SEOwalk Contests Perpetuates Wrong Focus - SEOwalk Rankings, Not Qualified Traffic

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SEO Companies Can Talk the Talk, But Can They Walk the Walk

A cash prize and recognition is available to the Search Engine Optimization company that can consistently get top rankings in Google, MSN and Yahoo and keep them there.

(PRWEB) February 26, 2005 -- Many Search Engine Optimization companies talk a great game, but deliver poor results. Others deliver great results over time, but are not good about talking about themselves.

SEOwalk is designed to once and for all add some real transparency and accountability to the industry and help the Good Guys get publicity and be objectively recognized for consistent good results over time.

Inspired by some of the past Search Engine Optimization contests - yet they all had the one major flaw in that they were about optimizing for just one point in time and not on an ongoing basis - thus there was no clear and objective way to tell who was doing a consistently good job.

SEOwalk is another such contest, but one in which results are posted monthly on an ongoing basis. This better reflects what customers want from their Search Engine Optimization partner. Consistently good results over time!

Along with the public recognition of being on the top of the SEOwalk results, whomever has the top average of the composite rankings after one year (June 2006) will receive a prize of $500.

Everyone and anyone is free to participate. Full Contest details and Rules are posted at http://www.seowalk.com

From http://www.seowalk.com/:

Contest Rules

"You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?"

SEOwalk (a contest with results posted on an ongoing monthly basis with no end date) is meant to help bring accountability to the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. On the first business day of each month (starting in June of 2005 to give some time to get the word out), the SEOwalk results from the prior month will be posted here. Rankings will be based on a non-filtered search from a Pageviews computer in Arizona at a random time on the last business day of each month. There will be separately reported monthly rankings of up to the top 100 contestants, based on their placement in the search engine results for the term "SEOwalk" (without the quotation marks), for each of the following search engines: A. Google, B. Yahoo, C. MSN Search, and D. a composite ranking weighted by the market share percentages of the above three search engines.

2. Everyone and anyone is free to participate. You are welcome to use new or existing websites - whichever you prefer. To be listed in the results as an actual contestant, the page(s) that you are optimizing to rank highly for the term "SEOwalk" (without the quotation marks) should somewhere on the page have the following: The words SEOwalk by and then the name to which that entry should be credited (most likely the name of your Search Engine Optimization company) that is a hyperlink to where a potential customer can get more information about you/your company (most likely the web address of your company website). Example: If your company name was Example, Inc. and your website was located at http://www.example.com then the page that you are optimizing for SEOwalk would have somewhere on that page the following:
SEOwalk by Example, Inc.

3. Along with the public recognition of being on the top of the SEOwalk results, whomever has the top average of the composite rankings after one year (June 2006) will receive a prize of $500 (also, there is a chance that other sponsors may come aboard and add to that prize and/or help create other rewards). The SEOwalk will continue on a monthly basis even after that first year - it is truly meant as a way to make visible and reward consistent performance over time.

4. Sponsors (Pageviews and LinkageXpress), and any and all of their related companies, affiliates, partners and customers are ineligible to participate in the SEOwalk. That's it. Start your optimizing!

Also from http://www.seowalk.com/

They can talk the talk...
but can they walk the walk?

I have been doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for nearly seven years now (through my companies PageViews and LinkageXpress) and have seen good and bad Search Engine Optimization strategies and companies come and go.

The frustration has always been that customers have very limited information and tools to tell the good from the bad.

Many Search Engine Optimization companies talk a great game, but deliver poor results.

Many others deliver great results over time, but are not good about talking about themselves.

SEOwalk was inspired by some of the past Search Engine Optimization contests - yet they all had the one major flaw in that they were about optimizing for just one point in time and not on an ongoing basis - thus there was no clear and objective way to tell who was doing a consistently good job.

SEOwalk is another such contest, but one in which results are posted monthly on an ongoing basis.

This better reflects what customers want from their Search Engine Optimization partner (consistently good results over time!)

The Contest Rules are posted in the left column. The term that, as of the date of this post, appears in no search engine, and which all contestants will try to obtain high search result rankings for is:

SEOwalk

Obviously, to keep things fair, I and my companies cannot participate in the SEOwalk contest - but I believe that we do a good job by our customers, and, by helping to make the industry more transparent and accountable, we benefit as well. At the very least, when a perspective customer tries to bargain with us by comparing us to someone who has never made any of the SEOwalk ranking results, we can say: "Well, it sounds like they can definitely talk the talk, but from the SEOwalk results, it does not appear that they can walk the walk..."

So start your optimizing and show the world that you can walk the SEOwalk!

