Competition time! Are you the best SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) person in Ireland? Want to prove it? Via the Irish Web Awards vehicle, we’re running another competition to see who’s the best at SEO in Ireland.
Photo owned by Mister Wilson (cc)
You have until December 1st at 3pm to rank your website for the following phrase: geansai gorm. Yup, we’re using a phrase as gaelige in order as as not to pollute the indices as much as possible.
Criteria:
- Entries open to all Irish individuals and Irish businesses.
- Search is to be performed on google.ie. Without Pages From Ireland selected, with personalisation off and from an Irish IP address.
- The domain to rank must be a new domain. Must not contain the keywords in the domain name at all and no ccTLD domains are to be used.
- Only want the homepage to rank, not other non-useful pages.
- 301 redirects are not permitted.
- Keywords as gaeilge instead of english but copy can be in English
Edit: Forgot to say a big thanks to both Cormac and Richard for their feedback about this idea.
Great idea damien. Might even have a go
What do you win?
Before everyone goes off blogging about blue jumpers, please don’t even bother doing so on WordPress.com as part of this competition. Your blog will likely be suspended.
I wonder if any will show up on http://en.search.wordpress.com/?q=geansai+gorm
sounds like a great competition
@Maryrose Love? And a piece of glass. Which we’ll keep away from people with hammers. The main prize is being seen as the best
@Donncha Why would WordPress suspend a blog that takes part?
Thje prize for me is what I’d learn about SEO. Brilliant idea.
Damien – there are SEO contests going on all the time and they’re generally written in a spammy way, and usually designed to drive traffic to another site which is against our TOS.
Not all are spammy of course, but they’re not the sort of blogs that people like to see in a community like WordPress.com.
@Donncha Ah ok, I get you. So if they create splogs just to redirect to another site? Is using WordPress to host the actual site ok though?
Hiya,
Damien, does “The domain to rank must be a new domain.” mean I’d have to buy a domain to participate or could I use a subdomain on a domain I already own?
Jaime.
Unfortunately I’d say the blog would be suspended too, otherwise we’d have lots of blogs showing up talking inanely about Geansai Gorm, probably with text that’s totally unconnected to jumpers.
The blogs will abuse the tags pages, and our users will stumble upon them, get annoyed and fire off emails to support or blog about how much spam there is at WordPress.com.
So, sorry, but please advice bloggers to stay away from WordPress.com if they’re going to take part in the SEO contest.
good question, jaime.
Also, damien, you say that no ccTDL domains must be “used” – does that mean that the target domain must not be a ccLTD, or that none of the sites that are used to point the geansai gorm words to the site must be hosted on a ccLTD?
[…] Web Awards vehicle, we?re running another competition to see who?s the best at SEO in Ireland. Damien Mulley Blog Archive Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest SEO of them all? So who’s entering? __________________ PHP Code: […]
hrm. can’t spell ccTLD
An excellent idea. This should be fun… 🙂
Does it require registration or any form of “I am in” message?
Sounds like fun. Think we should limit this to new domains exclusively.
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Great idea, and I guess I should at least put in an entry. I will try to rustle something up under http://www.mybluejumper.com/
Yes, this sounds like a bit of fun, it might even sharpen up my SEO skills. How do you enter?
I will give it a go with http://bluejumperireland.com/
Jason.
Shocking… All the easy domain names are taken already!
Something more obscure it is, so.
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Went with the dutch translation myself – I’ve no idea why!
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If this is affiliated to the Awards ‘vehicle’ why is it the only award or category where people have to perform in order to enter? In the Awards proper, you could submit work you had done to be considered.
Also, I’d like to ask the question of why something spurious like ‘geansai gorm’ had to be picked? There are lots of not-for-profits out there with no ranking whatsoever who would love to get some free SEO from a bunch of people with the time on their hands to do it. Mycharity.ie would be able to give you a list of them – they are not rare!
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@Maryrose 1. Because as you know in SEO it is very hard, perhaps too hard, to fairly judge anything SEO related if people are not optimising for the same thing, at the same time, using the same rules.
2. After checking previous competitions where a charity was given the best ranked domain after, it showed that if non “spurious” terms were used it polluted the index for genuine search terms and thus affected all those other businesses or charities that were also looking to be found for the same search terms.
If you want myCharity.ie to rank well, why not get some of the SEO people you work with to do work on their site pro-bono, I don’t see how this competition is the only way for them to get a search listings push.
FYI I have nothing to do with mycharity.ie. They were just a name that came to mind that would be able to give you 10 + worthy charities that all have no PR or no ranking to speak of. But thanks for answering my question. I wish everyone the best of luck. 🙂
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I’m in 🙂
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Define ‘new domain’ please. What is the last applicable date of registration?
Damien, just spotted this, this afternoon. You’ve created a monster, but I’m game for a laugh. Here’s my effort at the Geansai Gorm competion is here. It’s really Roger G here – but I couldn’t resist the above link. Already I see I could have gotten a better domain name. Have to say I agree with Eoghan. SEO is bullshit.
I think he means the domain should not have existed before the geansai gorm contest started.
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Thank you Damien for spicing things up with this contest.
Let the fun begin !
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This is going to be an interesting competition.
Best of luck to all of you, I’ve no doubt workloads will suffer due to this little game.
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I would really like to know your oppinion on this : http://geansaigorm.blogsome.com/2008/11/04/exclusive-ggwinner-may-not-be-a-new-domain/
Of course before 27.11.2008 🙂
P.S. You don’t have to post this comment..
Regards,
Sounds like a good idea! I’m a week late it seems but I’m game!
I’m throwing my hat in the ring for ‘Geansai Gorm’ with http://www.msbcentral.com.
I’ve bitten the Geansai gorm bullet too -all be it slightly late with what I feel is a very different angle than most others. My effort is at http://www.asgaelige.com