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).