In layman's term, SEO contest is a competition taken part by webmasters using a search engine's website pagerank system. Typically, the competition uses a meaningless and non-existent keyword for optimization. Several of the most known SEO contest keywords include the "hommingberger gepardenforelle", "Busby SEO Challenge" and the "Busby SEO Test".

Typically, a contest is set up and a keyword is limited by the contest holder. The object of the contest then is to develop a web site or a web page that is optimized for that keyword. The destination then is to obtain the 1st place rank for a search engine or some search engines for the given keyword.

In normal niches the competition is not as killing as in SEO contests, well... exclude for the search engine optimization niche off coarse. Only to be the best in an SEO contest you don't always have to have a big pocket, or a big network of authority websites. You can also win with a good strategy, and great SEO tactics.

The number one for the search engine contest keyword phrase is constantly the one everybody is concentrated upon. And everything that page does is being duplicated by hundreds of people. And that's not what you need, do you? You wish to win by surprise. The best way is off course hitting the first spot a day in front the end of the contest. But how can you make that? Well I'll explain it to you.

Starting of all you need to get yourself indexed, get some low pagerank backlinks from many link directories or something. This is to recognize your place in the contest, once you rank at a spot for the specific key phrase you kind of know how hard it is going to be, if you place on the first 3 pages of Google the contest isn't that hard. But if you rank at the tenth page it's getting to be a little more difficult.

The next thing is to use your network of websites. You can do that by placing a link from each website to your contest page. But if you have many websites and many pages on those websites, it can trigger a Google penalty, and you don't wish that in the contest. What you also can do is creating a page on each website you own and link to that page from all the pages within the website. You will get high valuable links with a lot of weight because the links are on topic.

Many SEO contestants use blog because it can be a great source of helpful, fresh and dynamic contents. Furthermore, most search engines prefer blogs as compared to a common website.

The history of SEO contest was considered to have established first on May 7, 2004 when SearchGuild sponsored the nigritude ultramarine challenge. The nigritude ultramarine SEO contest finished later on two months (July 7, 2004) and was won by Anil Dash - the company Vice President of Six Apart. When asked about what is his technique in winning the competition, Dash said that valid and educational contents are the name of the game. In addition, he also did not practice any black-hat optimization techniques in the contest.

Long term contests have several the benefit and hurt of having to survive multiple Google updates.

Google updates make or break your contest entry. If you've involved in any black hat SEO, the more updates that you pass, the more likely it is that Google will find your technique and punish your web site. A short term contest allows more flexibility in your seo technique. You can get your hat a little dirty and not be in much danger of loosing your ranking because of a Google penalty.