I was surfing the web and I found one of those "SEO World Championship" launched by a European Internet Marketing company, Eastpoint. The tournament is starting on January 15th 2007 and I had a funny idea. I haven't spoken with Rand about this yet (i.e. Rand: what do you think of this?), but I think we could do something interesting, challenging and potentially rewarding here for all of us, the SEOmoz community.
We could probably do a quick sign-up form here for any registered user of SEOmoz who would be willing to participate.
Here's the plan (and sorry to anyone who thinks this is silly!):
-As SEOmoz community, combine our white hat efforts of linkbuilding and linkbaiting to win the challenge
-Share some of the efforts/tactics we will implement to win this tournament
-Since we will win something, we give away the prize to a charity cause.
Here are the prizes
1st prize: Citroen C2
2nd prize: A caribbean cruise
3rd prize: A plasma TV
4th prize: 500$
5th prize: 100$
Are you ALL IN?
P.S. One good idea so far: Give the prize away to a charity cause!
I will gladly help... and would like to nominate Perverted Justice as the charity - let's get the creeps off of the internet. Well at least the child molesting creeps.... guess there is someone out there that thinks I am a creep.
noise!
poor rand, he has created a monster. ;o)
Hey Aaron, please accuse me, don't accuse Rand, I didn't have his "ok" on this.
Although I really like the charity thing that we could do on our own! Let's do a pixelotto for charity but with a nicer concept!
P.S. Rand: Do you still love me?
With all my heart, my Quebecois friend :)
Snaps, this could be fun.
That is a silly, silly little car.
What a great idea! A really good initiativ, with nicer prizes than ever!
This gonna be so fun!
Let’s just put it this way…It is a competition! Wikipedia defines competition as:“A competition is the act of striving against another force for the purpose of achieving dominance or attaining a reward or goal”.
Now…The reason behind our competition is to further promote the knowledge of SEO to the general business community... Something I believe all SEO’s have in common and one we constantly battle. If people don’t want to link to the site, they don’t have to! Furthermore, instead of criticizing the contest we can all join and make a more positive experience within the SEO community, rather then giving negative feedback.
In order to criticize the contest I believe we should first look at the keyword, needless to say we are the ones holding to that particular and it will be release the 15th of Jan.
Now… I cannot relate how or why promoting a competition has to do with our client level of satisfaction…? Especially when our clients are more then well satisfied…(unnecessary comment which could be mirrored back). We have assigned additional resources for this which currently doesn’t affect our client base… making this comment irrelevant to what the competition purpose is all about.
I can tell you one thing…The reason for this competition is very well based and orientated towards research within the SEO community. Our purpose is to achieve an educational purpose and there is nothing further to it, no hidden agendas, no link baiting, etc. We believe is an original concept and one that will generate interesting research data for future optimizers. All the information we will gladly share with the SEO community and no added cost. The prizes we believe are quite decent, they are real and while we are at it, I should mention we are paying for it ourselves.
To give an end to the entire charity situation and to clear any doubts… THE PRIZES GO TO CONTESTANTS*!! NOT TO CHARITY! THIS MEANS THE WINNERS WILL GET THE PRIZES not the Red Cross! So enough with the whole charity talk, it deviates the contest purpose. This was an initiative from our marketing department… We might as well add a good cause to it. “It doesn’t hurt”.
All positive feedback will be welcome! We encourage those with positive ideas to this contest this year and next. Email: [email protected]
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I think that the SEOmoz community should not participate in some cheesy competition and should go with the idea posted in the comments above about working together to benefit a charity. That would not be a contest, more like a collaborative SEO project. And it would be a whole lot more fun, and better for the world, and better promotion for SEOmoz and some deserving charity, than winning some car or cruise for one person. :)
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You try and make it sound such a philanthropic endeavour, but you also make it clear the iniative comes from your *marketing dept*. As above, this is about raising your own profile among SEO's, rather than taking SEO to the wider non-SEO community.
Yes, I sound quite negative, but search engines don't like third-party influence on their results. SEO's should understand this.
But all SEO contests do is illustrate plainly to search engines where their weaknesses are, and to close these weaknesses. Why do you think sandboxing and -30 filters are increasingly commonplace?
In that regard, people who take part in them are simply taking rope to hang themselves with.
In the meantime, I'll keep out of this specific discussion - I'm simply likely to alientate everybody at SEOmoz, and there's little point in doing that.
All I can do is warn people of what they are going to do to themselves in the long run taking part in such contests, and that's done.
Webbed Marketing is in! Let's build some Buzz.
Nice to see some SEO companies that are joining this early. Looking forward to see some more companies within short ;)
For all of you that interested in this contests you can now sign up to get the keywords via email once the contest keywords has been announced. Sign up here: https://www.seoworldchampionship.com/contestru...
I say we go for it. Several heads are better than one. (Except when it comes to government)
Oh, i forgot to mention, that Wikipedia has blacklisted the SEO contest, for Link Farming.
