With the first part of DarkBlue’s SEO challenge already decided, the optimization company announced the winner of the second stage of the challenge. The two-month competition had two stages in which winners could be declared.
Because yesterday was the last day of the competition, DarkBlue announced the winner of the Stayer portion on their message board. The winner, Anil Dash, used a different method than did the winner of the first stage, a contestant named Merkey.
Merkey created a forum dedicated to the keywords, and had numerous contextual links to sites that linked back to him using the “Nigritude Ultramarine” set.
Anil’s method involved his blog readers linking to him using the competition keywords. Dash made one entry on his blog asking people to link to him using the paired words. According to Wired News, after Anil’s late entry request (June 4th), he quickly gained the top spot and was never seriously challenged thereafter.
A snippet from Dash’s blog highlights his disdain for SEO tactics and has his request:
“(I)n order to prove that real content trumps all the shady optimization tricks that someone can figure out, and because I figure I deserve an iPod at least as much as the Star Wars Kid, I’m entering the contest. Do me a favor: Link to this post with the phrase Nigritude Ultramarine. I’d rather see a real blog win than any of the fake sites that show up on that search result right now.”
The winner of the Player portion of the contest received a mini iPod, while the winner of the Stayer part received a Flat Screen monitor from Sony.
Please read DarkBlue’s forum for further details.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest search news.
