On the first day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
A Panda in a pear tree.
On the second day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the third day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Three retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the fifth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the sixth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the seventh day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the eighth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Eight stumblers-stumbling,
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the ninth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Nine blogging comments,
Eight stumblers-stumbling,
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the tenth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Ten PPC trials,
Nine blog comments,
Eight stumblers stumbling,
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs scraping,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Eleven local listings,
Ten PPC trials,
Nine blog comments,
Eight stumblers stumbling,
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree.
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my SEOcret sent to me
Twelve +1’s,
Eleven local listings,
Ten PPC trials,
Nine blog comments,
Eight stumblers-stumbling,
Seven diggs-a-digging,
Six calls-to-action,
Five juicy links,
Four APIs,
Three Retweets,
Two Facebook likes,
And a Panda in a pear tree!
12 SEO Days of Christmas Lyrics is written by Darren Moloney, MD of All Things Web, partial to a bit of gliding and looking forward to grabbing a spare seat in Santa’s sledge this year… feel free to follow him @Darren_Moloney.
Bear with me here as I’m going to make not one, but two assumptions.
Most SEO’s are geeks, and most geeks like video games. As a result, most SEO geeks like video games. There is an element of truth in that to be honest, the amoung my Twitter feed has been clogged up with mentions of Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim and Battlefield 3 recently.
But put away the virtual-AK47, as it’s Christmas, and back when games were a lot simpler to play yet harder to master, when bedroom coders ran the industry rather than multi-million pound budgeted teams, tieing in a Christmas theme game was a lot more cost effective. Here’s three of my favourites for you to tide you over until Boxing Day, each celebrating a part of modern Christmas.
The Christmas Tat – Frosty The Snowman (Commodore 64)
No festive game got more use from me than this game first found on the short lived “Your Commodore” magazine’s cover tape. Truth is, it is absolutely abysmal. Controls are tricky, there are plenty of frustrating leaps of faith and the game is unfinished (I have played this game every Christmas since it’s release in 1990, I’ve yet to receive a snowball that you can apparently collect!). This game is tat, but with it’s Christmas Puds, bottles of Sherry, and an awesome Frosty the Snowman remix, it’s Christmas Tat. After all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
The Shameless Festive Tie In – Xmas Lemmings 91/92/93/94 (Commodore Amiga)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya2tVeO2AQ
Lemmings was a huge hit in the early 90′s on the 16-bit computers of the day, with great reason. The game itself was unique, easy to play and tricky to master, requiring lateral thinking to get through later levels. It sold in it’s millions. The first two years after release saw given away on magazine covermounts the Xmas Lemmings series. Realising the popularity, for the next two Christmases in 1993 and 1994 the game was released commercially. With 32 levels at full price for two years (compared to 140+ levels in the original – admittely with some repeats – for the same price), made worse that the entire of Xmas Lemmings 93 was included for free to those who bought Xmas Lemmings 94, the fact it was an amazing game didn’t help that people felt a little festively ripped off.
The Truly Magical Spirit of Christmas – Christmas Nights (Sega Saturn)
One tie in that did work superbly though was Christmas Nights. Nights was Sega Saturn’s critically acclaimed masterpiece that is almost impossible to describe – you’re flying around a world collecting orbs and trying to create high scores with long chains combos. Tough to explain but personally it’s one of my absolute favourite games ever, and well worth hunting out (or Nights: Journey into Dreams on the Wii). Anyway, a one stage demo was released freely in the early part of 1997 to promote the game for the Sega Saturn.
This demo was known as “Nights: Limited Edition” for 9 months of the year, but should the Sega Saturn’s internal clock be shown a November or January date – the game became “Winter Nights”, with snow capped levels. However, between December 1st and 31st, the game became “Christmas Nights”, that changed the demo completely.
