SEO Challenge ‘09 – Week 1 Update
Ajith | Jan 2009 | SEO Challenge
First of all, thanks to the 60 or so bloggers who approached me with their intention to participate in the SEO Challenge ‘09. I am glad I could approve more than 50% (32 to be exact) of them after scrutinizing. Believe me, it was a real tedious manual process. Unfortunately, I could not approve the rest due to one of the following reasons:
- Google Analytics tracking was not available on their blogs as of Dec 01st
- GA ‘View Only’ access was not shared on time
- Made-for-AdSense blogs with very little content
- Blog was not being updated for a couple of months or so
- Rated content, drug or banned content blogs
Week 1 Report
As mentioned in the rules, Week 1 report goes out on 12th and this report takes into account a value that is the average number of daily non-paid search visits for the last six weeks (Dec 01, 2008 – Jan 11, 2009). And our base value was the average daily search visits for December 2008. The percentage difference between these values is your gain (Check out our scoreboard for the updated values)
The following are the leading blogs for Week 1:
http://www.millionclues.com (71.00%)
http://www.techpp.com/ (33.87%)
http://www.read2know.com/ (28.93%)
http://www.madworldwii.com/ (28.81%)
http://www.technosamrat.com/ (14.13%)
The base value (Init Visits in the scoreboard) of those blogs with daily search visits for December 2008 less than 5 was supposed to be kept at 5 as per our first post. However, Daniel & I decided that it will be kept at 10 to give a fair chance to everyone and at the same time to curb explosive figures that relatively new blogs might be able to achieve. 10 is because it’s around the 25th percentile of all initial visits figures of the 32 participants. This formula will be maintained through out the competition.
SEO Strategies
Next week onwards, I shall request the participants to send around their strategies to encourage discussions around clean or white hat SEO methodologies. In the mean time please share your opinions and concerns here.
Dollar$hower SEO Challenge ‘09 Sponsors
Hi Ajith,
The initial figure of 10 for new blogs doesn’t make any sense(As far as I know.. ). The figure should be average of the values which takes all the blogs into account. All the blogs in the sense.. The blogs with 0 as their value will also be taken in to account…..
The % gain for a blog with 50 visits will be dramatic rather than for blogs with 500 visitors.. Or I guess you should have a better approach….. Hope you would analyze it and come up with a new algorithm!!
Thanks,
samrat
It sucks my other site didn’t get approved….. oh well….
Niche Titans’s last blog post… Aim To Rank For Long Tail Keywords
I have to improve dramatically in order to have any show in this contest. By the way, TechnoSamrat is right (although his anchor link leads nowhere :p )
If a new blog, with current traffic of 2 increases to 4, that is a 100% increase in traffic. However, if a blog with current traffic of 1000 increases to 1200, that is only 20% increase in traffic, even though there was a dramatic increase in traffic in the latter case. I guess a review of the judging process is necessary.
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My figures for this week are pretty bad :p a growth of 4 visitors! Unfortunately my site went down on sunday morning :p however I shall be working on growth hopefully in the 2nd half of this week
@Domain Marvelous Yes you are right… Either they should categorize the blogs??!@
And Also I feel the increase in traffic should be measured from jan rather than from Dec.. I mean the new avg should be from jan-feb15 rather than frm dec1 – feb15… What say ppl???
Ajith any ideas in your mind???
Yes, the equation needs to be updated. It definitely favors newer, lower traffic blogs. After all, it isn’t hard to experience double or triple increases in traffic if you have a low base number.
