When using Entrecard, I have noticed that many bloggers are using contests to promote their blogs. This is an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog, especially when you give extra contest entries for other bloggers to promote it. However, there are some problem areas that you should avoid.
If you want to have bloggers write a post about your contest and/or your blog, you CANNOT ask them to use specific terms in the link back. This is considered Black Hat SEO and will cause you to lose page rank. This happened to David Airey last year. If you wish to know more, please read How I reversed my Google ranking penalty.
One other problem area is the mega-contest with prizes from a gazillion different people. It may be difficult for bloggers to claim their prizes if the contest blog says something like, "claim your prize directly," which basically leaves the winners out in the cold. Personally, I have won three different prizes I never received. I would suggest that if you are going to offer prizes from other people, that you somehow control the process so that your readers receive their prizes.
Keep your blogging friendly and stay out of trouble with the search engines.
30 May 2008
The Problem With Blog Contests
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5 comments:
Well I really enjoyed reading your post on blog contests because I have been wondering myself about if they had stuff like that online and I would really like to learn more about stuff like that. Because I really enjoy blogging and doing my web site. Even though some people say I am too personal it is my way of letting off steam and dealing with my own problems.So I have been hoping that more people leave comments on my site so that I can hear what they think about my writing and see if they think I am too personal in my blogs. And my family thinks that I have a gift for writing and I want to know if other people think the same way. So a blog contest would be an excellent way in my eyes to prove to myself and others that my writing is good and not too personal and that I write good material. So thanks again for the good post and I really learned alot and I would love to read more about this type of stuff. So keep up the great work and great posts.Hope to read more of your great work in the future....
Thanks,
Ryan
Thanks for the great article I was just talking about running a contest to draw visitors to my blog last night. I think i'll hold off a bit.
Hi CyberCelt,
Thanks very much for linking to my article on Google penalties.
Much appreciated.
David
although i'm fully blogging for non-profit reasons & haven't checked pagerank in a very long time, definitely an interesting read
@ryan-Wow! Thanks for the thoughtful comment. If you want to write, you should write. We learn so much by writing.
@hosts-Just run it the right way. These megacontests with prizes from multiple people are too hard to manage.
@david-The more people that learn from our mistakes, the better, eh?
@stev-You have a page rank of 4 on your new blog. Well done.
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