News and Announcements

**vangogh** · 08-30-2006, 11:41 PM

I guess I missed that release.

**TimSchroeder** · 08-31-2006, 11:21 PM

Tick tock, Tick tock...

**TimSchroeder** · 09-01-2006, 12:19 AM

The Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity SEO Contest ended with 513,000 results in Google. That's not to bad considering the rule set.

Thanks to all who participated and to all those who have sponsored this contest. It's really a great list of prizes.

The winners of Webmaster-Talk.com's First SEO Contest, Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity, are as follows:

1st place:
www.retsambchar.com
Domain Registration Date: 04-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: The Voice of the Martyrs at http://www.persecution.com

2nd place:
www.seo-poland.com
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Big Cat Rescue at http://www.bigcatrescue.org

3rd place:
www.linkfor.us
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Action Against Hunger at http://www.actionagainsthunger.org

4th place:
www.seocontestant.com
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Autism Society of America at http://www.autism-society.org

5th place:
superseo.org
Domain Registration Date: 17-May-2006
Chosen Charity: The Christopher Reeve Foundation at http://www.christopherreeve.org

Here is a screenshot of the first five Google results at 12:00 A.M. Eastern U.S. time:

Congrats to each of you!

I'll be contacting each of you shortly to arrange prize payouts.

I hope everyone has enjoyed this SEO contest. I also hope that it has helped the Charity of your choice gain a little free publicity.

----------------
A few of the runner-ups are:

www.cpaisma.com
Domain Registration Date: 04-Apr-06
Chosen Charity: Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation at http://www.preventcancer.org

Nintendos Website (link removed because it appears it was spammed to death).
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-06
Chosen Charity: Autism Society of America at http://www.autism-society.org

www.site-sift.org
Domain Registration Date: 08-Apr-06
Chosen Charity: American Cancer Society at http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp

www.mes-seomaster.com
Domain Registration Date: 01 Aug 2006
Chosen Charity: Refugees International at http://charityreports.give.org/Publi...?CharityID=451

oxbil.com/retsambew-dash-klat-for-charity
Domain Registration Date: 16-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Youth Development Fund at http://www.youthdevelopmentfund.org/

www.talkupation.info
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: The American Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org/

Thanks again and stay tuned for the announcement of a future contest!

**emory7** · 09-01-2006, 12:35 AM

I'd like to say thanks to Tim and Webmaster-Talk for making this contest a great learning experience for me and a lot of fun. IMHO, the thought that went into the rules really made this a model for other SEO contests. I look forward to sharing and discussing what happened.

My white hat is off to all the excellent top competitors as well. You guys are great and kept me up late many a night. I am sure you will make tons with your SEO efforts.

**praveen** · 09-01-2006, 02:12 AM

Congrats to the Winners and to all those who participated.

**vangogh** · 09-01-2006, 03:31 AM

Congratulations to everyone, both the winners and the participants. Any chance we can get some of you to share some of what you learned about what worked and what didn't. I'm sure we can all learn quite a bit from your efforts.

Thanks again.

**seopoland** · 09-01-2006, 03:48 AM

Hi,

2nd place, not so bad

How we do it?
Hmmmm - 3 things:

Content with rssv- which change every day
Links in Co-op - not so many points
WebDirectories Links

As you see I have a lot of links and this help me, but not so strong links like 1st place site.

**TimSchroeder** · 09-01-2006, 11:44 AM

Contest Winners. I'll be contacting each of the sponsors and provide them with the email listed on the winning pages. I also am going to list the sponsors below and and we can keep track of who has paid up.

Details of payouts are in the first post of this thread:

Cash from TimSchroeder
Prizes Sent: 1st place YES, 2nd Place YES, 3rd Place YES

Cash from Praveen of Webmasters-Cavern.com
Prizes Sent: YES

Copies of SendStudio and TrackPoint from Interspire.com
Prizes Sent: YES

Copies of evoArticles by evo-Dev.com
Prizes Sent: YES

Free email credits through Vertical Response.
Prizes Sent: YES

Copies of Spy Sweeper and Window Washer by Webroot.com
Prizes Sent: Yes

6000 series 5.1 Speakers from Dustin07 of Technical Cable Applications
Prizes Sent: I will mail out.

