Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Overmortal: an Apology

Wars have collateral damage - civilians get hit by stray bullets and are even sometimes targetted on purpose. But imagine a civilian picking up a gun in the middle of the war and shooting a few rounds at the heavily armed soldiers passing by.

That is kind of what happened to Overmortal here: they took a swipe at Pizza SEO in the middle of the Pizza SEO wars and since Pizza SEOs never pull their punches, Overmortal was hit by a bullet or two.

By no means was it Pizza SEO's intention to take the first spot for searches for Overmortal in just over a month. As of right now though, this pathetic blog hosted on Google's free blogger service ranks first and the actual Overmortal site went MIA.


And no folks, it's not because of Google personalised results (Justin Boland style).

We apologise to Overmortal in all sincerity! Sadly, it seems this is not a proof of our skills but reflection of a problem with the Overmortal website - it does not rank anywhere in the top 10 for its own name (since they are not a SEO company, we should not hold them to too high of a standard - they shouldn't be expected to rank first for their name but they still should probably be in the top 10).

At Pizza SEO we have helped clients in this situation - usually a problem within the site causes Google to de-index or penalize it. Effective Web Audit, our introductory services offering a half day of consulting time, should identify the problem and recommend a fix. In addition it will provide actionable recommendations on on-site and off-site ranking factors, basic usability and accessibility.

We would like to offer Overmortal a free Effective Web Audit (an EUR 350 value) to make up for the damage we have caused. Let us know by email, through the form on our website or in blog comments here, if you would like to take us up on the offer.

Pizza SEO welcomes Justin Boland on board

About time for Justin Boland, the other Pizza SEO to acknowledge that he is neither the ONE, nor one of two, but one of at least three Pizza SEOs (who do not pull their punches).

Indeed, the Slovak usurpers have had to hire additional staff (Andrej Salner) to deal with the onslaught from Justin, a Vermont-based power weirdo. Let us hope Justin's prank does not end up bankrupting the small Slovak SEO company - that would put a premature stop to the international exchange.

It is now clear: there is more to come in the Pizza SEO Wars and it will only get more entertaining.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Pizza.info for sale through multiforum auction

The importance of domains in search engine marketing has not received the attention it deserves on this blog (for obvious reasons). As an opening into this vast field we offer this piece of domaining intelligence:

The domain PIZZA.INFO has gone on sale on November 24 through a multi-forum auction (see the thread at DNforum).

This domain could be used for a multitude of purposes:
- a directory of pizza restaurants, parlors, delivery services, etc.
- a portal on pizza
- pizza recipes
- a whole another purpose not directly related to Pizza (Pizza SEO?)

In 2001 the domain reportedly sold for $4,010 (via NP) and in April this year it went for EUR 12,000 on Sedo. There is no telling where the auctions ends up now, though the financial crisis may obviously slow the bidding somewhat.

Pizza.com recently sold for a sum of $2.6 million, which many commentators considered a steal.

Do all Pizza SEOs engage in meme warfare?

This question has come to us from a loyal reader via Twitter Direct Messaging. She wanted to know whether meme warfare is practiced only by a subset of Pizza SEOs or whether anyone who is a Pizza SEO practices some form of meme warfare by default.

Meme warfare is a form of Search Engine Optimization. It is in fact practiced by many SEO practitioners, including Pizza SEOs, although often under different guises. Usually a SEO may offer services in content creation (copywriting) including link bait, which overlap with aspects of memetic warfare. Viral marketing (although a misnomer) is also based on principles of memetics.

Creating content that spreads or helping the spread of content are forms of both SEO and meme warfare. There is one Pizza SEO specialised in this field, feel free to contact us if you would like to engage her services.

You can join her for a beer and a few slices of pizza and see if she can of of help.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

An Overmortal Exchange

Why would Pizza SEO bother to indulge with an exchange with the guys at Overmortal on this admittedly non-blog blog?

Overmortal published a post slamming Pizza SEO, a company in Slovakia for losing in "Pizza SEO Wars" to Justin Boland. Although they admit to know nothing about the company, they point out Pizza SEO's supposed incompetence. "...[C]ompany purporting to be an “expert” in search engine optimization ought to “own” their own company name in the rankings."

But Pizza SEO has a case to make. For one Justin Boland is not your average guy with a new Blogger blog. He runs a number of established web properties. He had a lot of time on his hands, he is smart and works hard.

The Overmortal blog post talks about the company but does not bother to link to its website (rather to drive the lesson home they put in three links to Justin). While they feel free to pass judgment they do not allow blog comments, which would have let Pizza SEO respond.

So there just may be a valuable lesson for them to learn here about how it feels for a company minding its own business to come under attack.

What if this Overmortal blog post actually ends up ranking for the Overmortal company name? Unlikely. What if we invest eight months in this little project? Start a blog or two - perhaps overmortal.blogspot.com, overmortal.tumblr.com and maybe throw in a Squidoo lense for good measure? Then we could conceivably rank.

Is that gonna hurt Overmortal? Unlikely. But then, like Justin has done, we could just change the content of the post around. How about a fake testimonial? Overmortal really messed up on our project. Someone can post a comment saying they got fired after Overmortal failed to deliver on their promises. That would be a bummer.

Meanwhile, we would be doing this purely in the cavalier-like spirit of the Overmortal Wars. Just to show that Overmortal are losers because they do not post enough interesting content on their website. Or maybe this will stimulate them to start spending time on generating more valuable content instead of their actual client work? They will maybe sleeps a little less peacefully, consider registering a profile on Twitter (oh, wait, they just did that themselves on November 4, after reading our post). They better hurry and do Flickr, Facebook, the whole Wes Unruh list, in fact, just in case we really do take this overboard and turn making Overmortal look ridiculous into an unhealthy obsession.

Hmmm, but that takes up some real resources. Ones that, if they are even available, could be used for client work or some real work like creating meaningful content.

Are we going to do this or take Overmortal's advice and focus on creating meaningful content? Watch this space (or start following us on Twitter) to find out...

Monday, November 3, 2008

Glad to see Overmortal reads more than one Pizza SEO blog

Seems like our friends at Overmortal know good advice when they see it: this Pizza SEO counseled Overmortal to fix the email address on their blog and we are now pleased to notice it has been fixed. People, who wish to engage this skilled expert's services now not to write to test@example.com but rather to support@overmortal.com.
 
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