The most kick *ss SEO contest ever!

Perfume.com is going to create the most kick ass seo contest ever.

We want to make it exciting and rewarding without POing anyone including our competiors, the engines themselves, and other SEO's. We plan on putting a lot of time, effort and money behind this to get good exposure and make it truely competitive and rewarding for all involved.

Before we officially start, we need some specific advice from you, the affiliates and other Search Engine Marketers out there. There have been many crappy contest that are poorly disguised fly by night carrot dangling promos. We want to learn from what worked in nigritude and what failed in TCads.

This is what we have so far:

-- Target a limited numbers of terms which will not swamp the SERPs, take traffic from other legitimate merchants, or expose to the public the flaws in any engines algos. Terms like "I Smell Freaking Fantastic".

-- Have many many many prizes ranging from schwacks of cash to t-shirts that say "I entered an SEO contest and all I won was this stupid t-shirt"

-- Have an independent third party pick the winners and settle any disputes. (Someone known and respected in the affiliate/SEO/SEM community)

Perfume.com has the best conversion rates and highest payouts in our niche. We want to get the word out to good affiliates, and reward them for strutting their stuff. The revenues affiliate generate through our program will keep you coming back - The contest is to create a buzz and have some fun!

What do you recommend we do and/or avoid?

And thanks for all your support on here so far – the success our program depends on strong, good looking folks such as yourselves!

 

I dont get the part about "expose to the public the flaws", Aren't we trying to learn from this SEO content as well?

 

If you're running a contest where the goal is to essentially flood perfume related serps with sites that focus on your affiliate products. How is that NOT going to piss off your competitors???

 

Why not contact the SEs to see if they will frown upon it. Maybe they will even suggest target keywords/phrases. It would be a great marketing ploy if you were backed by the major SEs.

 

Don't choose a contest ending date six months away like that other dumb contest... Keep it 4-6 weeks max... I wouldn't like devouting my link power to this for more than a month.

 

Something about this doesn't smell right.

 

If you're going to rank for something, someone else is going to have to let you through. It's par for the course. So objections about kicking people out of established positions shouldn't even enter the equation IMHO.

I think it's also important to state your objectives and to work to them from a business perspective.

As for SE's frowning ? They couldn't care less. They've more important things to do. As for a date, I think a VERY good point has been made. Few folks in SEO are going to allocate resources for this unless the objectives are achievable, and relatively short term.

As for me - I wouldn't go near it unless it was a group effort and I had something to learn. Knowledge is what I'd want out of it. The stuff you CAN'T win/buy.

Just my 2c worth of course - there's plenty of folks here that could contribute more significant perspectives than I - you just have to get them interested..

Cheers,

JL

 

That would never, ever, ever, ever, ever happen! NEVER!

 

IMO what 'perfume.com' are trying to achieve is a contest that doesnt destroy the serps for any particular 'real' term.

What failed in TCads is they had one goal: their own, you cant get lots of people involved in anything if its to benefit the organisers only. (although I wouldnt say its failed yet as such). Also, they had 0000000s of potential sites that had already won the contest before it began. They then sent someone here to bluff everyone instead of being straight..

For those that have read the other seo 'noncontest' thread, perfume.com are looking for info on the best way to run a contest like this. Personally, I dont know.. However, it appears to me that they are willing to listen and take people's advice on board, so those that have always wanted to have an opinion now have an opportunity to do so.


A fun idea could be seo forum vs seo forum, dp vs wmw vs seochat vs BOG etc etc. - although not my business/ forum or decision to make.

JL: fighting for "I Smell Freaking Fantastic" to me is not the same thing as fighting for 'backgammon' by xmas. its damage limitation at least (although as I have said all along - really it should be a non existant term for 2 reasons - very little damage to others & a level playing field. (someone that ranks for 'smell' already has an advantage).

 

I think they do care. Search results can hardly be called natural or "organic" if all of the top spots end up taking the search engine user back to the same site. What's the goal of the contest? To fill up the serps with their affiliates...which all go back to their site.


Personally I think it's a high risk move that puts you in the spotlight for a possible ban.

This is very similiar to the strategy of one person running duplicate sites and we all know that duplicate content has been hit hard in the last year. I know of one gift basket company that was banned by Google for doing this even though his worked hard to make each site somewhat unique. They were still all "gift basket" related, and obviously being managed by just one company. You might not get hit right off the bat but if the end result is that you're flooding the serps with a network then I think there's a damn good chance they will notice you.