-Terry Mickelson

[Comment by Chris Nielsen of SEOBy.org]

SEOwalk is interesting, but is it a real indication of how well a search engine optimization firm is going to do for a client? Not in my opinion. This is not really about what SEO firms are good as it is to stoke egos and give those that win or rank well a thing to brag about.

If you wanted to have a REAL contest, it would not be for some made-up word, but a real life keyword or phrase. Something like Vioxx, Mesothelioma, home mortgage, paris hilton, or something else.

But the real problem with these contests is that they take the focus off what should be the real focus for a SEO, and that is the increase of qualified traffic to a site. SEO projects should be judged by what is shown in the web traffic reports and not the ranking reports.

While traffic may follow rankings, there is no question what is happening then you look at the web stats. You can see the change in traffic and you can see what scored keyword phrases are bringing people to the site.

Maybe a top ranking for a phrase really does not generate all that much traffic. I have seen this for myself, or even more important, while the top ranking does generate traffic, the conversions are very, very bad. Yes, it could be related to the site, but this argument fails when you have other phrases that convert very well.

Hey, rankings are fun, but it's an ego thing and not something that should be the goal of a project when you are trying to produce results for a client.

(hris

P.S. Oh yeah, SEOwalk by NielsenTech.com

New Contest from Echolist Directory sustains linking mania madness
Now there's another contest that is sponsored by Echolist Directory. This time the prize is $1,000. In order to enter the contest, you need to have a page with the text and links mentioned below:

I'm a contestant in the Echolist Directory contest
The contest is brought to you by the Echolist Directory.

And your page must be on top of the results for a search on "Echolist Directory". That's "Echolist Directory" not "echo list directory", or "echo listdirectory".

Well, if there's $1,000 at stake, I just it might be worth tossing a few links around. I don't see any reason why one page can't win two contests. Man, that would put my company on the map, wouldn't it? The thing is, this Echolist Directory contest is just like the seowalk contest. It proves nothing and the $1,000 in prize money would be much better spent on SEO, optimization, submission, and other forms of actual web marketing. Linking can work, heck if things are not too competitive, and this page has already proved that for seowalk. I really didn't expect to return to this page several months after doing some work for the seowalk contest and find it still at the top of the rankings. It's nice, but I'm not about to drop the optimization services that we offer in favor of linking.

Why? Because it's too easy to manipulate. And search engine history has shown that any methods that we can manipulate and scam will eventually be rendered less effective or eliminated. Good basic scored keyword research and simple optimization has been working for us for over 6 years and while rankings may be all over the map, the amount of traffic that is generated for the sites we have worked on has generally be constant, if the site has been maintained and updated. I don't mean the site optimization, I mean the site content If you act like your site means something to you and show the world you care, Google at least is going to notice that and they will also care. I think that is about the most important thing you can do for your site, whether it's seowalk or Echolist Directory. You just have to have a good site

08/19/2005
If this page does well and people contact me to do the same thing for them, they will be out of luck. Echolist Directory may or may not be a good marketing idea for Echolist Directory, but it's not something I would do for a client since it's much too limited in scope and longevity.

Reality check 08/22/2005
This page can now be found in the second page of results for the phrase "echolist directory", and that has not hurt it's top-o-the-heap placement for "seowalk". How nice! I really didn't expect that since I only plunked down a few links. This quick showing prompted me to add echolist directory links on a few other places. I'll lay back for a few weeks and not do much, then I'll let loose to try and rank for the end of the contest. Since I'm trying a little harder than I did for SEOWalk, I doubt that I will succeed. I think you do better with these kind of things if you don't care...

Update 08/26/2005
No change to either seowalk or echolist directory placements.

Update 08/31/2005
Echolist Directory; page 1 Google, page 2 Yahoo
SEOWalk; page 1 Google, page 1 Yahoo

Update 09/08/05
Google: seowalk #1, echolist directory #6
Yahoo: seowalk #1, echolist directory #19, 2nd page

Update 11/01/05
Well, we've lost out #1 spot for seowalk, and I didn't bother checking for echolist directory. I got bored after our initial success and really don't have the time to work on stuff that feeds the ego and not the wallet... Good luck to all those that pursue this!

Ok, so I wrote that and then decided to pull all the echolist directory crap and add back the seowalk stuff that I removed or changed. Now the page is pretty much optimized the way it first was when we had such good results. I'm not going to touch it again, but we'll see if that helps in this seowalk "competition"..

Update 12/05/05
Well, we are back on top again at Google.com and #2 at Yahoo.com. I see that I missed the part about the contest ending in June... I guess it was the other one that was going to continue longer. Hey, I don't know what to make of this, but the SEOWALK domains have expired and will be available again soon. Gee, do you think it might be better to SELL the darned things rather than just let them expire...? Well, perhaps I can snag one of them when they are released... (hris