Back in 2006 I entered the initial contest with my article “Shhhh!….the dirty little secret about sem seo certification“ and even though I didn’t win it was an excellent way to get noticed by the judges. I also considered myself and everyone involved with the contest a winner but of course that’s usual banter from a loser. Here’s more about the real winners.

The winner of that first contest was Ben Wills with his article “The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing“.If you haven’t read it I encourage you to go check it out. I had a chance to meet him at SES Chicago. Ben’s a really bright young man and I knew he would go on to bigger and better things. He’s recently started his new enterprise ontolo and I encourage you to check it out if you are interested in large scale link prospecting services or a keyword landscape and competition analysis tool.

The winner of the second contest was Jeff Horsager, a copywriter who specializes in online and direct marketing, with the article “Increase Conversion Rates with the Google Website Optimizer“. Interestingly enough there was a tie in the second sem scholarship contest with CK Chung aka KidDisco’s article “Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You“ also getting 4 votes. The tie breaker was the fact that Jeff had 3,385 visitors compared to CK’s 1,094.

I think Marketing Pilgrims’ SEM Scholarship is one of the best sem/seo contests available, creating a win-win-win situation for the contestants, Marketing Pilgrim and the readers. Make sure you get in on next year’s contest, as a contestant or at least read the submissions. If you haven’t read them yet then go ahead, you may learn a thing or two.

But this is different, just look at the name of this contest. The SEO Charity Contest, now that sounds like a contest that means something. This was the second year that Bruce Clay, Inc. put this contest on. Here’s how it starts,

For the next two weeks, we’re inviting search engine marketers to contact a non-profit organization that you’re passionate about and whose Web site you feel could benefit from an organic search engine optimization campaign.

Last year’s winner was Keri Morgret who helped the Open Education Resource. This year there were so many great entries that they decided to award three tiers of prizes. Good on you people of BC! And the winners are……everybody that participated in my opinion.

• Honorary Mentions: Victor Caballero (Skirball Cultural Center) and Gyutae Park (San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium).

  Both Victor and Gyutae will receive a free one year subscription to the SEOToolSet.

• Runner up: Margaret Moore Butler (The International Rett Syndrome Foundation)

  Margaret will receive a free seat in our SEOToolSet and Advanced Certification course on April 7-11.

• Grand Prize Winner: Ryan Freeman (The Elisha Foundation)

  Ryan will receive a free pass to the Search Engine Strategies Conference taking place in March, as well as a free seat in our SEOToolSet and Advanced Certification course.

AIDS Clickathon – A Viral Marketing Strategy to Fight the HIV/AIDS Virus in Africa
Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You
The 7 Deadly Sins that Hurt You as an SEO or SEM
Big SEO Projects – A Strategy To Get Them
Increase Conversion Rates with the Google Website Optimizer?

Judges:
Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
Jim Boykin – WebBuildPages.com
Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org
Andrew Goodman – Page-Zero.com
Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
Jennifer Laycock – SearchEngineGuide.com
Todd Malicoat – Stuntdubl.com
Boris Mordkovich – SearchMarketingStandard.com
Lee Odden – TopRankBlog.com
Elisabeth Osmeloski – SearchEngineWatch.com
Neil Patel – PronetAdvertising.com
Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
Brett Tabke – WebmasterWorld.com
Laura Thieme – BizResearch.com
Aaron Wall – SEOBook.com

Last year’s winner Ben Wills wrote a great piece on social media and has been a busy guy since he won. The new Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Contest is on again and “this time it’s bigger, better and badder than before!”

I entered this contest last year and really enjoyed the challenge of driving as much traffic in a week as I could. I finished 12th out of 48 entries and had a great time doing it. My entry was in the last week when other procrastinators like myself waited until the last minute. So we were competing against more weekly entries than the others.

This year all entries will be printed at the same time and there will be 5 finalists instead of the 4 last year. Contestants will also have 4 weeks to promote their story. The finalists are chosen based on the number of unique page views they have and then the excellent panel of judges picks the final winner.

The deadline for all entries is April 6, 2007.

