Hooked on UKWW’s SEOContest2008

As the name suggests SEOContest2008 is a contest of SEO’s i.e. Search Engine Optimizers. Just like other competitions, at SEO Contest too, winners get awarded. The contest involves ranking of practitioners among the major search engines by optimizing the page with given keyword.

Sometimes these kinds of contests are controversial as they result in bulk link spamming. The reason is ‘that some of the participants endeavor to encourage their page rankings by all means’.

The SEOContest2008 holding organization should therefore keep a stern vigilance and aim at holding a contest without the promotion of products and services. They should also see that the Contest should be healthy and informative.

Why to enter into this SEO Contest?

I am usually too much afraid to join any SEO contest and chose to be a silent observer. The reason for not coming forth is that I think that the competitions eat up my development time, but when I came across this unique contest, my basic instinct forced me to give it a try.

I never discount the learning curve, one learns every day from every one and this experience will be priceless. I am joining here to have fun and pure fun, I have no aggressive plans. This is my seocontest2008 entry page.

This will be a tough competition for SEO Pro’s

Unlike other contests this contest is targeting a non existing single “Keyword” where as other contests in past used a keyphrase with 2 silly words. This makes it different and participants will be competing in a highly competitive environment.

It will be a great fun to spectate this hard fought contest. Be prepared to see professional SEO contestants competing with keyword and how search engines will respond to it.

Changing Trends! Relevancy is the key today!

I still remember early 1990’s, when any one sneaked in Infoseek’s pages just stuffing few words to the HTML pages, or using a link building tool to influence Inktomi. No one even cared about the Key Factor called “Relevancies”.

Now the things are different, it’s the age of relevance-ranking algorithms. The three big SE’s Google, Yahoo and Live do not disclose how they consider a page to rank well. SEO Practitioners simply study and analyze various ranking factors to gain desired results.

To some extent contests like this help people to analyze some of the ranking factors as most of them are targeting a non existence keyword and it’s fairly easy to keep a track.

About the Contest

UKWW Forums has started This unique SEO Contest on 1st February 2008. The contestants need to gain the 1st spot in Google for the search term “seocontest2008”. This contest is limited to 300 participants only. The SEO practitioners will rank themselves at most popular search engine “Google”, using the given keyword.

Organizers of Seocontest2008 contest for SEO:

UK Webmaster World Forums have limited the nos. of participants to 300 only, so hurry up (If you wish to participate in Seocontest2008), Visit the official website of SEOContest2008 using the following link:

Organizers of SEOContest2008: Here is the link to the official website of UK Webmaster World SEO Contest

Registration Page of Seocontest2008:

You must try your lick with this contest. Here is the link to the registration page.

Registration Page of SEOContest2008: Here is the link to the registration page.

Once you have registered you need to apply legitimate techniques to rank well for the search term “Seocontest2008? as per the rules and guidelines of the contest.

Rules and Regulations of Seocontest2008

Contest organizers have set very lenient terms for this ongoing Seocontest2008. Below are the rules from their official website:

• You may use a domain, folder, or sub domain as your optimized page with one criterion. The page must be all new, no backlins no cached version.
• All optimization techniques are allowed except cloaking, and hiding text. They will periodically compare the optimized pages with their cached version in order to discover the cloackers, hence it is advisable to avoid using any kind of noarchive meta tag.

Prizes for winners:

Winner of “Seocontest2008? will receive $1000 and each 3 runners up will get $100. However, even if this a small amount, most of the contestants are not participating for the prize money, but to exhibit their skills and potentially discover and share new techniques for promoting websites.

Official runtime of Seocontest2008

Seocontest2008 will officially run for 2 months, the results will be announced on 1st April 2008. I believe 2 months is a short time to attain authority for a new standalone domain, still it will be a close call for SEO practitioners round the globe to gamble with their websites.

Determining the Seocontest2008 winner

This will be solely dependent upon the results on Google.com for the search term “Seocontest2008?. On the 1st of April at 1pm (UK time) the result table of Seocontest2008 will be updated last time requesting the Google Query string here. Here Google is decider and site appearing on 1st spot will be declared as winner of the contest.

What is unique in Seocontest2008?

Most of the SEO contests expect SEO practitioners to optimize a single web page for a non-existent phrase of two silly words, where as this contest is targeting a meaningful and single keyword [Seocontest2008].

Unlike other SEO contests in past this contest is more interesting as I believe it makes sense that keyword “Seocontest2008? will not produce “spammy” results to regular internet searchers, even if some one is searching the web for “regular” information on search term/ Keyphrase “SEO Contest 2008? or keyword “Seocontest2008?.

Tips and Tricks to win this contest:

Optimization with Single keyword is bit tricky and need more attention. I am touching the base and I feel following points are crucial to get a good rank. One should remember the time is too short and 2 months is not a sufficient time to gain, following tips may help you win this contest.

• Exact Keyword Match Domain or a Folder or subfolder is a good start. The keyword presence in URl will give 30% more weight over hyphenated URL’s.
• Avoid over optimization, choose the flow of words in page carefully.
• Quality and relevant contents developed in around the targeted term.
• Title tags are important, Avoid keyword stuffing in meta tags.
• Prepare a minimal link building plan; few links from here and there will do the job.

Too many links in this short span may be considered as possible spam, so avoid aggressive link building.

Are you using Keyword filled domain for this Seocontest2008 too?

Good question, I am not participating here to win the contest but I am in to learn new things and test few of my strategies in past to understand if they are still useful. Below are the reasons why I am not using the exact match keyword domain.

• I am experimenting about how the hyphenated URL’s perform. “SEO Contest 2008” is more logical to humans rather than “seocontest2008”, I have a chance to test this out here.
• Quality Content is the king, I will test this adding unique and original contents that explain everything about this contest. I am trying to create a more relevant content.
• I will also test the performance of Exact Match URL/Folder but I will do this after a month from contest start date. Reason is that I am not going to compete with me and this page will remain my entry page till contest ends.
• Exact match domain were sold the day when I came to know about this contest, this also a good reason I am not choosing it.

So, I am starting with a discounted domain, but I am confident that it will perform well. If that happens I will be the only contestant in this contest to do so, ranking well without the keyword in URL.

Announcement of the keyword

The organizers have announced the targeted search term Seocontest2008 on the 1st of February 2008 at around 00:01, by this time we were facing a complete internet blackout in our city. In fact the whole country was logged off. Later on I discovered that all TLD’s Seocontest2008.com, Seocontest2008.net, Seocontest2008.org, Seocontest2008.info, Seocontest2008.co.uk, Seocontest2008.us, seocontest2008.uk.com and many more were not available.

I have no regret to this as I feel winner always needs to act fast. Still I will try my best rank better in this highly competitive environment. My decision to compete with this hyphenated URL is firm and I am not going to waste money on Exact Keyword Match domain, still plenty of available though.

Thanks for visiting my Seocontest2008 entry page. I wish best of luck to all contestants and hope that I may win the contest or I may win some new friends. Also please don’t forget to check my first seocontest2008 post do visit my Seocontest2008 blog where I am posting daily coverage about this ongoing Seocontest2008.