springleap.com has just announced an SEO challenge.
http://www.springleap.com/posts/view/springleap-seo-competition-r4000-in-prizes
At noon (South African clocks) on the 1st April (Just over TWO weeks time), if you are in one of the top 3 organic positions on google.com for the term springleap (no quotes - just the word springleap), you’ll be a winner.
Obviously google.com’s results might be different in different places, so 10 judges are being selected who will each take a screenshot at that time. Contact springleap if you want to be considered as a judge (no work - just take a screenshot and get a mention)
On each screenshot you’ll get 3 points for first place, 2 points for second and 1 point for third.
The results get added, and prizes awarded as follows:
3rd place - R500
2nd place - R1000
1st place - R2500
Obviously it’s expected that springleap will retain the number one spot, and not have to pay out R2500, but you never know…
At the moment at midnight on the 13th, the searches on google.com for springleap are as follows:
FIRST - springleap.com (sigh of relief from the springleap team!)
SECOND - bandwidth blog - Charl Norman stands to win R1000 if the results don’t change
THIRD - imod - Chris Mills stands to win R500 if the results don’t change
Update…
The first 3 5 7 8 7 judges have been confirmed - springleap is looking for up to 10. Maximum 5 in South Africa. Maximum 5 from other countries around the world.
Welcome from South Africa to:
Paul Jacobson from Chilibean
Catherine Luckhoff from Mango-OMC
David Donde from Origin Coffee
Rafiq Philips from Webaddict (has resigned as a judge as he decided trying to win is more fun)
Jenna Bloch
Welcome from International to:
Vinny Lingham from Synthasite in the USA
Grant Sidwell from GrantSidwell.com in the UK
Robert from iScatterlings
28 responses so far ↓
1 thebluestbutterfly // Mar 14, 2008 at 9:16 am
Well…I have started writing about it. Even if I am not a winner, it is
an intriguing company and I would write about it anyway.
I look forward to seeing your Twitters. E-Squared sounds marvelous.
2 rafiq // Mar 14, 2008 at 9:34 am
Just springleap?
Hmmm, some after hours fun
3 Jacques Marneweck // Mar 14, 2008 at 9:55 am
Is the word ’springleap’ in lower case?
4 Eric // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:01 am
Jacques - shouldn’t matter (According to SEO guru Allen who was first to come back to me with his opinion)
5 Eric // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:02 am
Jacques - but to make everything 100% clear, the judges will search ALL lower case…
springleap
6 paul // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:49 am
lol..
nice way to buy backlinks.
7 Eric // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:55 am
Yo Paul - i’ve got FAR cheaper ways of buying backlinks!
but now intrigued to find out who the best SEO guys are, as have had…
A couple of people telling me that springleap is the authority site and WON’T be pushed out of position 1!
A couple of people telling me they’ll DEFINITELY be number ONE.
Someone has to win. Someone has to lose.
8 Springleap // Mar 14, 2008 at 12:47 pm
woohooo … nice competition..!
9 paul // Mar 14, 2008 at 1:50 pm
you have any idea how difficult its going to be to knock springleap out of their number 1 spot?
1. They have over 100 backlinks already . Most of the anchor text is that specific keyword / keyphrase already or contains the keyphrase.
2. The word springleap is in their domain.
3. They have the text springleap in their page title on every indexed page as it is.
apart from a serious google bombing the only successful way to achieve this would be to create a silo site with various authoritative siloe’d pages pointing to a specific page with information regarding the keyphrase and unfortunately theres only much info you can give on that keyword that would be beneficial without serious spam and thereby crossing the black hat line.
Not saying it can’t be done, but it’s hardly worth the effort.
I agree with the people that say that they (springleap) are the authoritative site for that keyphrase. In order to change that one of the things you can do is to convince more than 150 other sites to link back to you with that keyphrase as the anchor text in order to manipulate who the authoritative site actually is. Unethically it can be done.
