Comments on: What Do You Think Of SEO Contests?

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:44:37 +0000

Thanks David. I liked your article as well and thought you had a catch title too. I like a lot of them actually. It’s always good to hear things from different perspectives.

I realize the quality of the article only came into play if you won for your week, but I assume everyone who entered was trying to write a quality article.

I did make use of socal networks and contacts for the most part and still kicking myself for not running even a small PPC campaign. I don’t think any of us was going to beat out Ben though. He far surpassed everyone else during the week and of all the articles I’ve read I also think his was the best so I think his victory was well deserved.

It really was fun like you said and a great learning experience. Completely worth it to me too.

By: David Temple

David Temple — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:39:09 +0000

I said pretty much everything in my blog post but I just wanted to add that the quality of the article didn’t really matter in the first round. Page views and only page views was the metric. I think you did a great job of promoting your article through forums and the blogosphere. Also your title was good and grabbed some attention. Bottom line :”Overall it was fun and worth the work to me.” And I appreciate your encouragement. thanks

By: Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:03:29 +0000

I think they can be fun. But some claims that they are an experimental ground that others can learn from by looking at what the winner done compared to what the losers done doesn’t make sense, because an SEO contest doesn’t provide anything that looking at any other sites appearing on any other search term would provide.

Plus, The search terms used in SEO contests tend to usually be a search term that at the time of the start of the competition returned no results. So basic SEO, even bad SEO (link spamming/keyword stuffing) could see the site appear top over a short time, enough time to win the competition.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:19:25 +0000

That’s why I liked Andy’s contest. It wasn’t about ranking a page for a mde up term. Those aren’t for me, but even they require a certan skillset.

This contest did require you to write an article and since the winner was ultimately chosen based on the quality of the article you did need to write a good one. I imagined this contest as how it would work after creating a new landing page and wanting to get traffic to it quickly for some reason. Maybe because you’re running a limited sale or because you need to sign up as many people as possible for a timed event.

I think this contest did measure something more inline with what an SEO might do than rank for a nonsense term. I also think if you look at the people who entered this contest compared to the rank for nonsense ones you can see a difference in the general abilites of the contestants.

I know some will disagree and contests really aren’t for everyone. I certainly don’t think winning one makes you a good SEO and that losing one makes you less than the winner.

Overall it was fun and worth the work to me. And assuming I would have the time I would likely enter should Andy run another one.