1. There will be ONLY ONE ROUND OF ENTRIES. Unlike last year – with four weekly deadlines – there will be just one chance to submit your article.
2. The biggest suggestion from last year was that one week to build traffic to an article, really didn’t demonstrate the true abilities of a search marketer. This time around, you’ll have a full 4 weeks to spread the word, drive traffic, build links, etc.
3. We’ll have five finalists this year, instead of four.

Once again the panel of judges is a who’s who list of the search marketing world.

Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
Jim Boykin – WebBuildPages.com
Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org
Andrew Goodman – Page-Zero.com
Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
Jennifer Laycock – SearchEngineGuide.com
Todd Malicoat – Stuntdubl.com
Boris Mordkovich – SearchMarketingStandard.com
Lee Odden – TopRankBlog.com
Elisabeth Osmeloski – SearchEngineWatch.com
Neil Patel – PronetAdvertising.com
Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
Brett Tabke – WebmasterWorld.com
Laura Thieme – BizResearch.com
Aaron Wall – SEOBook.com

This is one contest you don’t want to miss either as a participant or a reader. There were some great articles last year and I imagine this year there will be even more.

If you don’t want to miss the contest updates and deadlines, subscribe to the RSS feed. Best wishes to all the contestants!

 Forum members will choose the four training programs from a list of six including; SEMPO Institute, Search Engine College Certifications, Bruce Clay’s SEO ToolSet, Fresh Egg Internship, Web Design Training Program, Human Factors International and SEO Pros.  The poll includes an “other” choice to be considered in future sponsorships. Polling will end on January 15, 2007 and the winners will be announced.

Hats off to Kim and those at Cre8asiteforums for promoting education and training.  I encourage all of these training programs and others to follow her lead and offer “scholarships” or other ways to encourage training and certification.

Andy said to send him over my thoughts and that it would be a good idea to revisit the contest now that the dust had settled. This is a great way to repurpose content (that may not be the correct description but fits in this case). I think other bloggers should take note and dig up some of their great posts and comment on what has changed. There is so much content out there and to write about it once and then never visit it again, is a waste.

In fact he is the original sem seo certification and training evangelist, wouldn’t you agree? Yes, others have offered free advice on forums but Danny started Search Engine Strategies back in 1999. Here’s from their description “At this unique one-day event, you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of search engine marketing from top experts in the field”.  In addition to that Danny has been writing about search engines for more than 10 years and will add to that at Search Engine Land. 

So what’s the big deal you ask? Well in my article, Shhhh!….the dirty little secret about sem seo certification, for Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Scholarship contest I gave 4 practical tips and my first one was “Practical tip #1 – Whenever Danny Sullivan speaks, listen, whatever he writes, read”. If Danny’s writing that sem seo certification and training is accelerating then we should definitely pay attention. One way to do that is to subscribe to this blog’s feed. ;)

Danny talks about the “Certification Pathways” from Search Engine College, SEMPO’s webinar for those thinking about getting into search marketing, Starting a Career in Search Marketing and their new online training at SEMPO University. He also discusses the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) SEM Certification, the Incisive Media training after SES Chicago and of course Bruce Clay’s SEO Toolset, which I also mentioned in my article.

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Meanwhile, the Interns’ desk was finally delivered and assembled. It is a huge thing, custom built, that places the Interns right in the heart of the SEO team area, pretty much equidistant to both myself and to Lee. It is the Lincoln Continental of desks. Only fair, since Rand had equipped Rebecca with a laptop the size of a buick for her time in England.

Rebecca’s off to London with Ammon to consult with a client. Good luck Recbecca, let us know how it goes.

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Another overview of this scholarship contest is covered in my week by week blow but Andy’s “anatomy” is certainly all encompassing.  The  four weekly finalists will get a closer look by not only the distinguished panel of judges but also the sem seo community as a whole. Even those that didn’t make the finals “won” in a sense because they no doubt learned a lot and had the ability to express their views.

One clear lesson is the power of social media and in fact the last week’s winning article was “The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing“.  Another lesson was that a link from Stuntdubl,  SEOmoz and TopRankBlog  turned out to be a great way to get page views since these blogs are all about seo sem, the target audience. This blog also provided a few referrers to other people’s articles. Not a smart move in a contest. I just thought that all the articles  should be read.

