What Are SEO Contest?

What is SEO?

There are many definitions of SEO, and taking it verbatim from Wikipedia as of February 4, 2013, the definition goes as follows:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.^[1]

If you would get the layman's definition of this term, most people would simply define it as the ways to increase ranking in search engines for a desired keyword phrase.

But personally, how I would define SEO would be:

SEO is the process of ongoing improvements of a website to increase revenue from organic search engine traffic.^[2]

SEO Contest Defined

Now that you know that SEO is, what is an SEO contest? There are many types of SEO contest that have been going over the years, many with different rules, but the general perception of an SEO contest is that this is a ranking contest. And the general rule involves a given contest keyword where the competitors will have to try their best to rank as high as possible in search engines for the contest keyword and the winner is determined by whoever has the highest ranking on a given deadline date.

Contest may differ in many ways, aside from the keyword phrase used and span of time the contest runs, some contest also consider rules that help eliminate unfair advantages of other contestants. Some of these rules can involve guidelines or limitations domain age, type of platform used, if keywords are allowed in the URL or not, number of pages, types of links, and many more.

A common rule in many contests is to avoid doing any blackhat SEO tactics which can be a debatable issue if this is giving an unfair advantage or is just doing self-inflicted harm because of the potential of getting a SEO contest entry banned in search engine results.

What is Blackhat SEO?

This can be defined in many ways and different people have different definitions. I will answer this by using a reply I once gave to someone who asked me the same question in the past.

Some people say Blackhat SEO is the illegal way of doing SEO. First thing is there is no SEO law. And if there is no law, there is nothing illegal. Some people say Blackhat SEO is the unethical way of doing SEO. Now what is defined as ethical and unethical is inconsistent from one SEO person to another. Search engines give out webmaster and SEO guidelines, and as the name guidelines is defined, they serve as guides. And when you have guides, this means you may or may not follow them. Some people define Blackhat SEO as SEO techniques that go against Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

What is my definition of Blackhat SEO? I share the same views as Quadzilla where he once defined Blackhat SEO as taking advantage of a small simple ranking factor and find ways to blow up this small ranking factor into large proportions in some automated way until it start to be a large SEO factor.

Blackhat SEO can be a bit risky since search engines do not like people gaming the system and can slap serious penalties where the worst is getting banned in search engines.^[3]

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References:

1. Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimization 2013 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
2. Benj Arriola, Demystifying SEO: What really goes into an SEO campaign 2010 6th Annual E-Commerce Summit, San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau URL: http://www.slideshare.net/BenjArriola/demystifying-seo-what-really-goes-into-a-comprehensive-seo-campaign
3. Joshua Riddle, Interview with SEO Guru Benj Arriola 2010 Matters of Grey, URL: http://mattersofgrey.com/interview-with-seo-guru-benj-arriola/