Google: SEO Contests Useless, Waste Of Time & Generate Tons Of Spam

May 9, 2019 - 7:26 am 1 by
Filed Under Search News

Seo Contest

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:

For the most part, the SEO community seems pretty happy with what he said:

Why did he tweet this out of the blue? Well, Wix launched yet another SEO contest:

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.

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.

 

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