Do you think I will win this SEO Contest (Ends: March 18, 2010)

[nouseforaname]

Hi,

It's only few days left remaining for the SEO contest I participate. Currently my site is on #4 at Google (ignoring Press Release News, ESPN & BigNewz). This SEO contest will ends on March 18, 2010.

You can check the ranking here: mma pound for pound - Google Search

And my site is: MMA Pound for Pound - Mixed Martial Arts

Do you think I still can crank #1 spot within only few days remaining? What would be the best ideas to get ranked #1 fast?

Thanks in advance for your input by the way

[dburk]

Hi nouseforaname,

You page looks to be fairly well optimized. I would suggest that you add a list of about a dozen outbound links to other pages on your website or elsewhere. Use the targeted keyword first followed by a hyphen and a few other words.

Primary Keyword - 5 most popular [keyword]
Primary Keyword - 3 useful tips
Primary Keyword - Most useful site
Primary Keyword - Another useful site
etc...

Make the anchortext large and bold.

Then take the top 20 listings found with this search operator string and list them in the same fashion - Keyword followed by website name:

intitle:"mma pound for pound" inurl:"mma pound for pound" intext:"mma pound for pound" inanchor:"mma pound for pound" - Google Search

Linking out to relevant sites can help you achieve hub site status and may give you that boost needed to move up a position or two. You may not have enough time left to realize this boost, but it couldn't hurt.

Nothing would help more than having a sizable network of high PR pages that you own or control. A handful of backlinks from high PR pages will do wonders for your ranking. Though I noticed that the current #1 page is on a page with a lot of link juice pointed towards it, and it's on a hub site to boot.

[Raygun]

Please let us know how you do after the date is up, I hope you win.

[nouseforaname]

@dburk, thanks a lot for the tips, but I don't really understand what you mean on creating dozen of outbound link to other pages on my website or elsewhere. Did you mean that I need to create outbound link to other authority sites such as espn.com?

E.g.: MMA Pound for Pound - Top 10 Pound for Pound Rankings <-- Link to Espn.com from my page?

@Raygun, yea sure I will update this here later

Thanks

[dburk]

Originally Posted by nouseforaname

@dburk, thanks a lot for the tips, but I don't really understand what you mean on creating dozen of outbound link to other pages on my website or elsewhere. Did you mean that I need to create outbound link to other authority sites such as espn.com?

E.g.: MMA Pound for Pound - Top 10 Pound for Pound Rankings <-- Link to Espn.com from my page?

Thanks

Hi nouseforaname,

Yes, your outbound links and the anchortext used in those links have a significant influence on your relevancy score used to rank your page.

The current leader of the contest has a page that mostly just links to other pages. The one area that I see that page as vulnerable is the fact that most of his outbound links are somewhat relevant but lacks use of the primary keyword prominently in the anchortext of those links.

Use the Adwords Keyword Tool to see where your target keyword ranks in relevance for your page content. Currently it is nowhere near the most relevant keyword (The tool sorts by relevance). Add those links as I suggested and recheck your page with the tool and note if your target keyword moves higher in relevance. If so, you are on the right track.

Google ranks by relevancy, focus on those elements that will influence your relevancy score. Once your are satisfied with the improvements, be sure to ping your page with a pinging service to alert Google of the change. If you are lucky, you may get a ranking adjustment before the contest closes.

[Slaughter]

So, did you win?

Karan

[nouseforaname]

@dburk, sure I'll add more contents and OBL to authorities. Yep, I can see #1 entry has not much backlinks but I think the site has pretty good IBL and OBL. The rankings kept changing lately, mmaplayground.com isn't contestant but this site always stayed #1.

@K Goel, nope, the contest is still running. Ends on March 18, 2010. You can check the current rankings and winner at SEO Contest - Webmaster Contest for SEO

[nouseforaname]

Less than 24hrs left, ends on March 18, 2010 12 a.m. GMT-7.

The rankings are still intact, looks like each sites are freezing there. Hoping that my site will magically goes on #1 spot and win this contest (Percentage of 0.001%)

[WealthWithin]

hmmm,

Time for some reverse engineering..... muhwahaawaaaahhaa...

[nouseforaname]

@joelchrist, thanks but I don't think that I can get #1 in less than 24hrs. But I will still trying my best.

@WealthWithin, lol yeah, let's reverse engineer the top rankings.

[nouseforaname]

Update: I lost (Few minutes ago)