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Are any SEO contests good for search engines such as Google?

As i wrote in my previous post i will try to focus now on the impact on search engines, such as Google, that “SEOcontest2008” and other SEO contests have. First of all lets describe what SEO contest is. I have checked Wikipedia entry for SEO contest, and according to this source SEO contest is:

“…an activity of awarding prizes that challenges search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to rank themselves among the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword(s).”

At that point everything is clear and there can be no bad impact on search engines as far as I’m concerned. SEO is about ranking sites among SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for certain keyword(s). To rank better than other websites and gain additional audience that way and attract more visitors and possible clients to your website. Reading further Wikipedia SEO contest entry we find that:

“This type of contest is controversial because it often leads to massive amounts of link spamming as participants try to boost the rankings of their pages by any means available.”

And thats the heart of this problem. Many webmasters use Black Hat SEO techniques in order to get higher rankings than other participants in any SEO contest. That may be by spamming post and comment entries on blogs, creating worthless and junk pages filled with useless and unreadable keywords or by using hidden texts, cloaking and other Black Hat SEO techniques. That way they may even win any SEO contest, but is it really what SEO contest should be about?

Is it about showing that a webmaster can use bad techniques that will get him/her high rankings and by that way it is possible to win a contest? Or should it be about fair play, hard work with use of White Hat SEO techniques to show which SEO specialist is really the best?

Of course with limited time as 3 months it is hard to rank a website on 1st place with use of only White Hat techniques especially when there are hundreds of people trying to do the same with other techniques. But it is possible. All i try to say is that spamming and cheating is not the only way to win a SEO contest. Creating valuable text, nice graphics and layout can attract more people to your site and keep them on your site. Lets promote your site positively and have positive impact on how people find Search Engine Optimization. Its not about hidden texts, keyword stuffing, doorway pages and cloaking. Its about building your credibility, creating user friendly layout and interesting and unique content.

For search engines a SEO contest is not so important from their point of view as the only effects it has is creation of a new keyword(s) that didn’t existed in search engines indexes before the contest. The negative impact is spamming of search engines and other websites that webmasters, Google and other search engines have to deal with.

Try to win any SEO contest by using fair techniques, not by spamming and cheating search engines. Search engines, such as Google, will appreciate it and you wont regret it. During this SEOcontest2008 competition i will be doing only proper SEO optimization. I want to prove to others and myself that it is good way that SEO specialists should follow. And in few months we shall see the result.

In my next post lets focus on keywords used in different SEO contests among the years. Do they matter, what keyword should be used in the future?