My head is throbbing, my eyes are bloodshot, my back hurts and the pain on my butt is unmistakable. No, I'm not sick. My body is just reaping the rewards of my current search engine optimization (SEO) madness. Yup, I've been bitten by the bug as well and I've spent most of my time in front of the PC these past three days, updating, linking, optimizing my 2008 Olympics medal count page.

Having zero knowledge and negative interest in SEO several months ago, I discovered its joys (and financial rewards) quite accidentally through my Manny Pacquiao vs David Diaz post. I was pleasantly surprised by the spike in traffic, the increase in subscribers and the surge in Adsense earnings it brought. Wow, I told myself, this is much better than desperately waiting for paid posting opps daily! This is quite easy. Or so I thought. Since then I was hooked. I tried my new-found skills again with my Miss Universe 2008 posts and was fairly successful. But my hands were itching for
something better, something bigger, and I found it in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At first, I didn't know where to start. Then I stumbled on a blog with an Olympics medal count page, in July! That's when I realized that bloggers were eagerly jostling for positions that early, like race horses on the starting gate, waiting for the gun to sound off. I followed suit and started applying my little knowledge of optimization. To my surprise, my Olympic medal count page received tremendous traffic when the Games opened three days ago, and maintained a steady surge until today. Sure, I wasn't number 1, but landing on the first page of Google's search was good enough SEO ranking for a newbie like me. The additional traffic was great and so was the Adsense and SEO earnings. I was grinning from ear to ear,

But then I noticed a downtrend in visits starting this afternoon. With the Olympics not even halfway, this was a bad sign for my blog. A quick check at Google's SERPs revealed the culprit. The SEO experts (SEO specialists, or whatever they're called) had started to come in, armed with in-depth SEO marketing and optimization knowledge on how to quickly reach the top spot of Google's search and trounce pretenders like myself. Their 2008 Olympics medal tally posts seemingly swept my modest blog to the wayside. I knew it was too good to last.

Still, I will continue to link and optimize my Beijing Olympics blog post to maintain a respectable SEO ranking for the rest of the Summer Games, and hopefully earn some more from Adsense. But starting tomorrow I have a new goal, to learn more about SEO optimization and be prepared for the next battle!

postscript: For all you other SEO newbies out there, I hope you won't be discouraged by this tale. Every defeat is a learning experience and this is no exception. And, as with every battle, ammunition is the key. Let's start learning more about search engine optimization and start earning more with our blogs.

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