SEO contests a new effective way of internet marketing

First, let me explain you what a SEOcontest is. A SEOcontest is a contest where every webmaster can build a website or page about a special keyword. There must be no results in the targeted search engine for that keyword or keyphrase. So most contests have not existing words in them or have the site name of the sponsor in the keyphrase. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. Where you need to rank number 1 in Google for the keyphrase ambatchdotcom seocontest. And when you become number one in Google or another search engine and you stay at that spot until the end of the contest you win the main price. Normally thousands of dollars.

But how can a simple seocontest sponsor make profits from such a contest if it costs that much? That will be explained in this article.

The most big contests dure a couple of months or even half a year. So it can attract a lot of webmasters/SEO's because they can jump in any time, even if the contest is already going on for a month. And big prices attract big amounts of media and participants. So you're brand gets big attention for a long time.




Also, most contests contain the main keywords or the site name or the sponsor of the contest. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. The sponsor is ambatch.com. The contest is already going for a month and there are allready over 500,000 participants who promote the name ambatch.com. So when you start a SEOcontest you will be known in the whole webmaster world. Also a lot of contests like the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest have they're main keywords in them. In the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest the keyphrase is Cpayscom2 Online Casino to rank in msn at the first spot. But cpays.com is an affiliate program for online casinos, so the participants are not only promoting the main sponsor but also the main keyphrase of that sponsor.




In most contests there are rules. A common used rule is that you have to place a link back to the sponsor of the contest. So in the Cpayscom2 Online Casino you have to place a link back to cpays.com with the text online casino. But every participant has been optimizing their website for the keyphrase Cpayscom2 Online Casino. That keyphrase contains the words online casino. So every backlink from a participating page is a high value backlink! And if there are 500,000 participating websites, it makes the sponsor a huge jump in the serps and lots of traffic and....MONEY!

Necessity Of Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization has evolved over years. In good old days, tweaking on-page parameters like meta tags, headlines, alt tags, keyword shoving and anchor texts used to fetch good results. This is less likely these days since the techniques are simple to implement. As a result there is no dearth of optimized websites.

Be that as it may, for new websites it is always a good idea to start doing all that before exploring other avenues. In this article I will look at why search engine optimization is necessary, proceeding to unravel basic issues in this game before touching on aging factor which I believe is the cornerstone of success on the web.


Why search engine optimization?

When you are looking for information on a topic on the web, you usually query your favorite search engine for search terms relevant to your topic. The search engine on its part displays a list of web-pages which it thinks are closely related to your search term. The web-pages that appear at top are considered more important than the ones that appear successively below. Question arises as to how search engines must know which pages are more important for the search query.

This is where you step into the realm of search engine optimization. For all your painstaking effort, if your webpage is not considered important by search engines, you will remain undiscovered forever. Remember, search engines are not humans. They are machines. Which is why you need to let your webpage talk to them to achieve top ranking.


The mental block – do I need it?

If search engine optimization is important, why is it that many website owners still do not feel any need for it? One may say they are naïve, so they are. I have come across many of them who strongly feel that after a website is launched, nothing more needs to be done. There is a perception that once a website is there in world-wide-web, it is bound to be ‘known’ soon. Known to whom? ‘Why, Google will know me’ is a common refrain. It is only much later that one discovers that nobody, not even Google knows his site.

To be true, Google’s knowing your website is not a big deal. Just have an already-indexed website point a link to your main page. Google will shortly find out your main page and from there your other pages as well. This is exactly the way Google is indexing billions of new webpages everyday.

On the flip side, suppose your webpage has nice description of trekking in Himalayas. You have provided good information and pictures on the subject in the page. Yet if I am to search for the term ‘trekking in Himalayas’ in Google, will I get to see your webpage in the first 20 or 30 results? Perhaps not. Because, even though your website is indexed by Google, it still does not know that your webpage on ‘trekking in Himalayas’ is important enough to be listed high for the term.


On to optimizing web content

If indeed optimizing your web content is necessary, how do you proceed? As mentioned in the beginning, search engine optimization is an exercise of dressing up your webpage based on a chosen set of keyword phrases. This is to be done in such a way that the content appeals to human visitors as much as it does to search engine robots.