Christmas Nights made the game Christmas themed, with a Jingle Bells soundtrack, Christmas trees appearing on a snow-capped land, and baubles becoming the collectables. As well as this, you could unlock “Christmas Presents”, exclusive artwork, sound clips and even allowing you to play around the demo level as Sonic The Hedgehog, it truly was giving in the spirit of Christmas, and was impressive forward thinking marketing by SEGA – the buzz surrounding the demo saw it released making the commercial
These are three of my favourite Christmas Video Games, what about yours? Leave your ideas in the comments below!
Rhys Wynne has a broad face and a little round belly, that shakes when he laughs, like a bowl full of jelly. You can follow him on Twitter at @rhyswynne.
Last year, I told you about 5 incredible Christmas gifts guaranteed to please any SEO. This year Santa’s little helper has told me that over the Christmas holiday you’ve got a bit of free time to yourself (finally!), and maybe you might fancy curling up with a good book by the fire, glass of mulled wine in hand. YES! I thought you would agree with me.
I’m telling you about some books, the best books I’ve read this year (the best books I’ve read for a long time). If that was an Amazon review it would suffice, I wouldn’t need to say anymore but for the sake of this guest post I’ll fill you in on the finer details.
The Domino Effect
The Domino Project is the brainchild of Seth Godin, which is powered by Amazon. It is a new kind of evolutionary publishing, Seth Godin, along with other amazingly talented authors have come together to produce a collection of books that offer some of the best information my brain has ever digested.
This new wave of publishing was produced with the main intention of ‘spreading ideas’, exceptional ones at that! Seth Godin talking on video about the Domino Project.
I’m now part of the Domino Effect, one Domino falls passing the idea on to the next. I’m telling you about all these great books so you’ll read them too, then you’ll pass them on to someone else. We all benefit.
Maybe, you’ll create some new ideas of your own. Maybe, you’ll go on to spread those new ideas to others. There are currently 9 Books in total, each one is a short manifesto crammed full of ideas and great information.
For an SEO Christmas they would make an excellent present for any SEO, entrepreneur, freelancer, artist, musician, writer, designer, consultant or anyone who wants to achieve more in their life.
I Learnt to Fight a Dragon (Resistance)
One of my favourite books in the Domino Project is ‘Do the Work’ by Steven Pressfield.
Here is one of the ideas that I’m spreading to you.
Have you ever felt that there is something holding you back, preventing you from doing what you want to do in life? I have, many times.
Everyone battles with Resistance in their daily lives, that little doubting voice inside your head saying (you can’t do it, I’m scared to do it, I’ll do it tomorrow, I’m not good enough). We have all been there. Everyone feels Resistance in achieving their dreams, goals or taking action on the things they want to do. Resistance can manifest itself in many forms, fear, doubt, procrastination and many more.
What if you could fight those feeling? What if you could learn to ignore that doubting voice and achieve more in your life? What if you learnt what is holding you back?
Do the Work, will teach you why.
The greatest quote I have ever read:
“On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon”
I learnt that every day I get up for work, when I turn my computer on and start the next day of my business I face massive resistance. I have learnt to fight that Dragon and with each day I enter the battlefield I try to accomplish more, I try to get stronger and I try to get better at defeating that Dragon.
I’ve learnt to become a Knight, to trust my instincts and I know how to battle that little doubting voice better, and so can you.
The Books
Buy and read any one of these books over Christmas period and you’ll thank me. Most of the books come in written or Kindle (ebook) format. In fact, the Kindle versions of a couple of these books are under $5, a perfect gift for any SEOcret Santa wish list on Amazon.
We are all Werid – Seth Godin
Poke the Box – Seth Godin
End Malaria
Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness- Dan Zarella
Read This Before Our Next Meeting – Al Pittampalli
Pick Four – Zig Ziglar
Anything you Want – Derek Sivers
Self Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the Work – Steven Pressfield
Happy Christmas everyone or in Serbian Srećan Božić! Enjoy reading these as much as I did.