PS: It's possible I don't understand everything about this contest (I don't totally follow what exactly Perfume.com is trying to do or why), so I'm just throwing my thoughts out there. It might or might not be relevant.

 

french military victories, failure, miserable failure have all been left by Google, it seems google realises that its objective is not to ban what it doesnt like, but deal with it in some way..

I doubt there is anyone that ever used a search engine and doesnt realise that manipulation is required (seos are modern day librarians really). Imagine any of the search engines results if noone had ever done any seo in the first place. EVERY result is a manipulation, the real question is how far to push it..

 

Of course they care, that nigritude contest sure made the engines tighten up some loose screws and find out what holes they needed to patch

 

Agreed...which is why I use the term "risk".

 

That's interesting fryman..
Was there some sort of SE announcement about that ? (vs forum banter/speculation) hard to say that without sounding condescending ..

I still find it difficult to discern between the effects (SERPS wise) of the proposed competition and an aggressive SEO/SEM campaign.

I think it's a given that duplicate sites throw flags, but that's not (necessarily) what's proposed here.

There's always risk if you have something at stake and an unpredictable quantity like G. But again, it's par for the course.

As long as everyone is up front about it (for the benefit of participants btw, not the SE's) I wouldn't foresee a problem.

I'm more interested in what I can learn from it than anything else.. there have certainly been some changes to G of late, and I'd like to see them in play

Cheers,

JL

 

I always look forward to seo competitions. I hope this works out for you!

 

That is indeed a fun one.

 

Thanks for the response so far!

Comments have been made about the engines 'learning' too much from SEO contests. I think this is valid but at the same time they are leraning from any given set of serps that are heavily targeted by SEO's. I really don't worry that Google is going to have any revelations and update the algo because of a little contest. But that is a great discussion for another thread "What do the engineers learn from studying SEO tactics".

The goal of the contest is not to flood competitive SERPs. This industry is fairly small and flooding the fragrance serps will only earn me the title of 'that assh*le from Perfume.com' at the next fragrance trade show. We plan on targeting VERY specific terms that have little to no results currently and/or where the results returned have little to no relevency and likely result in no conversions to sales.

The 'hope' is that talented affiliates will have a better look at this niche and realize that there is a great opportunity here and the Perfume.com is the best company to partner with. Health and Beauty (particularily Fragrances) is one of the highest selling and fastest growing online categories. There lots of room within it for more and better affiliates.

I fully plan to once the datials are worked out. I have some contact at GOOG, YHOO and Ask but not MSN. People who will be sure that someone has a good look at it.
Unfortunately, I believe this will be the sentiment:

We are looking at somewhere in between ~ 3 months. enough time to get some terms ranked, then tweak accordingly.

We don't want to purposely damage others. But the playing field will never really be level. I get paid big bucks to study SEO all day, other people have to have day jobs and do this as a hobby - Advantage. Anyone with a good network of sites is going to have an some wuick pull to get pages indexed fast - advantage. So, we'll try and keep it flatish. But all of us here have a huge advantage in that we participate in forums and have a thirst for knowledge. We are very much interested in everyones opinion here - as crack pot and tinfoil hat as they may get. Discussion is good.

Well said John. There are many more opportunities here than just winning something.

 

That is not the same advantage, Michael Johnson has more resources, better trainers, physios, doctors, sponsorships, limos to the games etc etc. BUT he still has to run exactly the same 200m race if he wants to win. To me its fair.. maybe it could be new domains only, making it trickier and testing everyones sandbox theories..

As far as "non converting traffic" - this traffic will still convert, everyone uses perfumes & aftershaves and lots of the people watching & involved will have goodwill towards the organisers. I dont believe 100% in relevance only - demographics are extremely important in marketing. & linking to the organisers will boost their site anyway (which I think is a fair return for putting the effort into organising something like this). I find alot of the best things on the web 'by accident or referral' - I probably found dp through another forum post (i think I know which one, but im not sure) - I didnt search for "where do some friendly smart seos hangout ?"

 

I'm not sure if he wants to but you can contact Nick from ThreadWatch or maybe ysf1 .

Good luck!

Eiso

 

I'm extremely new to SEO and even newer to DigitalPoint, but the thought of a contest to help bring a website more exposure intrigues me. May I ask why it would be a bad thing to have the content organizers intention be to attract potential customers/users? If the winners are duly rewarded for their efforts, is there something wrong with that?

Like I said before, I am new to SEO, so I'm not sure what the ramifications are for such a contest. Seems like both the organizers and winners benefit.

Look forward to your responses...