Good job to the first place winner this week for your steady improvement, but really, how can we celebrate an increase of 10 visitors over someone who increased their visitors by 67?! Of course, if we had an equation which only counted increase in visitors, it would not be fair for smaller blogs that have fewer pages and haven’t had a chance to get fully indexed…
So, I’d suggest something that uses a combination of the increase in visitors AND the percentage increase…
Shirley’s last blog post… Are You Speaking A Language Your Readers Understand?
so sad i’m not qualified with this contest.! argh!
qarla’s last blog post… Blog word have a billion search results
@Folks, I do not want to reply point to point but the following are some of the reasons behind this formula. Please note that I do not have any bias towards anybody and I would like to give away all the sponsorship I got in a fair manner
1. The average of initial search visits of everyone cannot be taken as the base because 75% of the people’s initial search visits or init value fall below this average (avg will be around 130)
2. Somebody with init value of 2 (an example) and making it 10 this week ,according to the current formula, will still be having their gain as zero. Only when they make say 12 visits, their gain becomes 20%. Because base is 10 for anybody who has search visits below 10 (That explains the -70% in one of the cases above. I thought 10 is a fair value looking at the scorecard… it’s evened out in terms of negative and positive gains.
3. As for the question on why December value is considered, it will be only applicable in the initial weekly report. Final report is for Jan to Feb mid values as the 6 weeks window keeps moving.
Now my request to all: If you have any better formula at all and if that is accepted by at least 80% of you, I am ready to rework on it. We still have 5 weeks to go
So shoot your opinions and let us go by the majority. I would like to make this as transparent as possible and really want a happy giveaway while I know that it’s impossible to keep all parties happy.
So please come up with a formula, let’s debate on it or vote…
This should be very interesting to witness over the coming weeks, especially from an outsider.
Well I got off to a slow week but so far this week I have increased my search engine traffic by over 1000%, so I think that should put me in the lead
Simon’s last blog post… Buy Trundle Bed, Cheap Trundle Bed, Trundle Bed For Sale
Ajith, I thought i would be on the top because of my search engine traffic. I think i have missed some part of the formula. Can you clarify on that.
Congrats to others who are on top 5. Congratulations especially to Arun of Read2Know who my my college mate.
Nihar’s last blog post… How to Add categories to Nav Bar
Well, whatever the formula be, I feel they will always be biased towards lower traffic blogs. I would love to see someone come up with an approach which would prove me wrong
Raju’s last blog post… List of Sites Offering Free SMS Worldwide
Hi Ppl..
We need to take into account the increase in number of hits, domain age and also the % number of increase in hits. we can add all the three factors to the score card..
For Example…
There are 3 sites with traffic of 15, 200 and 1000 and the final traffic is 75, 400 and 1200. Then the final % increase is 400%, 100% and 20% and the increase in hits is 60, 200 and 200 and we can also consider the domain age… less than 2 months, less than 6 months and greater than 6 months..
So based on all the 3 stats we can decide the final winners..???
It looks from the 3 stats that the one with 100% increase has done a good job with an increase of 200 search visits..
Or should we set some reasonable targets for each blog and then see how close are they to the target??
We also need to consider the SEO strategies used by the Blogger to increase the number….
Any inputs???
Thanks,
Samrat
TechnoSamrat’s last blog post… Upgrade Your Nokia E71 Euro Firmware to v200.21.118
Sad I could not participate as I didnt used GA since december
Maybe next time. Good luck to all the participants 
Kurt Avish’s last blog post… Hidden love
Can somebody please explain why melvinblog.com has a gain of -29%? Im not good at math..
Melvin’s last blog post… Taking Advantage Of Startup Stuffs
@Raju, not exactly… Any blog has the potential to increase by a certain % as we are not talking about absolute increase here.
@Samrat, in principle we can consider a lot of things like SEO strategies, age of domain, PR, backlinks… but unfortunately tracking all these things manually is impossible. I would like to go by a % increase formula and if all of you can come to an agreement on that (decide the base number)… It’s also possible to set targets for each blog.
@Melvin, at the moment for low traffic blogs (where search visits per day is less than 10) we have set the base as 10. (This can change when the current debate is over) This approach makes sure that somebody with say 2 search visits and gets 5 next week will not get undue advantage (i.e. 250% improvement in the example case).
Again, I am requesting all of you to decide what should be the base value. Should it be kept as 10 (as it is now) or less than that or more?
Oh darn – I forgot to come back and sign up. Maybe next time. It will still be fun to watch this.
