SEOContest2008

I joined the SEO World Championship by Get Updated last year. This so called annual SEO contest that started in January 15, 2007 and I was waiting for this annual event in 2008 which just did not seem to come. With my best effort to look for the next best SEO Contest, I ended up joining UK Webmaster World’s SEO Contest.

I won the SEO World Championship and won my SEO contest car, but for the UK Webmaster World contest, we still don’t know yet who really wins. This contest ends on April 1 and as much as I try to maintain my lead, I know Paul Sanches and Martin Svilenov, current number 2 and number 3 respectively are not stopping in trying to get the top spot.

But even if I won the SEO World Championship, my whole SEO strategy was completely different in these two contest.

SEO World Championship, keyword: GlobalWarming Awareness2007

My main SEO weapon here was relevant content. Well researched content that was all 100% unique. All a product of my own writing which I did not seem to have a hard time to write being a science major (my first profession was being a Chemist). The formula was simple:

1. Come up with good viral link baitable content.
2. Use as much forms of social media I can to promote the content further.
3. Gain link naturally from people that discovery the site.

One of the most successful post was: 5 Good Arguments Why GlobalWarming is NOT due to Man-made Carbon Dioxide. I made a point that what I say was well researched and did my best to show both sides of the story and try not to be one-sided. Try to make it controversial and make it inviting to comment on to get more user interaction. It got 159 Diggs and got some science bloggers and global warming political bloggers to react and comment on, talk about and link to. Some positively, some hated me. Love or hate, the fact that these existed, meant the blog post was effective in getting the attention of people and having people link to it. Having MyBlogLog and looking for Global Warming bloggers helped in getting more target audience and placing all RSS feed reader chicklet links made it more inviting to bookmark.

Although I have used several other techniques, I believe this was the main strength I had to win the contest. I got relevant blogs linking to me mainly because of the content even without soliciting links.

UK Webmaster World’s SEO Contest keyword: SEOContest2008

Applying the same technique I did with GlobalWarming Awareness2008 was not exactly applicable here. Given the keyword, SEOContest2008, I needed to talk about SEO and Contest and try to get links from SEO blogs. That would be hard since one of the most hardest links you can get from link baiting alone is from SEO sites unless you really really have something good to talk about. Which I have attempted to do with the W3C valid code not important in SEO post that still worked as if hit front page of Sphinn and several Diggs when the blog post came out. But it would still be hard to come up with topics like this on a regular basis. So I did a different technique where I invested my initial time in the design of the site. I will quote a friend from SEO Philippines, Abel Quitoriano said this: Design pa lang, link bait na! In English he meant: The design alone is already a link bait! This strategy is not an original one. I must admit this is a copied strategy from Jason Torres, another friend of mine from SEO Philippines after seeing his performance in another previous SEO contest. His design was so popular it was featured on many sites, even in blog post saying the best designed sites of 2006, so thanks to Jason for the idea.

This contest is not over yet and we still don’t know who is going to win. Good luck to all competitors!

Popularity: 98% [?]

Most Popular Posts

• April 2, 2008 -- Wanted Project Manager and Business Analyts for Top SEO Company (4)
• March 19, 2009 -- Disabling Twitter Updates (1)
• March 24, 2008 -- Strategy Difference in the SEO World Championship and UK Webmaster World’s SEO Contest (4)
• October 19, 2008 -- SEO Contest & Spamming Sphinn (1)
• March 29, 2008 -- SEOContest2008 Problem 10: Dancing with the Sphere (3)
• April 1, 2008 -- Thanks for the SEOContest2008 help but please do not overhelp (5)
• March 24, 2008 -- SEOContest2008 Problem 9: Some Datacenters Dancing At #2 (7)
• April 17, 2009 -- Sulumits Retsambew is thinking… do I still have a chance in this contest? (6)
• April 23, 2009 -- Sulumits Retsambew is Seeing Some Kangaroos and Joeys (4)
• March 18, 2008 -- W3C Code Validation is NOT Important in Search Engine Ranking (35)

Posted in Editorial | 4 Comments »

Posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.