In a previous article [http://www.prioriti.in/blogs/?p=48], I have dealt on how to include keyword phrases to write an optimized content. To be sure, other than optimization you will need quality incoming links as well. But that is a different story.


The basic issues

If we have understood the inevitability of search engine optimization, let us briefly touch upon some basic issues.

1 Search engines list a webpage, not a website. This means one has to optimize individual web-pages (except those that are public disclosures) while maintaining overall aim and balance of the website.

2 Optimization of a webpage, in its primitive, centers around strategically locating one or more keyword phrases in that webpage. Number of keyword phrases to be used and frequency of each will depend on total number of content-words in that page.

3 Optimization for search engines is not an one-off exercise. Rather it has to be an ongoing effort to create web-pages. Websites that are veterans of many years have thousands of web-pages in their database.

4 Search engine optimization usually does not fetch immediate result. For new websites, specially in case of Google, it can be a long wait, sometimes several months.

5 If your website generates lot of traffic by itself, it has a fair chance to rank high in SERPs’ (search engine result pages), even if you have not done much of an optimization (for example, xe.com’s real-time currency conversion service). This means that your product or service is so unique that simple word-of-mouth publicity is enough to bring in torrents of visitors, while also ensuring prominent rank in search results.

6 Search engine optimization is not merely an exercise of shuffling keyword phrases. The content has to make sense to readers. In other words, ensure that your content passes usability test.

7 Apart from keyword-enriched content, there are more factors responsible for achieving top rank, specially building quality links that point to your website. To search engines, incoming links are like ‘votes’ in favor of your website. A good quality link carries considerable weight in the eyes of search engines.

8 Finally, lest one forgets, optimizing for search engines is only one part of the game. The other equally important necessity is to retain and satisfy your visitors.

Summing up – the aging factor

In Bengali, my mother tongue, there is a saying, which when roughly translated, means ‘seasoned paddy-grains make more rice’. In SEO parlance, nothing beats if you are at it for years. Search engines love the aging factor. Create good content. Allow it to settle. Revisit it to update occasionally. Repeat the cycle.

In other words, search engine optimization is all about letting it known that your website is a treasure-hub of great relevant content that only gets better as time passes.

Targeted Local Search Engine Optimisation

One of the key elements to Internet and Online marketing is identifying your target market. Who are they, how old are they and most importantly where are they located? With the advent of more advanced geo-location software systems being used by Google we are now able to target very specific markets with our online marketing campaigns. The first step in this process is to write down and identify your market with the 3 questions I have listed above. Once you have done that then you should consider the following and address them in order to hone in on your target search engines and then consequently your target market.




I will use the example of a Web Designer and Developer in Melbourne, Australia.




1. The website should be hosted in the country and if possible the city in which you plan on targeting with your online marketing strategy.




2. The website should have on page search engine optimisation which is tailored towards the region - country - city. So, in other words these three elements, if they are identified as the target market, should be mentioned in titles, keywords, meta tags, content, on page titles, links etc within the website.




3. Any controllable external links to the website should have a sprinkling of the region - country - city within them, without over doing it.




4. The website should have a fully qualified domain name. In this case .com.au




5. The website should be listed in the regional Google search index. You can go to your local search engine and simply register and request for the googlebot to scan your website. If you host within the region and/or you have a fully qualified domain name then you should get listed within the regional index anyway but registering will triply ensure.




6. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and then go to Tools->Set Geographic Location. Some sites target users for a particular geographic location. For example, a site may target all users within a specific country, or it may target only those users who reside within a very small geographic area within that country. Using this feature allows you to further refine your target your market.




7. Have a regional specific phone number. For example, for website design in Australia it would be 1300 880 841.




8. Get listed in local online directories.




9. Use a Google map that shows your business location. This will ensure that your regional association is further enhanced within the search engines.




Once you have done all of these things then your website should be fully targeted towards your identified target market. Now you just need to make your site interesting, make it sell and get it developed properly in order to do this.