Busby SEO Challenge
Posted in Busby SEO Challenge, News, Optimize And Monetize, SEO, WebMaster by DB
August 21st Update
Less than 10 days left for the contest to finish. Not much of a change in my ranking. Still hovering between the 7th and 8th position on the search engine results. By the way I rank number 1 for the term “Busby SEO Challenge” on the Indian data center. Actually I have been Number 1 for the past 3 weeks. Not that it’s gonna do me any good because the official data center for the Busby Contest is the Australian one. Lot of things can happen in 10 days, let’s wait and see how it goes.
Continue reading for complete information on the biggest SEO contest ever.
What is Busby SEO Challenge?
Busby SEO Challenge is the name of the latest SEO contest that seems to have captured the imagination of many SEO’s and webmasters. The Busby SEO Challenge is sponsored by Busby Web Solutions, a 100% subsidiary of Hire Intelligence Limited. No surprises then as to the target key phrase of the challenge. All contestants are aiming for that top rank on Google for the key phrase “BUSBY SEO CHALLENGE“.
Official Busby SEO Challenge Video
Busby SEO Challenge Rules
The rules are pretty straight forward.
- The contest started a while back, actually 21 days back, June 1st 2008. It shows how swamped I’ve been of late to be blogging about a contest that is 21 days into the running.
- The contest ends on 31st August 2008 at 12:00 midday, Western Australia time. The website that is number 1 on Google at exactly 12:00 pm on 31st August 2008 wins the contest.
- The contest judges have listed that only ethical SEO techniques may be used. There is no further explanation of the term ethical techniques but from conversations in the forum I gather that any contestant using blatant unethical SEO read blackhat techniques will be disqualified.
- All participants must register and registration is free. You can have more than one website in the contest but remember there is only one prize per person. So if you end up with all the three top spots, you still get only one prize.
- All contestant website pages are required to have the following anchor text in black 10 point Arial font.Participant in the Busby Web Solutions Search Optimization Challenge
- You can use either new or existing websites. However and this is important, no part of the domain name or sub domain name can contain the key phrase “Busby SEO Challenge” in any form.What this means is that you cannot have a domain in the competition that has say “SEO” as part of the domain name. Now this rule does not apply to the file names and folder names. So if you are looking to enter make sure you do NOT have either Busby or SEO or Challenge in the domain name but optimize your webpage by using Busby SEO Challenge as the file or folder name.
- And of course the standard no illegal behavior, pornography and discrimination of any form is permitted.
Busby SEO Challenge Prize Money
The winner of the contest gets $5000, the runners up takes home $2000 and the third on the list gets $500. At last count about 250 odd participants had already signed up and since we are already 21 days into the Busby SEO Challenge contest we can see quite a few websites already ranking on the SERP’s.
There is no word at the moment as to how the prize money will be transferred to the winning contestant. Busby have promised to work out the mode of payment with the winners in whatever mode suits the participants.
This contest is a good learning experience for many webmasters starting out and I would urge anyone starting out in SEO to think hard about joining the contest. If not for the prize money, the experience alone will be worth it.
Strategy and keen planning will be paramount and the one with the best off page optimization will ultimately win but nevertheless the contest will have taught you quite a bit. This ultimately is the real value in entering such a contest. So go ahead and register, pick your domain wisely and optimize wisely for the key phrase Busby SEO Challenge.
Official Busby SEO Challenge Results
The official results for the contest will be announced at mid day Western Australian time on Aug 31st using the following data center.
Top 10 Results for Busby SEO Challenge Key phrase
Top 100 Results for Busby SEO Challenge Key phrase
Top 10 Expanded Results for Busby SEO Challenge Key phrase
Busby SEO Challenge Update - June 29 2008
I decided to participate in the SEO Contest earlier this week, June 23rd to be precise. I wrote a quick post about the same and also in the post asked for the support of my readers to help me with some link love. I must say its been a little over 5 days and I’m overwhelmed by the number of people that contacted me via email and wished me the very best in the contest. Many even mentioned that they would be putting up links and referring back to this post to help me in this SEO endeavor. I just have one word for all you guys, actually two words “Thank You”
I’ve decided to put out regular updates about the contest on this particular page. Rather than creating a new update post each time, I felt it would be more convenient for a reader to read the entire Busby SEO contest updates on a single page.
