From time to time an SEO contest will be launched that we may place an entry for. This section of our blog will be where we record what we did and how we ranked in any competition that we enter.

You don’t know what an SEO contest is? Then read on…

The first english language contest was started in May 2004 by SearchGuild. The objective was to see who could rank highest for the search term ‘nigritude ultramarine’ in Google search engine.

The winner of the competition was the person who’s web site ranked first in the search engine on the 9th of June 2004 at 9am GMT for that particular search term. The prize on offer was an iPod and Flat Panel LCD Screen.

In all there were over 200 entries into the competition and the eventual winner was named as Anil Dash. While the competition did raise some eyebrows due to the variety of astonishing tricks web masters employed, Dash stated that his goal in entering the contest was to ‘prove that real content trumps all the shady optimization tricks that someone can figure out’.

Dash didn’t resort to such tactics, he simply wrote a weblog entry and asked his readers to link to it. What’s more, Dash’s entry is still ranked first place in Google today!

There have been hundreds of competitions since, with each competition or contest having their own unique set of rules which must be adhered to in order to claim the prize. Prizes can vary, some contests offer cash rewards while others will offer SEO contracts and some just offer the pure right of stating ‘I won that contest!’.

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