Why is everyone is bashing SEO Contest. Yes they are not for everyone, but they are good for two reasons. 1. Helps search engines deal better with spam and tricks, as I am sure they would follow and check them out. 2. By entering you will learn something. You do not necessarily have to win to learn something too. Take for example this contestant starting in 2 weeks time. All the domains will be new, so it will be a level playing field, no age of domain or sandbox factor. If you can only rank #20 at the end of the contest then you can go and analyze everyone above you and see what they did and maybe learn a thing or two. I would be surprised if also half the people who were bashing them also participate half the time and this is just a ploy to discourage others. Personally I would like to enter one, but know, I do not have the time or the resources to win it, i would rather spend that time getting my sites ranking even higher.
Your last sentence is the entire reason not to waste time with SEO contests for imaginary arbitrary words.
I agree to that for those who are full time seo workers, but let's face the reality, how much of us are "real" professionals? as far as I know there is a lot of student here or people that work in seo only for fun/pleasure/a little bit of extra money, and I'm sure they spend some time for, let's say party and sports. So I think it is feasable to spend one hour a day on a contest for 1 or 2 months...
You are quite right however that 1 hour a day could be better spent promoting your own site for your own gain or that of your clients. Ultimately the end goal of any SEO contest operator is to have many people promote their one site in hopes of winning an elusive prize. Often the ROI is much more valuable than the prizes. Being as the internet is so deregulated one could spend months trying to, and even winning an SEO contest, and not see any prize as who is to say these contests are all legit, and would have little recourse other than to start bad mouthing the contest operator. So whether everyone is an seo professional, all seo students or doing it as a hobby...ultimately each one of us is better off promoting our own / client site(s). For in long term thinking, one can buy most of the SEO prizes, many times over by promoting their own businesses. Peace
Sure Basically I'm into contest only for fun (in fact I refused the prize I won in one of the contest). But I'm not anymore a professional (I mean I started contest after "retiring" from business).
I am currently in one SEO Contest, and for me there are many benefits I have outlined already. I'd like to post the whole story but it's a bit long and is posted here: http://about.ituloy-angsulong.info/ituloy-angsulong-benefits.html In this SEO contest, everyone on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN, almost know each other and we even chat often with each other. It's funny talking to your competitors on how to rank better and it is like teaching each other. Although it is a competition, we are all having fun. And in fact it is also some of the competitors that pitched in some money for the prizes. All I can say is we are enjoying it. And if it is using too much of our time and we have some projects to finish, then we stop working on the contest, and work first and just go back to the contest later on.
no guys...ui thought iam joking...there is a SEO competition............. clearing that will not ive anything but Google Qualification..... i think thts much more that ur $1000........ i leave the rest for all........now i knw u all cn find.... think this post as a post from Google and start working if ur serious.. more details on google...i knw ur good optimizers and searchers... find it......all the best guys