About this Author:
This guest post was written by Illiya Vjestica. Illiya is Managing Director & Founder of Smartdog digital. He celebrates Christmas on the 25th and again on the 7th Jan (Serbian Orthodox Christmas) twice the festive fun and weight gain
I may be 40*cough* years old but I still revert to my 6 year old self whenever the festive season hits. I really don’t care that it’s freezing cold all the time, or the shops have had decorations up since September or about anything else that seems to spark the usual moaning. I am simply not at home to Mr Cynical when it comes to Christmas and all that the holidays bring. However, even I – Queen of trinket shopping – finds it difficult to know what to buy when it comes to colleagues. I tend to get them something I’d love myself, but not everyone appreciates a sparkly handbag shaped like a cupcake, right? So, this year, for inspiration, I have turned to flavour of the month and source of many a snigger – www.fiverr.com. I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s something for everyone in the following selection:
1. Unsure whether to use commas or pipes in your title tags? Torn between installing Yoast or Platinum SEO as your WP Plugin of choice? Stalling over paying £200 for one link or £100 for 10? (I’M JOKING), then let Vaughn Fry guide you, For just £3.66 of your finest English pounds, Vaughn will take the pressure off you and return what is, I’m sure, the right decision for your inbound marketing campaign. Thanks Vaughn!
2. We’ve all been there – you buy your bearded dragon, you get your bearded dragon home, you feed it Maltesers and watch old episodes of Quantum Leap together and all is well with the world. But wait! Perhaps bearded dragons may prefer a more plant based diet or comedy orientated tv schedule. Where to turn for advice??? Why, VermontDB of course! Verm (I like to think he goes by that name in real life) can provide guidance on everything from raising superworms (!) for your beloved’s culinary delight to teaching it how to use a Wii handset, or whatever the hell it’s sitting on. An excellent return on investment for your hard earned money and no mistake.
3. Colleague always bemoaning his/her lack of a comprehensive knowledge of the Belgian beer market? Put an end to their constant bellyaching by providing this handy guide to all things Northern European and hop based.
4. Tattoos aren’t cheap and I’m not suggesting that you splash out on one for a workmate just because you’ve drawn them in the annual Secret Santa jamboree. However, for the very modest price of just $5.00 you could provide the inspiration for their first or indeed, next, design. Take this, frankly extraordinary, piece of artwork from LoversInJapan – ideal for those who have always craved some kind of green tinged Anime/Gimp/Fetish ink across their lower back or calf. Beautiful.
5. Simply cannot be arsed to trawl through Fiverr to find just the right gift for Ian from accounts or Janice the Freelancer? No worries, give them a Fiverr gift card instead!
And, finally, here’s my own little present* to the SEOcret Santa Community. May Santa/Google/Apple (delete as applicable) bring you all you wish for.
*Possibly NSFW as contains some Sasquatch nudity
What? Not enough? OK, there’s a crisp, new $5 Fiverr gift card for whoever leaves the very best comment Merry Christmas!
About this Author:
This guest post was written by Carla Marshall. Carla is M.D. of Sorbet Digital and is more than a little excited about Christmas 2011 (especially if we get the promised snowstorms….)
Ever wondered what Christmas is like for the average SEO?
Wonder no more – this fantastic comic strip is by the super-talented Stu Munro and has the elves in fits of laughter!
(Don’t forget: sign up for SEOcret Santa closes Friday, 9th December! So sign up now!)
Stu Munro is a cartoonist for The Dandy, Britain’s longest running children’s comic. He also writes and draws the decidedly adult internet comic Ray The Otter. Stu has designed corporate logos and identities, event posters, written for both film and children’s television and is Chesney Hawkes’ official portrait artist. No, really.
So, it’s that most wonderful time of the year once again!
Offices up and down the country are preparing for their secret Santa programs, but more importantly, SEOcret Santa has restarted for 2011!
I’ve been elf’ed up and I’m getting in the spirit (literally it seems looking at my elf picture with a bottle of rum at the ready and a couple of spares to see me through the Christmas period).
I’ve tried to scour the web in search of great gifts for geeks to make it easier for all the folks signing up to be Santa, as it sounds like there are lots of brave Santa’s (me included) who are feeling brave and are asking to be surprised this year.
Very brave indeed!