My article came in 12th place out of 48 entries with 273 visitors and 375 page views.  Many of those page views came from the same IP address at work so next time I’ll make sure my colleagues check it out on their home computers.  I’ll also start preaching the power of social media. 

All in all this was an excellent experience and I look forward to the next time around. Again, congratulations to the finalists and best wishes!

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SEM Scholarship
Are you the next generation of search engine marketing experts? Are you interested in joining one of the fastest growing marketing industries ever?

Marketing Pilgrim has launched a contest to give away a search engine marketing scholarship prize worth more than $6,000. We want to help one lucky winner to either start their career in search engine marketing or improve their existing skills further.

WEEK 1

11 contestants joined the fray in the first week and one of them was anoymous. Why?

I just celebrated my 22nd birthday last week, and I already make more money than I know what to do with. I’m not trying to win this contest, because I’ll be at SES regardless, I’ve already bought Aaron’s book, and I have plenty of great research tools.

Truth be told, I was a bit jealous reading that article. Another article was about the psychology of seo and the author Rob Stevens had this to say.

A little dose of psychology: say something provocative, piss them off, butter them up, make them laugh … but the general rule is to get their attention with something that they would want to link to.

The article by Nick Urbani did just that. He provocatively entitled it “The SEO Article You Shouldn’t Read“ and walked away the first week’s winner with 385 unique views.

WEEK 2

Only 5 brave souls jumped into the pool the second week. Ryan Bell’s article – “Instant PPC Success for the Hometown Hero”, note the nifty title again, won with the most page views of 108.  Ryan summed up his geo targeted PPC tips like this.

How can I give away such a valuable secret? A truly talented SEO or SEM doesn’t rely on one secret-method to carry his career. The true talent is creativity and adaptation. I am not afraid of giving this strategy away, because I can invent 15 others to build on it which would turn this great campaign into a huge success.

WEEK 3

The competition gained momentum in week 3 with a total of 12 entries. Jordan McCollum won the week by a mere 3 unique views. Her article, again with the nifty title,  “SEO is Pointless (But You Don’t Have to Tell Your Clients)“ had a total of 633 unique views . Andy wrote, “It was a close battle in the week, with many entrants getting creative in their efforts to promote their entry – some even using PPC!”

Jeremy Luebke’s second place article, which lost by a mere 3  unique views (Ouch!),  was entitled “Most SEOs are Virgins“. Here’s what Jeremy wrote on his blog about what he called a “heartbreaker“.

Even though I didn’t win, it was quite an experience. Usually I build traffic the slow and steady route. Rarely am I under such a time crunch to drive so many visitors to a single page of a website with no ramp time. So what did I learn and what would I do different in retrospect?

Jeremy went on to provide some insightful examples about what he would do differently. One example referred to  using other social media (more on this later).  Jeremy also noticed the PPC ads and wrote “In my opinion the PPC campaigns went against the spirit of the contest but I’ll save that for another post.”

WEEK 4

The winner of week 4, Ben Wills, blew away the other 20 contestants with a total of 1,153 unique views! Apparently Ben knows a bit about social media and wrote the article, “The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing“. Ben actually ran away with week 4 by getting 400 more unique views than the nearest competitor.  Ben leaves us with some final thoughts.

One thing about social media marketing: It’s complicated for two reasons: no one has created a structure to work from, and there’s so much overlap in functionality of different sites, that it can be quite confusing as to a site’s single purpose because…well…there usually isn’t a single purpose.

Don’t let this hold you back. Get out there. Spend time with these sites. Sign up, Use them, meet your customers, talk to your customers, and LOVE THEM.

But wait! There’s More! Feel free to use my Social Media Marketing Tactics chart (on BenWills.com) to make sure your next campaign is a success.

FINAL THOUGHTS

 I agree with Jeremy, it was quite an experience. It may sound corny but I think everyone was a winner in this contest. Andy Beal, the contestants, the readers and even the judges, a virtual sem seo community who’s who list. Of course that’s easy for me to say since my article didn’t win. 

Best wishes to the finalists! Now everyone go read their articles. In fact if you want an idea about what the “next generation of search engine marketing experts” are thinking, then read all the articles.  And the next time Andy puts on his thinking cap count me in, how about you?

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