Its a scam. Some little swedish idots thinking they are the worlds best SEO. Eastpoint is a crap SEO company. There are a lot of better companies out there. Their website does not even rank in SEO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Admini...'_noticeboard#Globalwarming_awareness2007.2FSEO_world_championship_--_expect_a_spam_onslaught.
Hi all, Well i have 3 entries in the contest, and have been as high as second, all are in the top 100, and im about to turn it on, 2 dropped really well last night,
I have a spare domain that was register a few seconds after the contest started, i'm more than willing to loan it to Seomoz for the contest, if your still interested in having a go,
William s Put up or shut up,, your a "racist noob"
I have been testing with 2 sites in the contest. one that had zero links, and one i juiced, same content, same website, same age, same same, and also tested dot.mobi V dot.com
the results i measured are very interesting from an SEO point of view and i gleaned a lot of really cool "Measurable" statistics from it all..
im not a spammer either and i only need to use google guidelines to win, the French spammed wiki, the have dozens of people link building even as we speak, am i worried? not at all, they have numbers - I have brains,
the car is delivered from your NEAREST DEALER, because william s lives up a tree, he is about the only one to have a problem, not that he "could" win. except in his wildest - dreams
other than that, the domain is there if you want it? and is in the top 100, so your off to a flying start and well ahead of a lot of other lesser SEO mortals,
have a great day, Phillip Kemp
Looks like the SEO World Championship 2007 can't come up with a 2008 one. Last year, this contest started on January 15. January is nearly over and they have nothing up to now.
Well getting to see a lot of Team Work on this one, this is is so short and sweet..are the SEOmoz guys in this one ???
I'd be thrilled to see you compete in the SEO world championship. I got an email from Stéphane, moderator at SEO Sphere, and he told me that many of the best white hat SEO's in France will be participating.
I say why the hell not? Not participate because of some white/black hat ideal or the thought that someone is going to catch backlash for it? Yeah SEO contests may be dumb in some ways, but there so many stupid causes that make people rich and benefit no-one. If we can not only prove a point by winning something using the white hat, we can actually benefit people if we do too. The SEO pooling for a particular charity is not a bad idea either. Count me in for either...
I'll have a chat with Rand about all of this. Thanks for all your replies, didn't think it would arise that much!
Guillaume, this contest is a scam. Dont bother. Eastpoint is only looking for easy link backs. No such thing as a free lunch. Dont fall for it.
Some lucky orphan is going on a caribbean cruise!
SEO contests are so f***ing stupid.
It's an exercise at throwing bricks at the search engines. The people who applaud them I'll bet are the same ones who go to SEO forums after, complaining that the new algo updates to patch the exploited methods tanked their sites.
Worse still, SEO contests are always designed to benefit a minority (the competition holders) rather than the SEO community.
Let's clear the air - if you are a SEO company with SEO clients, and you have time to arse about throwing resources into a SEO contest, you're not working hard enough for your clients.
And if anyone is stupid enough to throw their resources into an SEO contest, only to see them devalued after, you've no one to blame but yourself.
I just don't get it - I really don't get it. Why do people think it's a great idea to taunt search engines and risk their business and livelihoods??
Anyone wants to go for it - you go for it. But don't you dare complain when Google et al devalue your sites, your link methods, and your income. Because you bloody well invited it.
Actually SEO contests are not that stupid. There will always be people looking for competitions in order to show their strength, and it doesn´t matter if it is in wrestling, chess, table tennis or SEO. What better way to show your strength then competing in a SEO World Championship? Sure! you can always photograph your latest adsense check or post screenshoots from stat programs on how massive your traffic is, or post links to Google searches with "high competitive keywords" that you rank good for. But that wouldn´t be the same as saying that you won a Seo contest.
SEO contests is a new phenomenon on the Internet and have faced a lot of criticism like every other new hype, but the Seo World Championship is unique in many ways. First of all the official contest site has it´s own domain, the SEO World Championship is also organized by Eastpoint which is one of Scandinavias biggest web companies. Many of us working at Eastpoint have experience from other SEO contests and have modified the rules for this contest so it will be as fair as possible. In order to win this contest you have to be able to rank high in all of the three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) and I believe that even SEO professionals will find that a difficult task.
One of the purposes with this contest is to raise awareness and get people to know what SEO actually is. Everyone who is reading Seomoz blog clearly knows what SEO is all about, but if you would ask the average "Joe" he wouldn´t have a clue.
Sounds fun - count me in!
As someone who won $5,000+ for charity in the V7ndotcom SEO contest, I like this idea. My beneficiary was the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research - this is something my kids have, so it's personal for me.
I can't imagine UofM needing a Citroen car (!) ... but every dollars helps fund their research to find a cure ... and awareness of this often un/mis-diagnosed disease is good too, especially since about 1% of Americans have it - many who don't realize it. alek
P.S. And if you want some holiday fun, check out the Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease. Three webcams allow you to view and control the 15,000 lights, plus giant inflatable Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! ;-)
great site hulkster
Hi Alek! You seem to be everywhere on the web :) I hope you join this contest as well, a charity SEO team might actually be a good idea since the competition in SEO contests keeps increasing constantly. Oh! BTW: I teamed up with a guy from Israel in the carcasher contest so hopefuly I can donate $500 to celiac charity the 1st December.
