I'm taking part in my first SEO contest. I was wondering if there is any chance to rank well using only white hat techniques. I mean : not overloading the page with the keyword not spamming directories for links not spamming digg-like sites clean HTML trying to put lots of quality content updating and adding content often except for a link in a sig, trying to get naturals backlinks ... The contest aim to rank first on a new search engine and little is known about how it index and rank sites. This is why I would like to keep it clean, to test the engine on it's "capacities". What you guys who participate in SEO contests think about that ?
Sincerely, i don`t think it`s possible, because white hat needs time that a seo contest doesn`t offer
No, not unless it's a small contest. Any serious contestant would link bomb via co-op or a similar system. I came close trying this in the retsambew dash klat for charity contest. Held first place for most of the contest until the last 3 days when sites started bombing. With solid on page SEO and frequent updates (RSS helps alot here) you can outrank sites with a few more links than you, but no way a site with 100 backlinks can compete against a site with 5,000.
Yeah that's what I was afraid of. The contest duration is only 4 months so I guess it will be too short to rank well. Nevermind, I'll try this way, it's will be a good way to test the search engine and an interesting experiment for me.
I think white hat is possible. There was one contest where a blogger actually beat out blackhats who were cloaking, 301 redirecting, etc... I wish I could remember what it was so I could send you the link.
Sure it is. But you will still need good content 1. Use RSS to distribute your content to hundreds of sites. 2. Use PRWEB.com to send a press release. 100s of sites will pick up the release(with your link) overnight. 3. Don't overload the page but include keywords in TITLE TAG, IMAGES NAMES, IMAGE ALT TAGS, H1 AND H2 TAGS AND COPYRIGHT. (I don't consider any of these black hat BTW) 4. Submit a site map to the search engine(if it accepts them)