SEO contest have been running for some time, the first known recorded contest was the German SEO contest Schnitzelmitkartoffelsalat in 2002[1]. Later on in 2004 the first English-language contest was nigritude ultramarine[2]. For the next following years more and more contest came out, some good ones, some bad ones, some with a very large prize, and some with just little prizes, but what makes a good SEO contest? A good contest is one that is fair to all competitors, avoiding any negative perceptions on the SEO industry, and has clear rules in determining the winners. Below are a few SEO contest guidelines of what makes a good SEO contest.
- A Good SEO Contest Avoids Any Unfair Advantage of a Competitor
- Domain Age and Page Age
Entries should be brand new sites on a brand new domain. Page age and domain are ranking factors, that those with old websites will have an advantage over new sites. - Keywords in the Domain
If the official keyword is the exact phrase of a dot com domain, this will have an advantage of sending signals to Google that the domain is the official brand of the targeted keyword and Google does prefer to determine the official brand page of a keyword. Although it may not be 100% accurate in determining a branded term or not, but it will try its best and an exact phrase .com domain of the contest keyword is showing these sites. Although just because you have the exact phrase as your domain, you automatically have a large lead in the game. There is what Google calls the Exact Match Domain (EMD) update where Google tries to determine if an exact match domain to a search keyword is really an official site, or just a site riding on the popularity of the keyword and does not really have quality content on pages. The EMD update will penalize these sites and get pushed down in ranking.
In the SEO World Championship[3] in 2007 organized by Swedish SEO company GetUpdated, used the keyword GlobalWarming Awareness2007, and just when the contest started, GetUpdate has already registered the domains globalwarmingawareness2007.com, globalwarmingawareness2007.net, and globalwarmingawareness2007.org.
In a contest by Branders.com called Promote Your Business[4] in 2008 used the keyword phrase: promotional items corporate gifts srednarb. And to avoid any keyword in domain advantage, the official rule was each competitor can only use a maximum of 2 words from the contest phrase within the domain name.
- Domain Age and Page Age
- SEO Contest should use a keyword phrase that has zero search results
A contest keyword phrase can have zero results if a unique word that does not exist in any dictionary and is not used by anyone. This gives an equal ranking baseline among all competitors. No site will have any previous keyword history usage advantage. No other site will have any relationship advantages from getting links from sites using the keyword. - An SEO Contest Should Not Disturb Any Current Industry
This is probably more of an ethical request. Following this rule is not only good for the SEO industry, but also avoids search engine algorithm changes that always throw of SEO professionals.
In February of 2008, Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters decided to run an SEO contest with the keyword phrase: Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World[5] The problem with this keyword, they were common everyday words. This caused many search results to pop up in the Search Engine Results Pages that were not about real estate agents. They were all about SEO contest. What does this mainly do?
- It gives a bad search experience
People interested in actually searching for a good real estate agent ends up not finding one and just finding a bunch of sites about SEO. In effect this gives SEO professionals a negative impression and will be generally perceived as spammers. - Google will want to clean up the SERPs
Google makes money from ads served in search results. Advertisers want to serve ads on Google because many people use it. Many people use Google because of the quality of search results. And if the quality of search results suffer, they lose the users, and when they lose the user, they lose the advertisers and the money. To avoid this from happening, Google will find a way to clean up the search results and will find algorithmic implementation that will affect all search results in general. So bear in mind, whenever there is an algorithmic change, most of the time, it was caused by the SEOs messing up the search experience.
- It gives a bad search experience
- Search Engine Parameters Should Be Very Specific
Search engines may show different search results based on a number of factors, from localization, personalization, data center propagation, and other factors. Thus if SEO competitors are seeing a different result from the contest organizer, there can be some conflicts and complaints from different parties. Below are a few things that would be appropriate to clear up in the rules of an SEO competition:
- Google Country Version
Google.com is the main Google website but there are many Google country versions on almost every ccTLD[6]. Each Google site may show some discrepancies in search result even if searching for the same keyword. - City Location
Under Search tools, in some countries, a specific city can be mentioned. If the contest organizer does not clear up what city should be used, competitors may see different results. - Personalization
- Log out of a Google Account
Google has some personalization of results where it tries to analyze the type of results you prefer based on your browsing habits and search result selections. When logged into a Google account, these preferences are tied to that account. - Run Incognito Mode
Incognito Mode (Google Chrome) or Private Web Browsing (Firefox) are settings on your web browser to not save any cookies and web browsing history. As Google can also be looking into these sources of information of browsing habits, preferences and can still up with personalize results. - Minimize Parameters
For every search on Google, multiple parameters are still passed to them. From referring URL, button clicks, type of web browser, and much more. The more information passed, the more you are still identifiable even if running private browsing settings and logged off. - Disable Personal Web Search
Google has created a search parameter you can actually pass in the URL that specifically tells Google to turn of Personal Web Search.