In all honesty, I saw this and didn't want to give them any link love or attention... Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of SEO contests. But, it seems like people are fairly interested, so I'll try to look at it a bit this week.
Just thought I'd be funny to work on a project that all the community of SEOmoz can participate and learn through it; I think it would be interesting to do some sort of a sandbox test study with all competing sites + ours (since they will all be new domains launching on January 15th 2007), and to look at statistics by looking closely at the top20 or top50 contendors on a weekly basis and seeing if any of the sites get sandboxed.
Just my 2 cents :D
Most definitely. Show us the dotted line :)
I will definitely create some sort of "Golden Rules to apply" to ensure we pull this through!
I'm in!
count me in, i'd vote for giving any prizes to charity though...
And I wouldn't mind at all doing so Joost! Then it's easier to have it sold if the charity group don't want the car!
Giving away a carribean cruise to charity? What kind of charity could possibly use this type of help... besides the "Help Chris Get Carribean Chicks Foundation" ?
It is a novel idea, but I think I'm with Rand on the SEO contest thing being somewhat played... although you gotta respect these guys for putting up the huge prizes for this one.
You got a point! But whoever wants it the most can pay for it and we'll give the money to the charity cause.
I'm sure someone like "Make a wish" could use that.
If any of you guys want to donate to charity, it's not a problem. In fact, we'll be happy to convert the prizes to money if it's going to such a purpose!
How do they determine who followed the rules and who didn't (since they say you can't use comment spam, etc.)?
It seems like it would be very easy to sabotage the competition.
I have to agree with you here. The all beautiful contest could turn out to be a antiblackhat contest.
If any of the contestants sites are using black hat methods, like hidden content, we will disqualify them.
Anyway, the way the actual contest is built and how search engines work, I doubt the winner will succeed with using methods such as comment spam. Wait and see on the 15th of January when we release the final rules, there might be some updates.
If you find anything suspicious, you can always send us an email. The email is up an running now.
I've just tried to contact them about what I assume will be a typo in their official rules and got a permanent failure for the mail delivery.
If anyone does want to apply probably best to contact Eastpoint directly.
Hi! We have a problem with our mail system and this will be fixed within a few hours, sorry for the inconvenience.
It's now possible to send emails again.
Pah! Citroen C2 - make it an Aston Martin and I might be interested...
Daz
PS Good idea giving the prize away for charity though...
Good one! :-) Maybe next year.
I always ask "What's in it for me" - it is probably why you do not see me around here and other places that often.
SeO contests are not good sEo, even if they may be fun.
I think this is indeed a noble idea to unite the SEOmoz, or however you want to spell it, community to help those less fortunate. However "We don't need no stinkin' contest". If we really want to help a charitable cause then let's identify that cause and put our seo heads together to help them directly. Why promote an seo contest and in turn help promote someone else. In other words, let's cut out the middle man. Just a thought.
I agree with David and if we decide on helping a charity through our SEO efforts, I'm in for that!
For example we could pick a charity and work as an entire community for the following:
1) Make sure they have bandwidth/hosting for a million visitors 2) Get one or two of their pages on #1 for some keyword on Google, Yahoo, MSN 3) Get an article about them from their own site on digg and a few other similar sites
In the end we could make a goal that our efforts should result in that charity raising some dollar figure, like $250, 000 or something.
That would be worthwhile :)
I think it should be a charity that has low administrative costs and is doing some type of work to help those in need in the world (not just in USA).
You might be on to something here. I would jump on that for sure.
Maybe we can organize the people who want in on this so each of us who specialize in certain areas own that portion of a site and/or project for a good charity.
But I think that is "cart before the horse" - if we are going to do something for charity, we need to decide the who, what, where, and when.
I'm in. eBay the prize and give the money away (unless we win the money one).
1. SEOMoz contributors banding together would only prove that we can scam the system, not that we are more talented.
2. These types of schemes, such as announcing "I will donate my winnings..." as link bait, only diminish the value of such competitions.
In my honest opinion, I would rather see a handful of community members choose to compete as individuals.
PS: A real competition: Give a start date for the contest, the day at which a domain can be registered. Do not announce the keyword to target until the last week of the competition. That way, no advantage is given to people who purchase the keyword domain name the fastest. It becomes more about developing a trustworthy site than spamming out one keyword.
2 points granted for the inevitable rjonesx ;)
Thanks - good feedback
Do you think we can pull this out? I think so!
Guilliame, this contest is a scam.The only reason is that everyone links to the Eastpoint websiste and they rank higher for SEO services. There is no prize what so ever. Have you checked the rules? Where do you live? Do you know how much u will have to pay for "the prize" in terms of taxes adn getting it shipped to your country. Eastpoint is a bunch of blond swedish loosers. THe CEO is an idot if he thinks that they can sscam other people.