If you’re interested in staying updated with the DP SEO Contest, you can signup here. That’s not an official contest signup, as the contest hasn’t officially been launched yet, but you can stay abreast of updates and express your interest.

So far, the rules set being discussed is a very limited one: buy a new domain, rank for these (as of yet undetermined) keywords. You can see the discussion so far here. Feel free to express your interest, opinions, or offer a sponsorship/prize.

There’s talk of a possible SEO contest being started over at the DP forums. I know not everybody likes a SEO contest, or would care to join one, but some folks think it’s fun. There’s a few prizes that have been pledged already, so it just might happen. If you think you’d like to sponsor this contest or just have some input to how it would be run, have a look at the DP thread.

Yes, it’s another update, folks. Matt Cutts even warned us about this one. Go ahead and check your page rank and see what you got, if you haven’t already.

What I found interesting about this update is that I noticed a few directories getting PR on inner pages/categories. For example, my real estate directory, which I haven’t really been promoting, dropped from a PR3 to PR2, but it picked up PR on a few inner categories, which it didn’t have before. Here’s one that has PR on some inner pages, although I don’t know if it had them before this update. I’ve also heard some statements on DP that a directory is getting inner page PR here and there.

Here’s the category pages on my directory that received some PR, all PR1:

http://www.brsrealestate.com/agents/

http://www.brsrealestate.com/golf-properties/

http://www.brsrealestate.com/insurance/

http://www.brsrealestate.com/property-management/

http://www.brsrealestate.com/resorts/

http://www.brsrealestate.com/social-networking/

All the rest are still PR0, but that’s not too surprising when it’s only a PR2 domain. Like I said, I haven’t been promoting it (it’s not even finished), but it did get a few links here and there since the last update, all to the home page, though, not to inner pages.

Most know that directories have been hammered by google, getting PR penalties, PR totally smacked down to 0, and having PR removed from inner pages/categories. I wonder if this is a change of heart?

The only thing that I can say about my directory is that it is free to submit, doesn’t sell links, doesn’t buy links, doesn’t require a reciprocal, and actually rejects poor quality/off topic/unfinished sites (even ones that add a ‘reciprocal’ link). In other words, it really is following google’s quality guidelines. Is this a sign that directories that actually strive for quality and good behavior (in Google’s eyes) will be ‘rewarded?’ Ha, we’ll see.

Anyone else noticing PR on inner pages, where there was none before?

Shoemoney says that BOTW and AOL are in talks to buy DMOZ! Holy cow!

Now maybe DMOZ won’t be known for being a dead, corrupt directory. I wonder how much they’ll charge for inclusion? More or less than BOTW?

Your thoughts?

John Cow is having a COWPETITION to see who can launch a new blog and sell it for the most money on SitePoint. The Cow is cowpeting against Garry Conn, who looks like he needs to upgrade/pay his hosting:

Some really good prizes are being given away, like the Affiliate Elite Enterprise Edition, PLR Pro membership and more. To win, you have to subscribe to the blog (which I have), and you can get more tickets for the random drawing by performing other actions, like writing this blog post, or signing up for Twitter and then tweeting/twitting/twittering about it…

The Cow is using the cowpetition to go through a ‘how to’ series of posts to show everyone just how exactly the Cow makes mooney. He’s really milking this for all it’s worth. Oh, the puns. Good luck to all!

Damn, I wasn’t going to get into this Twitter business…

Wordpress.com announced yesterday that they have upgraded everybody’s WordPress.com free upload storage capacity to 3,000 MB, or 3 gigabytes - for free! The previous limit was just 50 MB.

Of course, those of us that host our own blogs get what we pay for, but for those on WordPress.com, that’s a pretty good deal.

It wasn’t that long ago that I mentioned the release of the beta version of PHPLD 3.3, but the final version is already out! Good news!

Check out the release.

Well, I saw that I had an ever-so-small pickup in traffic on my real estate directory, with some hits on the submit page. So I decided to login to the admin panel to see if anyone submitted sites or not, even though I haven’t ‘officially’ launched the site, nor am I nearly close to being done with design, features, etc.

To my surprise, I actually had two submissions, one for an actual realtor, and another for Property Hogs, a real estate portal. I’m sure that sumission came from the DP forums, as I mentioned my site in a thread there. Not a big deal, but I was pleased to see that someone submitted.

Unfortunately, I had to also delete two links, one for a skin care site, and another for gift baskets, both MFA (Made For Adsense) sites.

Sigh.

John Chow emailed me today (he emails me every day) and let me know that the Pepperjam Network launched today. John’s got a great review of their offering, so I’ll let you head over there to see what’s what, but here’s a few tidbits:

• They’re attempting to fill in the gaps left by existing affiliate networks - poor communication and transparency - with tools such as live chat and an info-packed interface.
• They’ve launched with over 100 merchants such as Blockbuster and SEOmoz Premium.
• Inc. Magazine recognized them as one of the fastest growing privately held businesses two years in a row.
• They have their own affiliate program that pays out $7 per approved signup.

They look really promising. I’ve signed up, so I’ll hopefully be able to check them out (need to be approved). If you want to skip the John Chow review, you could go straight to Pepperjam’s Blog or just sign up.

It looks like yet another Page Rank update has ocurred in the past couple days - did you get the PR you wanted?

If not, you could always buy links. Why? Because they work!

Of course, you should know by now that Page Rank doesn’t matter.