Kim Woodbridge’s last blog post… Lessons in Backing Up – The Journalspace Disaster
@ Kim that alright you can just help me now :p
@ Ajith, unless we set up a tier system it would be impossible (almost) to make it a fair standing at the Small/new v Big/old sites.
Hi PPl..
The best solution would be to divide the blogs into 3 categories.. traffic less than 100.. traffic between 100 and 500, traffic above 500… Then we can decide the winner from among the three top ones in each category….
Thanks,
samrat
thats really great contest buddy. i know you invited me to participate in it but m bit busy and could not make it this time. but m sure there is always next time. the sites stats you mentioned are going quite well and it would be great to see the competition here.
I kind of agree with Samrat here. Grouping blogs based on the search visits seems to be the best way. Else, older blogs with more traffic will find it tough to compete here.
Raju’s last blog post… Why VPS Hosting Rocks?
Firstly, I congratulate you on organizing this contest. This is not an easy one to organize.
It needs lot of manual effort.
As for at the contest rules goes, I agree with TechnoSamrat’s view below.
“We need to take into account the increase in number of hits, domain age and also the % number of increase in hits. we can add all the three factors to the score card..”
We already have the no. of hits and % no.of increase in hits with Google Analytics. The only thing we need is the domain age. We can get this from any PR sites.
What do you say Ajith?
@Nihar, Thanks for the congrats!
Read 2 Know’s last blog post… Microsoft issues Emergency Fix for Browser Flaw
I’m sorry but the idea of changing the competition rules after it starts just does not work for me! It”..who increase their search visits by the maximum percentage will get the first and second prizes. ” It did not take a rocket scientist to see the contest is biased toward those with lower search numbers! Participants have to apply based on understanding the rules or asking questions before they ‘waste their time’. I entered the last Blogging Idol contest with a new blog knowing the chances of increasing raw reader number were slim when compared to those with hundreds of readers already — it was not a percentage increase. I admit I thought it would be since the rule was a bit vague, but cleared up later.
I find this discussion a bit frustrating and unnecessary distraction in any contest. Now, for what to do. One option is to stop the contest, set the rules and reopen. If not, my suggestion is as follows:
First a base of 10 is still very hard for low count blogs to achieve (500%?) when compared to larger blogs that have high SEO rankings already. So why handicap the smaller ones even more? They have to take monumental steps to go that distance in such a short time frame… Okay, if you want to change the rules, then divide the field into two or three groups based on current search starting point. Then award a top prize to each sector and maybe one overall — like Olympic trials leading up to the big one. Let’s settle this and stop messing around. Competitors need to know what they are up against to plan their efforts.
SBA’s last blog post… Google’s New Favicon
Folks, as I stressed before what is ‘possible’ is to purify the percentage formula in a way that make sense to most people. I am convinced that % increase method make sense unlike absolute values and other parameters. I am not going to add more complications into the formula like domain age, PR, grouping and so on.
So we have to decide the base for calculating the % increase ASAP. If that cannot be arrived at in the next two-three days, it will stay the way it is now.
In the future I will stay away from conducting such competitions as most people just want lottery based dumb contests. I had a chance to improve my RSS count to 500 or so if I had offered all these prizes in contests. But I thought we had a great chance to learn SEO from each other via this competition and improve search traffic. The amount of criticism I am facing because of the need to share Google Analytics a/c is even more
I shall send a survey email tonight to all participants to choose a base value. And we will stick to the majority’s opinion…
Ajith,
My 2 cents of thought. What you choose is fine with me. I am really here to participate and encourage you more than anything. Winning is good, but not everything… Its not really the end of the world as some seem to think. Whatever happened to the spirit of participation? Blogs used to be a place where you put your points/views/thoughts across. Now they have become a means to making money, that’s all. Very sad to say and see!