Free Logo Designs by Logo-Mojo.com
Prizes Sent: YES

Copies of Jim Daniel's ezWebBusinessBuilder
Prizes Sent: YES

an iPod from Dan F of Dan's Blog.
Prizes Sent: YES

Template from TemplateMonster.com.
Prizes Sent: Yes

Premium listing on AffiliateGuide.com
Prizes Sent: YES

4.5 gigs of public domain content from Nintendo.
Prizes Sent: YES

Manual directory submissions by Seoster.com
Prizes Sent: NO. Registration attempt failed. Sent a few emails but received no reply.

PayPal or $250 in unique content from Constant-Content.com
Prizes Sent: YES

$100 worth of click credit to list products/services within Midano.com's Domain Industry Price Comparison Engine
Prizes Sent: YES

Cash from John Scott of the new V7n Directory
Prizes Sent: YES

**TimSchroeder** · 09-01-2006, 11:51 AM

linkfor.us : Please post an email on your website. I can't find one.

**seocontest** · 09-01-2006, 01:28 PM

My secret is research test what works and does not work I found new info just at the end my site should continue to move up moving on to new contest and getting back my #1 spot in the carcasherdotcom seocontest currently #2

**Midano** · 09-01-2006, 05:07 PM

Winners:

Congratulations!
Please PM me for instructions on how to claim and use your prizes provided by Midano.com - Complete Domain Resource

Leo.

**jeter4982** · 09-01-2006, 06:01 PM

Congrats to all the winners! Unfortunately I could not get into the top 5, but it was fun none the less. Thank you for hosting such a great contest Tim...

Tom

**mdvaldosta** · 09-01-2006, 07:52 PM

Congrats to all.

**JohnScott** · 09-01-2006, 10:05 PM

V7 has sent $250 to the first place contestant as promised. Congrats to all the winners!

**emory7** · 09-01-2006, 11:35 PM

Received. Thanks so much, John!

**praveen** · 09-02-2006, 01:26 AM

Webmasters Cavern has sent the $50 to the Winner as promised. Congrats once again

**sixty6** · 09:02 PM

hey just so you know Tim me and Dustin are the owners of linkfor.us (the domain is registered at sixty6domains.com and hosting is by me

-> Sixty6 Hosting - cPanel and Plesk Web Hosting)

I don't think Dustin is online, but I'll put up my E-Mail address in the footer for a day!

**Dustin07** · 09-03-2006, 08:21 PM

Quote:

hey just so you know Tim me and Dustin are the owners of linkfor.us (the domain is registered at sixty6domains.com and hosting is by me

-> Sixty6 Hosting - cPanel and Plesk Web Hosting)

I don't think Dustin is online, but I'll put up my E-Mail address in the footer for a day!

LOL, I was building links all the way up until this last week and then somehow completely forgot about the contest... been camping for the past few days.

Congrats to the winner though, it's been an interesting ride. And it passed MUCH quicker then I expected it to!

**emory7** · 09-05-2006, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

Congratulations to everyone, both the winners and the participants. Any chance we can get some of you to share some of what you learned about what worked and what didn't. I'm sure we can all learn quite a bit from your efforts.

Thanks again.

Here are some things I did and didn't do.

Built a static site for the most part
Links from directories - not many and most early in the contest
Tried to come up with content that someone would want to link to (not sure if that worked so well).
Wrote some SEO articles and submitted to article sites.
Some links from blogs, bookmark sites and maybe one friend or two's site.
Made an RSS feed and submitted it to some feed sites.

Did not use a blog script for the site - wished I had, though.
Did not use the coop network - my greatest fear was getting knocked off by coop.
No reciprocal links.

Some people may believe that because the domain I chose used syllables from the contest keywords (retsamb and char), it may have given the site an advantage. It's possible, but I don't think that "stemming" helps rankings. Google talks about it here, but it seems to be more about findability than rankings. If anyone knows anything about this, please post.

**Dustin07** · 09-05-2006, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Some people may believe that because the domain I chose used syllables from the contest keywords (retsamb and char), it may have given the site an advantage. It's possible, but I don't think that "stemming" helps rankings.

I agree with you. I'd say 90% of our efforts were based upon linkage. I posted some articles and did a lot of 3-site exchanges. The articles were somewhat random. Probably got into an article mood once a month since the beginning of the contest to kind of jump start a few more links here and there.

I think blogging helps a lot. You cover far more content and as you pointed out, hopefully you post something of interest that gains some natural linkage.