SEO contest is a competition participated by webmasters using a search engine’s website pagerank system. Typically, the contest uses a nonsense and non-existent keyword for optimization.
1. To avoid older websites to have a head start against newer sites.
2. To protect the ordinary internet searchers from the so-called “search results spams”.
SEO contests tend to “trick” search engines, particularly Google’s web search results. Google have been the constant ground of most SEO contests because it is notoriously known to have a complex search engine pagerank system. Contestants can use any forms of methods and guidelines. These include the white-hat SEO optimization procedure such as giving readers a good & informative contents and fining page titles. However, some webmasters apply the black-hat SEO optimization system such as spamming, spamdexing, and cloaking.
Many SEO contestants use blog because it can be a great source of helpful, fresh and dynamic contents. Furthermore, most search engines prefer blogs as compared to a common website.
The history of SEO contest was considered to have established first on May 7, 2004 when SearchGuild sponsored the nigritude ultramarine challenge. The nigritude ultramarine SEO contest ended after two months (July 7, 2004) and was won by Anil Dash - the company Vice President of Six Apart. When asked about what is his technique in winning the competition, Dash stated that valid and informative contents are the name of the game. In addition, he also did not apply any black-hat optimization techniques in the contest.
After the success of the nigritude ultramarine SEO contest, several competitions soon followed. This include the “seraphim proudleduck” on September 1, 2004, “loquine glupe” on January 2005, “redscowl bluesingsky” on January 1, 2006, “v7ndotcom elursrebmem” on January 15, 2006, “Isulong Seoph” on September 30, 2006 and “Ituloy AngSulong” on February 23, 2006.
