Manipulating the Search Engines for fun and laughter

One of the more interesting contests that a Blog can run is an SEO blog contest.

This is normally done for fun and the actual benefits to the blog running the contest itself is minimal. (Except for boasting rights in running the contest and some backlinks with the anchor word SEO if structured correctly.

The SEO blog contest rules.
Normally, the person running the SEO blog contest would chose a term to rank for the competition. To equal the start point for all the contestants, it would be better to choose an obscure term or even number that does not really appear any where on the Internet. (Or if it does, it should appear quite minimally)

This would help ensure that the contestants who actively practice SEO methods to rank for that term would get their site or blog listed in the first few search results when ranked by the search engine.

The key criteria for winning this type of blog contest are to rank the highest for the search term that is being challenged for in a specific search engine. The search engine should be defined as the SEO required for the different search engines might require different SEO strategies.

For a norm, the search results for the blog running the contest would normally be discounted granted that the backlinks created for the contest would normally help the blog running the contest rank for the obscure term.

An optional rule that you might want to play to make things even fairer (or for some people who do not want to “pollute” their own blogs with the obscure term) is for the participants to start a new blog on a new domain (This is sometimes the ultimate as you can get the keyword as the domain) or even use the free blog platforms like Wordpress or Blogspot to join the contest.

Suitable SEO Contest Time frame.
The time period for an SEO contest would normally be longer than an average blog contest. I would say that a period of 1 month would be a good time for such a contest as it gives the participants enough time to do some SEO experiments as well as time for the search engines to crawl and show relevancy for the blog or site.

What about the Prizes?
The participants of a SEO blog contest are normally people who would like to challenge themselves and are not really in it for the prizes. Sometimes boasting rights are enough as demonstrated in “The Human SEO contest” that gave a prize money of $20 and a backlink. The contest itself was quite successful in terms of number of participants but because of the way the contest was structured, a high PR blog came in on the last day and managed to win the prize. (The rest of the blogs that took part are PR0-3 type blogs)

But if your intention is to get more traffic and create a bigger buzz, a SEO contest with lots of prizes will also attract a larger spectrum of the citizens of the Blogosphere. SEO contest in the likes of SEO NooB where several categories of prizes are up for grabs (and the list is growing as more sponsors for prizes pour in)

What’s in it for the SEO contest participants?
Well, given the competitive nature of SEO’s in the real world for competitive terms, it’s really difficult to see how your knowledge of SEO has progress. If you gauge your SEO skills against a very competitive terms and see yourself come out very short (those terms have link centuries of SEO behind them vs your recent ventures), you would be discouraged.

Gauge it against a lowly ranked term and you do not have much competition to see if you really rank well against others. So, it is with a SEO contest where there are people actively trying to rank for a obscure term that you are able to gauge your progress in SEO knowledge.

So have you run a SEO contest today? Share some of your experience with us here.

Bookmark to: