Here’s the list of prizes for the Busby SEO Challenge:
First Prize: $5000
Second Prize: $2000
Third Prize: $500

The prize at stake is high so this will be a competitive one.

RULES

* Start date is 1st June 2008, 12:00midday, Perth, Western Australia at which point the phrase will be posted on the Busby website.
* End date of 31st August 2008, 12:00 midday, Perth, Western Australia.
* Only ethical SEO techniques may be engaged and the judges reserve the right to review the techniques engaged by the winner to ensure they comply.
* No pornography, no discrimination and no illegal behaviour is permitted.
* The competition is only open to domain and sub domain names that do not include the key phrase in any form
* Only registered entrants are eligible to compete and win the prize. Busby will maintain a list of entrants which can be view on the Entrants List page.
* Registration is free, open to anyone of any age, gender, race and domicile and can only be made through Registration Process.
* All entrants pages must have a visible link back to www.busbywebsolutions.com with the following text (including the hyperlink) in Arial 10 font:

* Only one prize per person.
* Employees, franchisees and licensees of Busby (and each of their family members) are eligible to enter but are not eligible to win any prizes.

Goodluck to everyone who’s joining.

1. Honestly, I wasn’t interested or should I say didn’t pay attention much to other topics other than the ones discussed by:

• Benj Arriola – SEO for Megasites.
• Jayvee Fernandez of b5media – Effective Web Copywriting
• Hans Koch of syndeomedia.com – Pitfalls of Pay-Per-Click
• Marc Macalua – Innovative Landing Page Optimization.

2. I was looking forward on hearing Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl.com for his topic “The Art of Linkbaiting” but unfortunately, by the time he was speaking, I was having a short chat outside the hall with Derek Callow (Regional Marketing Manager – South East Asia, Google), Aileen Apolo (Google Philippines) with 4 other Filipino seo wherein some good plans for local search industry were discussed.

3. It happened that I paid Php7750.00 (it should be Php8500.00 but I got a discounted rate) without checking the speakers list and their topics so I was a bit disappointed when I learned the first day that Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com will just be delivering keynote address and not what I’m expecting that he’ll be discussing a certain section of optimization deeper.

4. I preferred walking outside of the hall whenever a speaker talks about his company though I am not really against what their doing as I know that they are marketers and the event is a great opportunity for them to market something, it’s just that it’s time for me to pee or have a smoke while the real topic isn’t discussed yet.

5. I quite disagree with Rhiza Sanchez about this Pink hat seo stuff. I know that there’s black hat where seo’s do some unethical stuffs to achieve something, white hat doing plain clean stuffs and (might be) grey hat doing both. I think doing girly stuffs can be classified either black or white, it just matters on how you apply it. But it’s her stuff so she can say whatever she wants, this is just my personal opinion.

6. Great food.

7. I met some other local seo’s aside from the usual ones that I have seen several times.

By the way, I learned a lot about ghost, magic, getting yourself banned several times at adsense, talking to yourself in your own forum, and a lot more hilarious things during a fun coffee session with Hans Koch, Mike Lopez, Jenny Trinidad, Abel Quitoriano, Benj Arriola and Jason Torres right after the conference.

I’ll be waiting for Jenny’s pics so I can steal some to add in here and make an update later.

Overall, it was still a wonderful 2-day event and I’m looking forward for SEMCON Philippines 2008.

Quick Update: Photos I forcibly asked to be shared to me from fire_lady of SEO Blog Zone and 2 more coming from Aileen Apolo’s picasa album!

Looks like it’s official! After having the buzz as early as February this year with Marc Macalua looking for speakers and sponsors, I am now 99% sure that the SEMCON Philippines 2007 is definitely coming as I have seen the banner announcing the event in the SEOPhilippines forum.

As what the (seems like official) site says, the biggest event this year for local and might even be international search engine marketing individuals will be held in The Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati City Philippines on October 9-10 this year.

And to quote this one from the site:

We’re also equally honored to have one of the leading authorities in search marketing today as our keynote speaker, Aaron Wall of SEO Book.

It is an event seo professionals shouldn’t miss. I hope we’ll have discounts on registration fees, calling Marc

It was just a day ago when me and my wife saw this “Taste Asia” at SM Mall of Asia and planned to have a taste of it one of these days, but looks like it won’t take me long to have those seafoods right in my tummy….

I was reading the blog of Google’s sexiest employee and saw her post about bloggers getting a Taste Asia on July 3, 2007. This will be another good event to be at, as I will have the chance to meet other bloggers in and out of the metro while having free food and drinks.

So Taste Asia….here I come!!!!

Photo stolen from: Anton