Like I mentioned earlier a lot of people got back to me with intentions of helping me out. I don’t see a single link yet on Yahoo’s site explorer but I’m sure some of them are out there already. Yahoo takes its time and is always a little late in updating or even finding all the incoming links to a post/page or domain. Another one of those reasons where Google scores over Yahoo but the good thing about Yahoo is that it shows you all the incoming links to your domain or page whereas Google intentionally does not. Infact it usually is a while before Google even starts showing any incoming links.
Back to the contest, the contest 5 days back had about 200K odd pages and in the span of 5 days has gone to about 350K pages in the Google index. It pretty much indicates the number of people that are spewing out content about the Busby SEO Challenge contest. Here is a screen shot of the top six on the leader board right now.
So where does this site stand on the contest. I had a quick look and surprise surprise its on position 98. Actually its on 96 if I check the SERP’s directly. Not bad for a 5 day effort especially since I started almost a month after the contest. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if I completely disappeared from the SERP’s over the next week or two once Google starts to apply its filters. Here is the screenshot that shows this site at position 98.
All in all a good start, obviously this is not good enough. Hopefully with all the link love you my readers will provide I’m confident we’ll do better. Stay tuned for more updates on the Busby SEO Challenge.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - July 16 2008
Its been a while since I gave an update about the ongoing SEO Challenge from Busby. Looking at the leader board I see my entry at 24th, so basically the third page. Here is a screen shot showing of this page on the leader board results.
Decent improvement since my last update. I gained about 70 odd positions in a little over 2 weeks. Still it is a long way to go and of late I must confess that I haven’t been concentrating a lot on link building. I sense that I might soon see the effect of this on the SERP’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if I go back a few spots in the next week or so.
The team from France seems to be holding steady with the team from Indonesia and Philippines giving them close company. Infact barring a few like me, I believe the top 100 spots are pretty much full of the entries from these three teams. After all the French team is about 30 people, up 5 from the last time I checked. The Indonesian team is still about 25 from my estimate with the team from Philippines getting close to about 20.
Now remember there is no limit on the number of entries each contestant can have and with incoming links being one of the most important factors if not the factor in this contest, every SEO in the contest is churning out pages by the dozen. That said, remember its quality that matters over quantity.
Let me end this update by thanking all those that have linked to me. As you can see I still have some way to go in this contest. Do continue to link to this page, ideally with the anchor text as Busby SEO Challenge. Hopefully the next update should see me in the top 10 and with a real chance to win the Busby SEO Challenge.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - July 18 2008
Quick update, I’m now ranking first for the Busby SEO Challenge on Yahoo search. 
Had you going there for a bit huh!! Not that its going to do me any good as Google is what matters as far as this contest is concerned. It took me around 20 odd days from the start to reach position 1 on Yahoo. Here is a screenshot of the results on Yahoo
Enough of the self praise and gloating, back to focusing on Google. Stay tuned to the contest folks. It sure is getting interesting.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - July 28 2008
The challenge is entering its last month and things are more or less the same at the top of the leader board. My ranking is kinda all over the place depending on which Google data center you check which is natural because Google has increasingly started to geo target all its queries. On the data center that matters I am currently 26th which is not great but then I had gone back to about 40 a few days back. I’m still steady at position 1 on Yahoo not that it matters.
As we enter the final month of the Busby SEO Challenge, you can expect everyone to make a big push to the final line. All the big guns and bag of tricks will be unleashed over the next 30 days to take that number 1 spot on Google. I have pretty much put in motion all of my plays and now its all about waiting and watching.
Keep tuning in and track this fascinating contest as it unwinds to a close. On a closing note, once again Thank You for all the link love you have given me. I went a step ahead and got a couple of banners done that anybody can use to help me win this Busby SEO Challenge. Here they are.
Code for the 468 x 60 Busby SEO Challenge Supporter Badge
Code for the 125 x 125 Busby SEO Challenge Supporter Badge
Text Links
Keep that link love flowing folks!!
