It is amazing to see how many people cannot stick to some basic rules when placing their entry into the Directory Contest. After paging through the Google results you can quickly see which sites have broken the rules and those that have not. The very fact that this contest has cash on offer has brought out all of the usual tricks and cheating methods.

We know full well that it is not worth cheating, not because we fear getting caught but because it is just plain wrong. The competition has rules for a reason, it also has a purpose, to find out which of the directories are actually worthwhile webmasters submitting to. I am very pleased that Mike Dammann has stated that before announcing who has won anything he will be checking each entry which is in with a shot of winning something to ensure they have not broken the rules.

So far just by paging through the results I have seen all of the following rule breaking tricks:

People have…

• ….used the alt and meta tags to enhance their entry, this is clearly not what they do with regular listings.
• ….entered into the competition using normal web sites and blogs.
• ….added sitewide links from their own web site to their own entry page. (Considered on-site SEO).
• ….created dedicated pages for their entry which a regular listing does not receive.
• ….created a directory with only one listing, their entry into the competition, no doubt these will just disapear and never actually accept regular listings when the competition closes.

It reallly is quite amazing to see what people will try in order to win a cash prize! Common people, if you are entering, stick to the rules please!

Stumble it!