PLEASE NOTE: This contest is not sponsored by or officially connected to this forum. I'm just posting it here because I think members will be interested. The 2011 Backlinks Contest is to see who can get the most backlinks to a specific page using a specific keyword. Pages will be unique and anonymous and hosted across multiple sites so you don’t have to worry about people scraping your links – I will be the only one who knows what URLs to look for. The contest lasts for 4 months beginning 1 January 2011 and ending 30 April 2011 at midnight EST. You may join at any point during the contest though obviously the earlier you join the greater your chance of winning. To register for the contest please go here. Those who pre-register will receive an email on 1 January with your link and keyword information. Those who register after 1 January will receive your link info ASAP. The top three contestants with the most backlinks that fall within the rules of the contest will win prizes as follows: 1st place: $300, 2nd place: $200, 3rd place: $100. Additional prizes may be awarded at my discretion. NOTE: The rules below apply to each individual contestant. If different contestants get links from the same domains the links will count for each contestant. For your links to count you must: 1 – Link only to the URL provided with the keyword provided. If a platform does not allow keyword anchor text (ex: phpBB) it will still count towards your total. 2 – Link only once from each domain. Subdomains will count as individual links so if you link from blog1.website.com, blog2.website.com, and blog3.website.com you will get credit for 3 links. (NOTE: Multiple links from the same IP count as long as they’re all on different domains/subdomains) 3 – Link only using dofollow links. Links which are tagged nofollow will not count towards your total. 4 – Link only on pages that are crawl-able by the SE Spiders. 5 – Include an identifier on each page that you link which can be searched in google to find your links. This will help to get around the 1000 link limit in Yahoo Site Explorer. The identifier you use MUST be unique so before you use something, do a search for it in Google and make sure there are no other results. If you want, I can assign you an identifier. NOTE: You may have multiple links to multiple sites on a single page so if you want to just add your contest link/keyword to your current linking efforts that’s fine. However, only 1 contest link/keyword per page is allowed (so doing a blog comment with your contest link/keyword repeated 100 times will not help you!). Backlinks will be counted as follows: 1 – I will do a Yahoo Site Explorer report for your assigned URL and download the showing links 2 – I will search Google for the identifier that you included in your profiles. 3 – I will run a SEO spyglass report to confirm that the backlink exists, what the anchor text is and that it’s dofollow. 4 – After 1-3 are done I’ll use scrapebox to remove duplicate domains and the final count will be the number of links that will count towards your final score. NOTE: A big part of your success will rest on getting your links indexed so they can be found in the google search for your unique identifier so make sure you perform some sort of indexing step. The rules above are subject to change at any time as needed. If a rule changes it will be updated on the contest website and on this forum thread. Notice will also be sent to contest newsletter subscribers The leaderboard will be posted weekly with updated stats for the *ROUGH* backlink count. This means only the number that appears in YSE, not the count that has been verified and de-duped as outlined above. This means that just because someone is leading on the leaderboard doesn’t mean they’ll win. It is only for motivation and informational purposes. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please post them in the thread or use our contact form . Good luck to everyone and happy backlinking! Register Now!