seocontest2008

Personally I believe that a domain extension is not critical when it comes to SEO and SERPs. Unless we are talking at a country level, where local ccTLDs have proved to perform better. For instance, for most searches conducted in the UK (on Google UK), .co.uk seems to perform better, or at least far more better than on searches conducted from other parts of the world. Same thing applies to Australia, Spain, Canada etc.

It is assumed that China extensions (.com.cn, .cn etc.) can’t perform that well on Google outside of China. When taking part in the UK webmaster world SEO contest (for the keyword seocontest2008 ), one of my motivations was to see how a new site with a Chinese extension would match up in such a competitive arena. So far I have been rather impressed. Without any serious link building strategies (some participants have reportedly acquired thousands or even tens of thousands of links already!), today the site is ranked #22 on Google when searching for seocontest2008. The organic SEO done on the site itself surely help, having the site hosted on a US server doesn’t harm neither, but the main conclusion for me is that a dot cn site can match up with any site worldwide when optimized properly.

I would have probably performed better by creating a blog on a sub-directory on seo4china.com server, which would have taken away the age factor and put the blog on a relatively trusted domain. However, I am confident that with seocontest2008.com.cn I should be able to get within the top 10 at the end of the contest. Wish me luck (and give me links ) !

I just checked the rankings, and seocontest2008.com.cn seems to have made it to the top 100! We are currently ranked 35th on the Google SERPs for “seocontest2008″, and 18th among the registered contestants (out of 300, please!). Now time to continue the unstoppable march towards the top 10, and why not, allow ourselves to dream

You can check the rankings at:

http://www.ukwebmasterworld.com/seo-contest/0208/top100.php

Actual position may depend on when you read this post. Hopefully the site would have moved up by then

As one of the contestants of the seocontest2008 SEO contest, below is a quick summary of how we match against other participants:

Strenghts:

-Keyword reach domain: the objective of this contest is to rank a site at the top of Google for the keyword seocontest2008 . Of course, most of the top TLDs (.com, .net, .org) were registered within a few hours of the contest beginning. I was able however to grab the seocontest2008.com.cn six days after the beginning of the contest and hopefully that will work in my favor.

-Self-hosted blog: seocontest2008.com.cn is built using wordpress blog software, which is well-known for its SEO-friendliness.

Weaknesses:

-New domain/Age of site: As we all know new domains take time to rank high on Google, due to a phenomena called the Sandbox effects. At the early stage of the contest, most of the top 10 participants are using sub-domains or a site on a folder of an existing/older domain, meaning they will be more quickly ranked on Google and hopefully won’t face any sandbox effect. We hope however than our strengths and subsequent link building activity will help compensate for that weakness.

-Chinese TLD: As the site extension is .com.cn, which denotes a Chinese denomination, I may have more work to do as the competition is mostly relevant to the international Google.com, and Chinese TLDs are unlikely to perform that well there.

-Late participation: seocontest2008.com.cn was registered as a domain and added as a contestant to the contest about a week after the contest has begun. Meaning many participants and site owners got started a full 6-7 days ahead of me, which may be a lot considering that the contest will last about 60 days (that’s about 10 days lost).

Welcome to the seocontest2008 blog!

This blog has been launched as part of the UK Webmaster World sponsored SEO contest that is taking place from February 1st to April 1st. However, we will be posting as well on other SEO contests happening globally. Make sure to subscribe by email to receive updates, especially if you are in the SEO world.

Cheers,

Patrick

www.seo4china.com