Many our website guests and visitors have sent us inquiries asking us to explain or define a Seraphim Proudleduck, as the terms appear all over the internet, and has drawn lots of interest. At first I had no idea what it was all about, the term was completely foreign to me. I decided to do some quick research on it through Google, as I thought it might have something to do with Seraphim angels. Upon further investigation, I discovered the keyword combination has nothing to do with angels or the seraphim at all. It was a gibberish word combo used in a search engine optimization contest in 2004. I was a little surprised by the steady trickle of inquiries regarding the subject, so thought I better give a brief explanation here on the website. So for the record, it has nothing to do with theology, seraphim angels, spirituality, or any of the things that our website generally tends to focus on. In retrospect I laugh at what I had first thought it was.
Starting on September 1, 2004, a large group of webmasters started a hard three month long search engine optimization contest, with the ultimate end goal being to rank number one in Google for the keyword search combination "Seraphim Proudleduck". The contest drew wide spread participation, with webmasters using various tactics and strategies to over power any opposition. There were no official prizes given to the winner, other than the bragging rights for being the best at search placement. Strangely, no official winner was really ever recognized, because to this date the contest unofficially is still ongoing. The head of Google's web spam department Matt Cutts, was apparently keeping a close eye on how webmasters were ranking their sites, so that he could identify any possible exploits, and make sure Google's ranking algorithm would block these exploits in the future. Most participants seem to have used white hat techniques.
If you are wondering why such a bizarre search term was used in a search engine ranking contest, then you sort of just answered your own question. To keep the contest going in a manner that wouldn't harm the regular search users, they used a search term that no one else would be looking for, as the term was meaningless before the contest started. The head of Google's spam department was and is aware that the contest took place, and allowed it to go forward unabated. The current ranking leader is boldly declaring that he has held the number spot now for almost two thousand days. On the page itself it a brief run down of the contest itself, which sort of explains how he achieved the ranking, assuming of course there are not any offsite elements that are helping him hold the ranking, like link partners for example. Although I don't generally employ search engine optimization strategies, it was nonetheless informative read about the contest.
I know this subject isn't particularly useful for our regular web users, however I thought this brief explanation would be helpful, as some individuals seemed to think it was some sort of angel type. Hilarity factor aside, we do appreciate the questions about it, however it has absolutely nothing to do with angels, theology, or spirituality, the focus of this website. We do however encourage you to read up on search engine optimization if you are a webmaster, as knowing the basics of it are essential for positioning your website. It's also important to know which techniques are considered acceptable, and which techniques could potentially get you penalized or banned from Google's search engine. You'll notice our website doesn't use any specific SEO strategies, other than the good old fashioned meta title, and well written content. The best SEO rule anyone can really use, is to forget about SEO altogether, and just build a high quality website.