- Log out of a Google Account
- Avoid Propagation Issues
Although this is less of a problem these days with Google's multiple updates in the past, from the Big Daddy and Caffeine updates where Google has been faster in updating all data centers worldwide, there can still be some small time frames where search results will still be different in different search engines. Thus a contest organizer can specific a specific IP address to use. But if an IP address is overused, Google may block off that IP for a long time. So it all depends on the contest organizer if they want to set this rule or not. If ever they will not, they will then have to specify the physical location of where the final results will be drawn since the Google displays search results often from the data center closest to the location of the user searching.
- Google Country Version
Although all of these rules are applied to Google, if the SEO contest for another search engine, just as apply as many of the items listed above as possible.
References
- de.comm.infosystems.www.authoring.misc, Schnitzelmitkartoffelsalat 2004 URL: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/de.comm.infosystems.www.authoring.misc/kRxkbzYoqP0/vhbHtbUrZloJ
- Anil Dash Nigritude Ultramarine2004 URL: http://dashes.com/anil/2004/06/nigritude-ultra.html
- GetUpdated, SEO World Championship 2007 URL: http://www.seoworldchampionship.com/
- Benj Arriola, Promotional Items Corporate Gifts Srednarb – New SEO Contest 2008 URL: http://www.seoreligion.com/promotional-items-corporate-gifts-srednarb.html
- Morgan Carey, Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World Contest - A competition for Real Estate SEO supremacy 2008 Real Estate Webmasters, URL: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/4307/show/
- Google Supported Domains, URL: http://www.google.com/supported_domains
Sir Benj na try na namin dati mg.organized sng SEO contest para m.push down ung RipOffReport sa first page ng Google then naging successful naman ung plan. But after the contest bumalik ulit ung RipoffReport sa first page. Hingi po sana ako ng suggestions kng ano pa po ung pwdeng gawin pra mpa alis ung ripoffreport sa 1st page - Thanks...
ReplyDeleteGood question John Paul, just for the benefit of others, I will translate the question.
ReplyDeleteSir Benj, we tried organizing an SEO contest before to push down RipoffReport off the first page of Google and it was successful. But after the contest, RipoffReport came back to the first page. I would like to please ask for some suggestions on what else can we do to push down RipoffReport off the first page. - Thanks...
The simple answer is do SEO on 10 different pages so it will fill up page 1 but we all know as simple as it may sound, it is not that simple to do. 1 page alone can sometimes be a lot of work, so making 10 pages rank all on page 1 is like 10 times of the a lot of work.
But when you did the SEO contest, you did say it was successful mainly because it is not only you doing the work, it was other people and they were all competing for it. They were all doing if for the incentive they will get and possibly the bragging rights along with it if they win the contest. When the contest ended, no one was doing anything to maintain their sites and for many it might even be costing them money to maintain the site.
So the real problem is you did something that does not stick. So the solution is either:
1) Think of something else that will stick. Something that people will be naturally drawn to pages that help make these pages popular, and that may work.
Or
2) Look for some type of incentive to the SEO contest competitors to make them keep and maintain their sites. What some contest organizers do is tie up the contest with an affiliate program. Since the site can make money, sometimes that is a good enough reason for them to keep the sites.
3) Try building up other properties that can potentially rank on page 1. There are tons of social media sites that you can make it rank for a brand name, but of course again it is not that easy. You will have to optimize for these pages for them to rank high as well.
The main solution that encompasses all these three is coming up with creative ideas that can make content viral. It all goes back to quality content and content marketing but unfortunately, this is not always the easiest thing to think of.
But even if you have the best idea in the world that can go viral and people love it and would pass it around and would rank high, if the main complaint on RipoffReport continues to exist and more people will complain in the future, you can almost expect it to never disappear. It will always be on page 1.