Remember the “Nigritude Ultramarine” SEO contest that SearchGuild did about a year and a half ago? Basically, SearchGuild and DarkBlue came up with a totally obscure search term with no results in Google and had a contest where the SEO that ranked number one for the keyphrase a month after the contest ended won an iPod (the Player), and the SEO that ranked number one after two months won a 17″ LCD (the Stayer).
It seems that John Scott over at V7N couldn’t come up with his own way to build links and awareness about his site, so he’s got a “me too” contest going with a first prize of $1000, 2nd prize of $500, and 3-5th place prize of $100. The “catch” is that participants must link back to V7N on their optimized contest page. While John Scott claims innocence by later stating that the link doesn’t have to be SE indexable (only human-clickable), it’s very obvious to me and others in the SEO industry that this is a lame stunt to garner backlinks to V7N and John’s network of sites.
Because of this “new” contest there’s been some controversy and even a counter-contest offered by Greg Boser (aka WebGuerrilla). Greg will award the exact same amount of money in his contest except instead of linking to V7N, Greg requires that participants link to Matt Cutts’ blog without the www. (since it only shows a PR of 4). Funny, funny stuff.
IMO Greg knows SEO and tells it like it is. If John Scott doesn’t like the bad press, maybe this will force him to come up with an original idea next time instead of reproducing a contest that wasn’t all that exciting in the first place. I would definitely put contests like this in the same category as SEO awards. They never seem to benefit anyone except the creator.
2 comments ↓
What’s the big deal?
I don’t understand why you think his idea of building links is such a bad one. Are you saying it’s because he’s unoriginal? So is writing quality content in order to gain quality links stupid because someone else has already done it?
John’s idea obviously isn’t so bad considering the amount of links he’s getting just from announcing the contest, let alone all the links that will come from the actual contest. He’s getting more links than he could ever hope to buy. Not so stupid, me thinks.
If you don’t like the contest don’t participate.
I also think it’s quite funny what Greg is doing, but at the same time he’s also being a little bit of an ass.
BTW - I have no affiliation of either parties.
Later!
Hi Cameron,
The problem is that contests such as this don’t contribute anything useful to the web. Quality content that attracts natural links is beneficial to end users, thus a contribution. Writing great content is not just about gaining links either, it’s also about “speeding up” the sales lifecycle. When you answer the common questions a customer may have or educate users on a product or service with quality content, the informed visitor is then much more likely to buy FROM YOU since you’re an authority on the subject.
Who (besides John Scott) stands to benefit from this contest? Maybe Matt Cutts and other spam engineers from the SEs, as I’m sure they will check out the results, SEO techniques involved, and take appropriate actions to eliminate the exploits used or at least tighten up a few filters.
I won’t be participating in the contest because I have actual clients to work with, but felt that I needed to voice my annoyance so that hopefully this won’t become the “new thing” to do to build links. I don’t feel that Greg’s being an ass at all, it’s humor. And if he makes other “me too” contest creators think twice before launching, then all the better.
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