Thoughts on a BHW SEO Competition?

To put it bluntly, I'm sick of all the shit around here, especially some of the SEO services. If a SEO competition was held on BHW it would let us see which services are working best in the current environment, who knows their shit, who's providing outdated tactics and most importantly who we are wasting our money on.

If there is enough intrested, I'd be willing to start one up and put up an initial prize fund of $100 for the winner. Rather than doing it for the prize fund though, the SEO services would do it for more business.. and member's could have a shot for fun/respect/(future service). If it did go ahead, there would need to be a few fair play rules:

- Must be a specific TLD.
- Keyword can't be in the domain name.
- Must be registered after today
- Rank checks done on google USA

I'd be happy to hold one every 3 months for a new keyword (brand new as in no results on google for this word) to see whats CURRENTLY working, the prize would/could be given at various intervals (ranking at the end of first week, first month, third month). It would also serve as a huge experiment and could prove quite interesting if participants were willing to share tactics.

Would you join in/donate to the prize fund? Any ideas are welcome.

That would definitely be interesting.

One thing I'd change. "brand new as in no results in google for this word". I hope that doesn't mean a made up word or something.

I think it would be more exciting in a medium/high competition market. I'd feel bad for the sites currently ranked for that keyword, but I think it would be a much better test group and would provide better results.

englandrm said:

That would definitely be interesting.

One thing I'd change. "brand new as in no results in google for this word". I hope that doesn't mean a made up word or something.

I think it would be more exciting in a medium/high competition market. I'd feel bad for the sites currently ranked for that keyword, but I think it would be a much better test group and would provide better results.

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Thanks for the input. Although I feel a made up word would be better (at least for the first competition) to ensure an even playing field and give everyone an fair chance from the start.

I think this sounds like a great idea. Like the idea of a non sense word too.

TheRedPill said:

I think this sounds like a great idea. Like the idea of a non sense word too.

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Would you be interested in taking part, or just watching as a kind of experiment/gauge who is the best?

Sounds interesting, I am sure that some of them will end up buying services of their competitors because they only target one part of the practise

webdesign said:

Thanks for the input. Although I feel a made up word would be better (at least for the first competition) to ensure an even playing field and give everyone an fair chance from the start.

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I can put some money towards the pot aswell.

And it HAS to be a made up word, otherwise there are a lot of things that could go wrong

This is kind of stupid in that the services all provide a different level of service. A 300 dollar service that creates a blog network, 50,000 xr link blast to the blog network, rss submit, ping, etc is going to probably yield better results then a 30$ 1 tier blog farm. But it costs 10x more. The services would have to compete APPLE to APPLE for this to even make any sense.

I think this is a great idea lol. Should be interesting. I may participate as well depending on the pool.

That reminds me of the ****** contest that I entered 3 or 4 months ago , Man that was fun !! it was a made up word and the site had to be registered one day after the contest.
We were allowed to have the keyword on the domain tho . but Op's idea sounds like a lot of fun !

This sounds like a great idea, as a consumer/audience. It's great to see what is and what isn't working, and that's what reviews are for right?

But how many people will actually try and compete?

Hamstamasta said:

Sounds interesting, I am sure that some of them will end up buying services of their competitors because they only target one part of the practise

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True, but the name of the game would be to rank #1 on google no matter what it takes, the contest would HAVE to be for the all-in-one services, as in most cases it takes more than 1 method to stay at the top of the pack.

BUT that's not to say the contest is limited to the all-in-one services, say if I (a member with no SEO business to date) managed to pull together a plan that got me ranked #1 for the contest, I could easily set up a new side business providing my all-in-one ranking solution, with all the members on BHW seeing the proof, I got a feeling the business would do pretty damn well.

If someone wanted to use a fellow BHW service to help them get ranked I don't see a problem with that, as long as they use the same service to get others ranked #1 in the end, it seems fair to me! SEO is all about strategy, so even if one thread claims to have "Amazing Niche Targeted High PR Links", they might ONLY have amazing results when coupled with another method. That's really where the compeition will get opened up, finding the right combination will be key, it's what separates the one trick ponies from the ones who really know their stuff.

Georgebg said:

I can put some money towards the pot aswell.

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Great, appreciate it George!

mudbutt said:

This is kind of stupid

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Your right, see my answer to Hamstamasta above!

d4l1t0s said:

That reminds me of the ****** contest that I entered 3 or 4 months ago , Man that was fun !!

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Thanks for letting me know about that, mind sending me a link?

Sinatra said:

But how many people will actually try and compete?

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Unless people don't want to potentially explode their sales, it'd be hard for them not to compete!

great idea, I can also add some money to the pool, let me know the terms and details when you are set if we will get agreement to make such a contest. it can give great value to all the members!

Where do the competitors sign up??
;b

I would be interested to sign up .. how do I do that ??

how do you control that they are actually using their service on the contest?
Shit they might just outsource a shit ton of work, just so they could win and get exposure.

CustomerSer said:

Where do the competitors sign up??
;b

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virtualc08 said:

I would be interested to sign up .. how do I do that ??

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I'll create another thread in the SEO section when we get a few more opinions.
I'll contact a few people who provide services later tonight and see what they think of the idea.

reinie said:

how do you control that they are actually using their service on the contest?
Shit they might just outsource a shit ton of work, just so they could win and get exposure.

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Take a look at my answer Hamstamasta. If they can provide results, I don't really mind who they outsourced it too! It's an open game so everyone can do anything, almost all SEO services outsource backlinking to an extent. We can always do backlink checks to see if anyone happens to be lying about something/disqualify them.

If you use a made-up word you will cut out a large part of SEO. G likes to see links, html tags, articles etc that are on topic, and indeed many seo techniques make use of this fact to find keywords, appropriate pages for backlinks etc that are keyword-rich for the given niche.

In the real world, no-one would try to rank for a made-up word, they would try to rank for a word or phrase that has low competition. If you use a made-up word you are going to skew your results set - giving a potentially false indication of seo services and techniques that are effective.