I personally would not participate in such an exercise because essentially what you’re trying to set out to do is to manipulate results with the only objective being to ultimately mess with the algorithm that determines what true searches are sposed to reveal.
Once you start doing that, you then need to ask yourself if all other results on google are actual best match results based on authority?
Don’t kill the search engines, when I want to search for something I want to be able to find meaningful data because its the best out there and not because the serp is nothing more than the result of clever manipulation.
If Google then starts displaying only manipulated results, how effective are search engines then? They then just become a worthless tool affected by spam.
10 Andrew // Mar 14, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Word of advise: In the post or website your planning to SEO for this competition, DON’T LINK TO THE SPRINGLEAP.COM WEBSITE!!.
You will simply increase their rank, which will make it hopeless, of ever getting above them.
Just for the guys that don’t know this.
11 thebluestbutterfly // Mar 15, 2008 at 9:19 am
The two entries that are winning right now were both written before this contest started.
12 Springleap // Mar 15, 2008 at 12:12 pm
imod has been knocked off the third spot by viralmarketer, flickr is back down to 4th ..
13 springleap // Mar 15, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Eish ya, the SERPS are not playing nicely!
14 springleap // Mar 16, 2008 at 12:11 am
Seems a little silly that the results are being drawn from International SERP rankings, when Springleap is a local start up. The winner should be from a Google SA search..
15 Eric // Mar 16, 2008 at 10:52 am
Chris - nice idea
perhaps we’ll have a springleap South Africa SEO comp in the future
16 Eric // Mar 16, 2008 at 10:53 am
by the way, Chris, i just checked google.co.za and Paul Jacobsen is now number 1 under the .co.za rankings
17 Robin // Mar 17, 2008 at 9:26 am
Personally I found this a good excuse to write a post and drive some traffic to my site. If I win, great, if I loose, at least I got a few hits out of it and supported a local startup. It’s all good fun and shouldn’t be taken too seriously…
18 Springleap // Mar 17, 2008 at 9:43 am
Oh Im 2nd and 3rd now..
Webaddicts just posted something.. Rafiq has PR6.. this will be interesting to watch
19 Eric // Mar 17, 2008 at 9:52 am
Rafiq can’t win. He’s a JUDGE.
If his site comes within the top 3, then we’ll simply look at the next website, as his website won’t be counted…
as won’t any of the other Judges.
UPDATE: Rafiq has RESIGNED as a JUDGE as he has decided trying to win is more fun
20 Springleap // Mar 18, 2008 at 9:28 pm
This is heating up - Rafiq closing in.. or is he.
21 Dimitrio // Mar 21, 2008 at 6:09 am
This seems to be causing a stir in the SA blogosphere, makes for interesting read on the blogs.
22 Springleap // Mar 21, 2008 at 12:49 pm
If I’m still ahead of Rafiq come Monday next week I got this won.. not sure if that will happen.
23 Springleap - the countdown has begun | Web AddiCT(s); // Mar 29, 2008 at 2:03 pm
[...] The springleap seo contest was first announced by via the spingleap blog and eric’s post about the springleap seo contest. [...]
24 Springleap // Mar 29, 2008 at 2:22 pm
a few days to go
25 robin // Mar 29, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Jees, Charl and Rafiq are neck and neck. Last night Rafiq was second, moved back to third now.
26 Dimitrio // Mar 30, 2008 at 1:00 am
Competition is heating up - One day left!
27 Chris M // Mar 30, 2008 at 1:01 am
Absolutely, I actually blogged about it here: http://imod.co.za/index.php/2008/03/28/the-springleap-seo-battle-continues/
It’s going to be a couple interesting days!
28 Vote For My Fit-Shan T-Shirt On Springleap.com! | Mike Stopforth // Apr 2, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] the blogosphere has it’s conflicting opinions about the Springleap SEO competition Eric Edelstein has watched his new baby’s rankings soar up the [...]
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