One Week SEO Competition

[whirlybird20]

Hi Everyone,

I am co-hosting a competition with SEO Google Tips (http://seogoogletips.com) to see who can stick a fresh post highest in the Google SERPs.

More information (http://joeldrapper.com/2008/09/24/one-week-seo-competition/)

[vansterdam]

Kinda lame prize in my opinion. A contest is a good way to get traffic to your site, but to be effective it should have a worthwhile prize.

[whirlybird20]

What would you consider a good prize? I am open for suggestions.

[vansterdam]

Well it is unlikely that all participants would link to the winner's site. In the end, they might only get the links from the two co-host websites as well as 2 or 3 other links. It looks like neither of the co-host websites have Google PR either.

I don't know a suitable free prize that you could offer though. What do you give to the seo who has everything? They likely wouldn't care about the links, but some might care about bragging rights. Not sure though.

Check what other similar contests offer.

By the way, you make me feel old everytime I see your posts on here. lol

[whirlybird20]

What about 25 or 30 dollars?

[vansterdam]

Some people would probably like some money as an incentive, but any good seo probably makes a lot of money from their own sites. I'm probably the wrong person to be answering though. I don't think I would take part in such a contest even if the prize were a few thousand dollars. It would be time taken away from marketing my own sites.

Is there anyone else on this forum who has taken part in such contests? Perhaps they can give some better feedback.

[Vic_mackey]

There are various problems with this competition, lets go through a few of them.

Once the competition ends, I would bet most people are not going to link back so effectively your prize is zero.

Trying to force people to give backlinks, especially tied to an seo competition, stinks of bought links and I would not want to get involved in something so blatant.

The biggest issue I have, is this is not a 1 week seo competition. Its a competition to see who had the strongest blog already before the competition even started. I know for sure I can write a blog post and post it on one of my stronger sites, and 95% of DP are going to immediately not have a chance in hell of ranking above my post within a week. I don't see any show of seo skills or knowledge by doing it so I would say the competition is not very well thought out.

[seogoogletips]

Thanks for your feedback vansterdam. Yeah your right in everything you say, the prizes will mean nothing to a lot of people, still we feel it will be a fun experimentand interesting to see the statistics and how everyone does etc.

This is no 'blockbuster' but a small indie production made for our own enjoyment, and perhaps a small cult following :p But anyone is welcome to join and look forward seeing how we all do compared to each other.

[whirlybird20]

It is only really meant for beginners to have a bit of fun.

[Vic_mackey]

Yes but for something to be fun, the entrants need to have at least some chance of winning or doing well or it becomes pointless. Beginners have zero chance to win something like this as someone with a pr5, 18 month old blog is going to write one post in 2 minutes, and not need to do any more seo work and it is going to win. No matter how much seo someone does on a new domain, its not going to have a chance at all.

[whirlybird20]

I understand, but maybe those who have massively successful pr 5 blogs can step back and let the beginners play around.

[seogoogletips]

Yeah a point well brought up Vic_mackey. If someone comes in and does 2 minutes work to defeat us and we've slaved for a week, im not gonna be all smiles :p

Maybe we should amend the rules no blogs above.. PR 4?
Deal?

[Vic_mackey]

Best be careful what you offer for a prize then. I think if you offer any more than $50 you are going to have someone with a pr4 blog consisting of solely paid posts, decide to take your competition prize.

You could always make them post it on a newly created blog, to stop someone leveraging old domain strength to win. If you do this I would make it more than a week though to give people time to get indexed etc. It wouldn't need to cost the users money as they can register on wordpress or blogger etc.

Though even with new domains, it wouldn't stop me registering a new domain, then pointing backlinks to it from all my old ones.

I think it can be an interesting idea if done correctly, so just trying to point out a few issues to help you make it as reasonable a competition as you can. To be honest there isn't any "fair" way to run an seo competition so I would just keep the prize below $50 so that anyone who could win it by the methods I've said, will not bother. I'm absolutely not interested in wasting 30 minutes to win $50, but if you put an extra zero on there I'm starting to give it some thought ;)

[whirlybird20]

I think that we should stop coming up with new rules, and just enjoy ourselves. The next competition I enter will be the president of the internet. Which as far as I know has no prize apart from being president of the internet! :P

[whirlybird20]

I would still like to know what people think would be a reasonable prize to offer. Anyone got any ideas?

[fr@nc!z]

Hi Everyone,

I am co-hosting a competition with SEO Google Tips (http://seogoogletips.com) to see who can stick a fresh post highest in the Google SERPs.

More information (http://joeldrapper.com/2008/09/24/one-week-seo-competition/)

Gee... I thought is was a cash prize... :p