In my opinion, SEO is part science, part art, part luck and a lot of instinct.
After working for the first time at targeting a specific key word for an SEO Contest I have formed some opinions on best practices for SEO.

1. Know your topic. When it comes to a contest of this type, it’s impossible to know your topic because the key word or key phrase for a contest is usually a meaningless term but that creates a challenge to provide content. Very similar to someone attempting to build a site around a subject when they have no real knowledge of the topic.

2. Once you know which topic you are going to cover, pick your target keywords. Do your research and look for niche keywords. There are many online services that offer keyword suggestions.

3. Determine your main target keyword and attempt to get it in your domain name. While having your keyword or key phrase in your domain name does not guarantee top search engine placement, it certainly holds an advantage.

4. Use meta tags effectively. Use the title, keyword and description meta tags to your advantage. Use your keywords in the title tag and description but avoid keyword stuffing as it can get you banned by some search engines.

5. Build content for visitors. Write your content for the people you are targeting first. Then go back over and tweak it with some appropriate keywords.

6. Fresh content. The search engines like fresh content so it’s not enough to build a site and forget it. It’s a perpetual job to keep your site dynamic and fresh.

7. Get backlinks. Organically, backlinks happen when other sites find your site to be a valuable resource and voluntarily link to it but with the sheer volume of sites on the internet, it’s a hard climb to get those organic links. Submit to directories, exchange links with relevant sites and submit articles to get your site name out there and visible.

Personally I think that any webmaster doing their own SEO should attempt a SEO Contest at some point. I think it can be a valuable learning tool in really discovering what works and what doesn’t on a level playing field. There aren’t many other opportunities to target a keyword that has no competition.

Typically, a contest is set up and a keyword or keyphrase is defined by the contest holder. The object of the contest then is to develop a website or a web page that is optimized for that keyword or key phrase, for instance, SEO Contest 2008 , SEOContest2008

The goal then is to obtain the 1st position rank for a search engine or several search engines for the given keyword.

Unless the contest holder’s rules specify against it, most participants will attempt to register a domain name containing the keyphrase.

The next step in developing a contest entry is to provide content. Because the keyphrase is the equivalent of an imaginary word, any content will suffice. Most people choose to talk about the contest, the current rankings, and how they are doing in the contest. Others choose to write stories or even use random text generation to provide content.

Content and relevant domain names are a good start but that’s just the beginning. The real work begins in obtaining backlinks. Under normal circumstances, SEO experts move at a slow even pace in achieving backlinks that are relevant to their site topic. In SEO Contests, other than other contest sites, there really aren’t any sites that are relevant to your keyword so the tendency is to acquire as many highly ranked web sites as possible.

Much of how the contest will conclude also depends on the timing of the contest. A long term contest lasting around a year will call for a different strategy than a shorter contest.

Long term contests have both the benefit and detriment of having to survive multiple Google updates.

Google updates make or break your contest entry. If you’ve engaged in any black hat SEO, the more updates that you pass, the more likely it is that Google will discover your technique and penalize your site. A short term contest allows more flexibility in your seo technique. You can get your hat a little dirty and not be in much danger of loosing your ranking because of a Google penalty.