DP SEO Contest?

[pixeladd]

Ive seen plenty of these seo contests and they always seem really badly organised.
Would anyone be interested in doing one here at DP

the basic format is someone would pick a keyphrase like this example of a past contest http://www.google.com/search?q=the+c...et&pws=0&gl=US and we would all basically try and rank the highest

EDIT
rules-NONE, just a new fresh domain

time frame say 2/3 months and then we see who has ranked the highest in Google
I would be happy to put up a prize and im sure i could get some others to sponsor the contest, even an entry fee of say $1 and the winner takes the pot

if anyone is interested pm me or get in contact with me on my blog.

Sign up page is here http://www.vipey.com/seo-competition/
that will only subscribe to the seo competition but not my blog

[Vic_mackey]

Are you going to make it need to be a freshly bought domain? Or would a page on a current site be allowed? If you make it a current site allowed, you are very quickly going to make the competition completely un-winnable by 90% of the entrants.

For your example search term, it would be easy for me to write a blog post "the coolest guy on the planet" and throw it up on pr5 fcfootballblog.com, writing an article about say David Beckham and show loads of pictures of his nice houses/cars to keep it relevant to my site niche. That immediately rules out most people being able to compete. With that site I will rank first page with an exact match page title for sure within a few hours of making the post. (in fact as a test, if anyone wants to write the post for me we'll try it )

I'm not saying its a bad idea, but if you want people to enter then it needs to give everyone a fair chance or they will not bother. Too many seo competitions aren't that, but rather a "who's already got the strongest, high PR trusted blog" competitions.

Also saying "no black hat" is going to lead to arguments. If I buy links in DP is that blackhat? Is forum commenting/blog commenting spam? For me I delete comments like that on my own blog so I would say that it is, but some peoples sole seo efforts consist of trying to sneak their comments past my filters and they would say its not. How about links added in other sites I own, but have hosted with seperate whois/ip, is that black hat?

[AfiBiz]

Sounds great. Would be alot of fun

[pixeladd]

yeh i think it would have to be a brand new domain really to make it fair, although if you really know what your doing a PR5 blog could easily be outranked.

in regards to the blackhat thing maybe your right and that could cause problems, i know some people wudnt be willing to buy a new domain for this but if we could get together some good prizes it would add a bit of real competition and im sure quite a few would enter

Great for those offering seo services here as would really show who can seo and who cant

[gr8liverpoolfan]

Everybody should start on a fresh domain, and preferably, no one should be on a free host.

The paid links part won't work. If I give a link from one of my fairly good sites to this fresh one, it is as good as paid, isn't it ? And it is extremely difficult to keep track of such things.

[SEOibiza]

Vic shush!!

lets just agree and take the pot

(dont tell sweetfunny though he could be the fly in the ointment)

[pixeladd]

yeh i think we need to make it basically no rules! just it needs to be a new domain and someone randomly pick a keyphrase to target so theres no accusations of bribery

il see how many people reply to this tonight and seem interested and if it looks like we could do something then il setup a page on my blog to use where everyone can sign up etc. if people are happy with that

[TheRazor5]

Put me IN.

Let me know the term and the rules.

[BusinessCoach]

who will judge?

who will hold the money?

if you want to make it really fair, have everyone get domains from same place and host on same server.

That eliminates majority of "tricks" and shows who REALLY knows how to optimize, because same IP with dup content wont help much...hehehe

[pixeladd]

now sure how that would work, alot of people might not want to get new hosting
well the judge will be google!! whoever ranks top will win

in regards to the money yes im happy to hold it and i can try and get a mod involved to have access to the funds should their be any problems

[BusinessCoach]

well someone would have to sponsor the hosting, or make it cheap, like a buck or something

but also, will data centers be a factor?

you can be top in one region and not in another

also those who allow google to try to understand their habits based off of region and site type will also see different results....just stuff to think about

[pixeladd]

yeh i think we will go with google.com which is most commonly used, i have a firefox plugin which allows me to search different regions http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/...ent-locations/
so it would be google.com or us region

yeh im sure we could get some sponsors, hosting, tools, scripts etc.. all webmaster stuff, maybe the sites could show a couple of the sponsor ads and if it takes off it should get some good publicity.

Id be happy to run it and get some blog posts from respected blogs etc.. get some publicity for it, should get some decent prizes

[zexy]

The rules should be extremely clear otherwise it will turn into a big mess.
How are you going to determine if someone is buying links or not for example?

[pixeladd]

well like i said here

yeh i think we need to make it basically no rules! just it needs to be a new domain and someone randomly pick a keyphrase to target so theres no accusations of bribery

thats the only rule we can really use otherwise it will be to difficult to manage and then there cant be any cause for to many problems

[Pammer]

interesting.. just subscribe for next updates

[pixeladd]

ok cool, well had quite a bit of interest, il post something up on my blog so feel free to subscribe there for updates on this(shameless plug i know) i would have loved to have taken part but im quite happy to try and organize this and get us some prizes.
keep posting any ideas you get gujys and il try to implement these if i can, im guessing a good length would be around 3 months, maybe the results day good be Jan 1st 2009 if thats not to soon, again any feedback would be great.

[TheRazor5]

How many contestants are we talking about here?

Will we get the prize money from what? Participation Fees? Sponsors?

How cheap can we get the hosting here?

Will it be only the 1º winner, or Top 3 winners?

[pixeladd]

well i reckon we will need at least 20 to make it worth while, id be happy to get the contest promoted on a few other popular blogs to get the word out and some publicity for this
Had a few offers of prizes/sponsorship so far..free hosting/domains,free banners but hoping to get some bigger names on board to offer maybe some software something like that.

If theres enough interest il setup a new reseller account and just charge say $1 a month for that to keep it fair
i was thinking probably the top 3 would win some sort of prize aswell as the fact that they will be able to get alot of work here on DP and just think how much the winners ebook would sell for

[theman12468]

Hey guys, wouldn't you want to make the keyword a profitable one? Not just some keyword that has no meaning whatsoever or one with no competition present at all. That would be a better challenge and hell, in the long run you would be making money even if you aren't number one (or however close you would get).

[Loco.M]

how about just a new subdomain?
if so, I would be interested
sorry, I just don't want to buy a new url just for a contest

ps.. I would even be interested if the main url had to have low pr, 1 or 2