How to win the SEO world championship

You’ve probably heard about the SEO World Championship already. I’m not really into SEO contests and I’ve never participated in one. But this one is special because even though it’s white hat only it’s probably easier won by a black hat. Here’s my take on how to win the SEO world championship.

I was pointed to the SEO contest (which is obviously bullshit since SEO is) yesterday and from then heard about it a couple of times. So I went to check out what the fuss was about this time. And it didn’t take long before I had a good idea of how this can be won with only little efforts (unless they change the rules).

You see, the first thing I noticed was the mumbo jumbo about sites ignoring Google’s guidelines not being qualified for prizes. I quote:

Website will not use SEO methods which are clearly not approved by Search Engine Guidelines for example: doorway pages, etc. See Google webmaster Guidelines. (Any participant ignoring the Google webmaster guidelines will not qualify for a prize)

At first it seems great and very fair. I don’t know how they’ll judge whether a site is “ignoring the Google webmaster guidelines” but as I see it, it’s now possible to knock out any or all participants. Even without any significant work.

All you need is a SERP scraper and a link spamming script. Then configure your SERP scraper to gather all participating sites on a daily basis. Then create some participating sites by yourself but don’t work too hard on them. Just get a few links so they can rank in the top500 or so. And make sure your sites stay under the radar if anybody else uses this tactic

Then like 3-4 weeks before the contest ends you should begin to do link spamming for all participating URL’s (well, except your own…). Now all your competitors will be breaking the Google guidelines which goes like this:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Now all there’s left for you to do is make sure your own site(s) being somewhere in the SERP’s among those thousands of disqualified participants.

Remember that anybody can comment spam etc. with your URL at any time and Yahoo’s siteexplorer shows the links rather quickly. So by participating you’d be risking that your efforts is worthless because anyone can get you disqualified.

Now might be the time to re-consider if you’ll be participating, and if you will, which tactic to use…