Busby SEO Challenge Update - Aug 02 2008
29 days left for the contest to end. Pleased to announce that my entry (this page) stands currently at number 11 on the official results. Actually 10 if you discount one of the double results. This site is doing much better than 11 on many of the data centers but again no point in dwelling about that. An interesting point is that my Yahoo search ranking has dropped to the second page. So while I moved up 15 odd places on Google, I dropped about the exact number of Yahoo. Only goes to show that how fine the line is when you try to optimize for more than one search engine. Some of the changes I made over the last couple of days must have not gone well with Yahoo or it is a temporary blip and should be back up again. Let’s wait and watch.
This is the USP’s of SEO contests. It gives you the opportunity to try out things in real time and against fierce competition. While the Yahoo search results is no where relevant to the Busby Challenge unlike some of the other SEO contests in the past, it gives me the platform to experiment and fine tune my knowledge and skill.
Stay tuned for more updates on the biggest SEO challenge of them all, the Busby SEO Challenge.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - Aug 04 2008
Less than 26 days left for the Busby SEO Challenge contest to end. The past two days has seen considerable churn in the top 10. The French team flagship blog seems to be heading down whereas the Indonesian team looks to be on the rise. The top 10 Google results for Busby SEO Challenge is made up of 6 Indonesian participants and 3 entries from the French. The last remaining entry is mine. I dropped a couple of places today to 10 from 8. 24 hrs of non activity is all that it takes to see a shift in your rankings, only goes to show how hard fought this competition is. Read through the entire post for all the information regarding the contest and periodic updates on how this entry is faring in the challenge.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - Aug 08 2008
Not much in way of change. My entry has been hovering around the 8th and the 9th position for the past 4 days. Currently it is 9th. The top 3 spots have not seen any changes over the past 6 days which kind of tells you that whatever the French team is trying, it is not working so far.
The next couple of weeks is crucial and the site that cements or takes the lead will be hard to catch in the final week unless you have a few PR 8’s in store. I thought I was done in terms of tweaking the site but I guess not. I plan to ring in some additional changes that should help me see climb but that remains to be seen.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - Aug 10 2008
I figured that it would make for some interesting reading to see some statistics of other contestants in the Busby SEO challenge contest. I’ve put together some statistics for the top 5 on the SERP’s list as of today. Keep in mind that the rankings will change constantly and so will some of the stats that I’ve collected on each individual contestant. See the Analyzing The Busby SEO Challenge Competition block at the end of the page for detailed analysis.
Busby SEO Challenge Update - Aug 17 2008
There has been some churn at the top in the past two days. However things are back to where they were at the time of writing this. Indicates a lot of effort that is being put to usurp the top ranked listing. The contest has been tainted of sorts with some of the contestants claiming their bandwidth is being deliberately used up using automated tools. These allegations are indeed serious but with no clear pointer as to who is doing it I don’t believe anything can be done. It is a shame that a few contestants or teams can resort to this kind of tactics to get to the top.
On another note, I’ve created a series of videos for this SEO challenge. I call it the Busby SEO Challenge Video series. These videos are basic tips and suggestions that might be of interest to the many observers following the contest.
Keep tuned folks and watch this space for more updates on one of the most closely fought SEO campaigns ever.
47 Responses
Leave a Comment
June 25th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
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July 1st, 2008 at 7:45 am
wow, thanks for letting me know. I never realized there was contest going on. Do you think it is a good idea to join the Busby SEO Challenge contest especially since everyone else has such a head start? I’m a little confused.
Good luck with your entry though.
Thanks
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July 14th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
So, you are in the fourth position… Good going… Keep up… All the best…
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July 17th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Thanks Pavan,
My position is kinda all over the place at the moment and is quite different in the various Google DC’s. This is primarily due to the geo filters taking effect and ofcourse the daily change in the rankings rolling out to all the DC’s.
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July 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
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August 31st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
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September 4th, 2008 at 12:14 am
So what happened to your entry? I was so busy these past few days and didn’t notice at all that the contest already ended..hahaha SEO is so tiring for people like me. I’m new so I had to learn a lot. The first week we got to the top spot for Busby SEO contest but lost the rankings all along as it aged to 2 months.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:55 am
you guys must be the first participant in the Busby SEO Challenge to offer as in really offer codes for a support ticket to your entry. How did it go for you? Just intriguing though.