SEO Contests – the Basics

We have read about SEO contests springing up every now and then, usually with big prizes like laptop computers, thousands of dollars, webhosting businesses, and the like. The basic premise is that the organizers would invent a search term or keyword that’s non-existent in the search engine databases, such as “V7ndotcom elursrebmem,” which actually stands for “v7n.com members rule” (“members rule” is reversed to read as “elursrebmem”).

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.

By SEO Guru in Google Rank, SEO Contests

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