM News have given readers an option to vote for me (Dave Pasternack) or the award-winning chef (David Pasternack). FWIW, the New Yorker will be a very difficult site to displace, and we’ve seen no movement suggesting this will happen. Of course, we have several weeks to go in this interesting race. My hope is that the end result of this competition will be more, not less relevancy (for goodness sake, we don’t need any more irrelevancy than we already have!)
Regards,
Dave Pasternack
Did-it Search Marketing
[…] When Threadwatch’s competition first kicked off, Pasternack’s about me wasn’t even on the front page of these same Google results. With that in mind, the question becomes, how did Pasternack effect such a change in Google’s results? […]
But it does provide for SEO professionals to test themselves. You wouldn’t believe how many quacks are hired for SEO purposes without any experience and proof of what they can do. Dave Pasternack contest at least allows for that. Until the search engines provide for some ways to measure SEO capabilities of SEO professionals, contest will be the only way to measure yourself against others
[…] David Pasternack – Dave set the precedent for Calacanis by diplomatically asking whether SEO is Rocket Science As a president of a PPC agency he developed a bit of a reputation for bashing the natural search marketers and Threadwatch decided to give $1000 to who ever could rank for his name. Eventually they felt guilty and gave all their link love to a chef sharing the PPC-praiser’s name. […]