So I’ve decided to join Santa’s elves with a guest post here looking for weird and wonderful gift ideas for geeks this Christmas. I should note – if you are my Santa, you don’t have to get me any of these if you have any ideas yourself!
It’s that time of year again and after having so much fun last year, the elves (Dan Barker and Joanna Butler) are pleased to announce SEOcret Santa 2011!
What is SEOcret Santa?
SEOcret Santa is a Secret Santa gift exchange between SEOs and friends of SEOs around the world – all welcome!
How do I sign up?
Simply fill out the form below before the sign up deadline of Friday, 9th December 2011.
We’ll send you an email shortly after the deadline with your randomly selected SEOcret Santa recipient’s postal address or Amazon wishlist URL for you to send them a gift. Then sit back wait for your own SEOcret Santa to send you a gift. That’s it!
Remember!
We need a real address or an Amazon wishlist URL or both. If you’re signing up with a real address, this will only be shared with your SEOcret Santa recipient – make sure it’s somewhere you can easily receive a gift during December. If you’re signing up with an Amazon wishlist URL then make sure you have added your address to your wishlist, made the wishlist public and added at least 1 item worth £5/$5!
WIN an extra present from SEOcret Santa!!
And – just in case you were thinking “what’s in it for me, this whole SEOcret Santa thing???” – Christmas will come early for 5 lucky participants.
For our UK SEOcret Santa Participants, one of 3 Norwegian Spruce Christmas Trees delivered by post thanks to the lovely, sustainable Christmas Tree Land.
And, for our international friends, one of 2 sets of magical, beautiful, astounding, stupendous, magnificent, Yoda Christmas Tree Lights courtesy of Joanna & Dan.
Sign up before December 9th, and we’ll draw the lucky winners at random very soon after!
What are you waiting for? Fill the form out below now!
FINALLY, here are the gifts that made their way to their recipients after Christmas (no thanks to the snow!). We want to say a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who took part! We look forward to more fun this Christmas! (Only 331 days to go!)
THE BIG REVEAL
Before we introduce you to the final round of tweets and twitpics of presents, we’d like to do a call for our wonderful SEOcret Santas to reveal themselves in the blog comments or directly to their SEOcret Santas! We’ve had numerous requests from recipients who are desperate to thank their SEOcret Santas personally! So please drop a comment below, or let them know!
@seocretsanta any chance of finding out who the wonderful Santa was that gave me the “I facebooked your mum” tee so I can say thanks?
We’d like to ask a tiny, miniscule, ridiculously off-the-scale small favour.
(This is a lie, it’s a big favour).
You may have known the wonderful Jaamit Durrani – a hugely popular UK SEO. (If you did not know Jaamit, you can find out all about him here: http://www.google.com/search?q=jaamit) Very recently, at just 29 years old, Jaamit very sadly passed away. There is now a campaign to help his wife after his death. The ThinkVisibility Team have set up a simple donation page here: http://www.thinkvisibility.com/jaamit/
What’s the favour?
If you feel comfortable with it, here is the triple-favour we’d like to ask:
If you are able to, please spare what you feel able as a donation to Jaamit’s wife here: http://bit.ly/helpjaamit – if it helps Jaamit’s wife just a little, we would be most grateful.
Please tweet a link to the “Help Jaamit’s Wife” donation page here: http://bit.ly/helpjaamit – or alternatively, clicking this link will compose a tweet for you automatically on twitter.com (you can edit it before it’s posted): http://bit.ly/HelpJaamitsWife
Finally, we have nominated Jaamit for a Shorty Award in #tech but we need votes! You can help simply by posting a tweet. This link will compose a tweet for you automatically in twitter.com (you can edit it before it’s posted): http://bit.ly/votejaamit
P.S. If some drastically unfortunate cosmic event has occurred and you have not received a SEOcretSanta gift, do drop us an email – SEOcretSanta at gmail.com – and we’ll try to fix!
Merry Christmas!
So, it’s that most wonderful time of the year once again!
For our UK SEOcret Santa Participants, one of 3 Norwegian Spruce Christmas Trees delivered by post thanks to the lovely, sustainable 