@Ajith – Don’t let this discussion taint the original purpose — it was and still is to learn and share SEO! I don’t like random contests, but one like this involves brain power and contribution. I was recently burned by a contest that I put a lot of effort into and would have won, had the blog owner not blatantly add new rules after the contest closed. So, I am not criticizing the contest goal at all nor your admirable decision to conduct this type of competition. Most of us see them as an incentive to aim a bit higher and have our efforts recognized. So don’t be discouraged. We need some contest ‘heroes’.
Let the survey begin.
SBA’s last blog post… The Blogger’s Block
I think I am losing. I have joined the wrong blog. HAHAHA.
Hussein’s last blog post… Chromifox: Make Firefox Look Like Google Chrome
@Rajiv, SBA… thanks for your support and understanding
@Hussein, Not really, we are trying to fix the problem so that nobody can easily get away with it
Results of Voting
Thanks for your votes. 24 out of 32 replied to my survey mail. See the results below:
RajaieTalks.com – 10
Read2Know.com – 5
MelvinBlog.com – 5
Ardi.Web.Id – 5
Homebiz.bukiki.com – 10
BlogginKid.com – Nothing selected
MillionClues.com – 10
Techzoomin.com – 10
Technotip.org – 10
TechnoSamrat.com – 40
BlogBucks.net – 10
Nela.in – Any value is fine
VelvetBlues.com – 20
DomainMarvelous.com – 10
Otooo.com – 10
Geek-Speak.co.uk – 10
BloggingFromHome.com – 10
LifeIsColourful.com – 10
ThouShallBlog.com – 10
TechVivo.com – 40
HoxfulMonsters.com – 10
BEFolks.com – 10
TechPP.com – 15
MadWorldWii.com – 10
10 – 15 votes
5 – 3 votes
40 – 2 vote
20 – 1 vote
15 – 1 vote
None selected – 1 vote
Any value is fine – 1 vote
We are going with the majority. i.e. 10. Thank you all for your coopearation. We still have more than four weeks to go and hence everybody (small, large, old, new…) has a chance to improve search visits.
Good luck!
By the way, I just realized that it’s very easy for small traffic bloggers to game the system. It no way means that I doubt anyone’s strategy here.
But I would like to share it: Any blogger with weekly traffic of let’s say 10 needs to achieve 10 more to get 100% gain.
I must be knowing the terms for those 10 existing searches. If I search for those exact terms during the week, and visit my own blog – it would be anyways counted as a search visit. Sounds very simple to me for small blogs.
Of course even good traffic blogs (like 100+) can also do the same, but they would not be able to achieve anything like that very easily unless they have all time in hand to just to do it all day.
Wow, that is a very easy way to game the system. I hadn’t thought of it, and I’m sure that others hadn’t either… Way to let the cat out of the bag. lol. Hopefully no one resorts to this technique.
Shirley’s last blog post… ALT vs. TITLE Attributes For Images in HTML
A couple of ’suspicious’ activities has already been noted
I will take a close look at the top 5 spots throughout the event… Of course, not everything can be tracked down completely…
@Abhijeet – I know the prizes are very nice, but anyone stooping to that level is in serious need of counseling! I assumed all owners have taken themselves out of the Analytics counts??? In that case would this still be possible to ‘game’ in that way? I know my regular visits are NOT counted, but not sure about searches. Can someone answer that question?
SBA’s last blog post… It’s All About Working The Net
@SBA, The SEO thing would not count those visits anyways as you rightly mentioned. But I did not get when you say “Not sure about searches” – do you search and land up on your own blogs??
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@Abhijeet – My regular Google searches have nothing to do with my blog’s tags — have to take a break sometime! But I was fixing some ‘page not found’ errors and did a “site:” search to see where the errant url was — I then pressed the link in the search results to see if the redirection worked.. Not sure if that counts. If so it was innocent (LOL). Anyway, we are learning from this exercise…
SBA’s last blog post… It’s All About Working The Net
The whole system is very confusing. But one thing is clear.
All you got to do is maximize your search engine traffic and you will be in the competition. This week I am lagging behind.. So a lot of work need to be done.
Congrats to the Top 5..