Of course, experienced and novice SEOs alike would be doing all sorts of optimizations and tweaks for their sites or blogs to come out as number one, but in reality whoever wins or loses the top prize, it’s actually the contest sponsors that will emerge as one big winner.

That’s because the SEO contest sponsors would almost always require links to their websites or services, in order for contestants to be eligible for prizes (either additional special prizes or the actual prize itself). So in the end, the sponsors get some optimization at a cost lower than if they had hired a professional.

Brilliant, isn’t it?

With hundreds or thousands of contestants linking to one website, and since most contestants’ pages are closely related and hosted/run on different servers and domain names, the search engines would view this as quality linkages. This would be sure to jack up the pagerank of the sponsor pages.

Google Trends results for “elursrebmem”. Notice the lack of results prior to the contest in 2006.

The SEO contest would then be a race to the top of the search engine results page (SERP). After a few months, the website (or blog, even) in top position at Google would be declared the winner.

Contests like these would require much work SEO-wise, including on-site tweaking to optimize the page for indexing, and as well gathering much-needed inbound links. Organizers may impose rules such as domain and site ageing (so contestants would be forced to start with fresh domains with a low starting pagerank) and guidelines against “black hat” SEO. These are meant to level the playing field.

One issue with such SEO contests is that some people claim that optimizers are polluting the search engines with unnecessary and irrelevant keywords. After all, the terms used are usually useless outside of the contest itself, except for possible news items that may cite the actual competition. However, it’s still one way by which SEO gurus can showcase their expertise and novices can hone their skills. Some people also use it as their “calling card” for getting clients to sign up with their SEO businesses. Sponsors also benefit a lot from quality inbound links.

Next: We look deeper into the relevance of SEO contests.

Google is seeking participants to test their new services and products.

Their User Experience Research Program recruits relevant Google users to test new developments across their service range. Interested participants are required to sign up and answer a simple online survey.

Based on your survey responses, Google will approach you when a suitable test case or research project arises. So if you love Google, or just want to get involved in their development process, then this is a great chance.

What’s even better is that you get paid for the research and testing you complete. According to the FAQ, they pay around US$75 per hour for your efforts. That said, signing up doesn’t guarantee you’ll be asked to participate.

The research options come in 4 basic formats:
# Usability Study at a Google Office
# Remote usability study – via your computer
# Field Study – they come to you
# Online survey