Every now and then you hear about a new SEO contest where you can win money, prizes, recognition and fame. Well, that might just stop now that John Mueller from Google trashed the concept. He said on Twitter "SEO contests are pretty useless. SEO contests never reflect real life-performance, they generate a ton of spam that negatively affects the whole ecosystem, they're a big waste of time & effort. The smart approach to SEO contests is to ignore them."
He then added "If you're thinking of running or taking part in one, consider just improving your services overall, making the websites you work on stronger & better for the long run, instead of trying to play useless, short-term games."
Here are those tweets:
If you're thinking of running or taking part in one, consider just improving your services overall, making the websites you work on stronger & better for the long run, instead of trying to play useless, short-term games.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) May 8, 2019
For the most part, the SEO community seems pretty happy with what he said:
— Dave Smart (@davewsmart) May 8, 2019
John dropping truth bombs right here 🙌
— Itamar Blauer (@ItamarBlauer) May 8, 2019
Word.
— moreyh 🇪🇪 (@moreyh) May 8, 2019
And the #SEO community goes... pic.twitter.com/qk1CLh8Bc7
— Jenny Halasz (@jennyhalasz) May 8, 2019
My biggest pet peeve when I was agency side was watching internal presentations stating “we recommended x, y,z for the client, and the client LOVED IT”...but when I asked “what was actually implemented” answer was “none of it.”- then those campaigns won awards. #horseshit pic.twitter.com/3KDKBonN2y
— Dana Tan (@danatanseo) May 9, 2019
Why did he tweet this out of the blue? Well, Wix launched yet another SEO contest:
Join the Wix SEO Battle - Wix Lovers vs. Wix Haters!
— Wix (@Wix) May 6, 2019
✔️⚖️❌
Rank Higher for the Query “Wix SEO” and your agency could Win $25K
We’re up for the challenge, are you? >>https://t.co/9jpziZjACX#WixSEOBattle pic.twitter.com/vY2x5yoduD
It worked well for their reputation in 2016, did something like it in 2017 and they keep doing it. Google has said Wix is fine for SEO but Wix doesn't have that great of a reputation in the SEO community.
@Wix right now 😂 pic.twitter.com/gTu83lTWRu
— Suganthan Mohanadasan (@Suganthanmn) May 8, 2019
In any event - contests are fun. I don't know if I'd be that harsh against them. All industries have contests. But I guess if it really causes a ton of spam, I can see why a Googler might not like them.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
