It has been about three weeks since the directory contest was officially announced. Our Romow directory entered the contest with the DirectoryContest.com listing a few days later, and it has ranked among the top-five consistently since then. As of this posting, it even outranks the official contest site, and show up first at Google for keyword “directorycontest.com.” :)
As the contest hoster described in the announcement, “the goal of this contest is to find the strongest directories which benefit the submitters the most.” If executed right (which I think is quite a challenge), the outcome of such a contest would be extremely useful to all the webmasters out there who are constantly looking to boost their search engine ranking. However, the original goal of this contest can be tarnished by the fact that the contest allows external link building or site-wide linking specifically targeting a contest listing, and by the possibility that such “unnatural” backlink building efforts by directory owners may end up deciding the winners after all. Well, in that sense, I wouldn’t be too proud of our contest ranking if you know what I mean. :) According to directorycontest.com, the reason why they allow link building to contest listings is because they cannot control it. People may build backlinks to their competitor’s listing to make them disqualified. That’s valid concern on their part.
At this point, it is not clear which is the dominant factor in determining the contest rankings: overall strength of a directory, or link building/SEO tricks for a particular contest entry. If the latter is what matters, then who knows? Some aspiring directory owner may buy up PR7/PR8 links to their listing a week before the contest is over, and instantly boost their ranking to the top just in time. Well, snatching $1500 contest prize with $xxx investment in link building is quite good ROI.
The reason we are participating in this contest even with all these concerns and self-criticism is not for cach prize, but simply for the targeted exposure the contest can bring to us. The Romow directory has been heavily promoted and gained significant directory strength. However, it is still a relatively new entrant in directory market, and thus needs a good amount of exposure to targeted audience. DirectoryContest.com is the very first (as far as I know) online contest devoted to ranking directories, and so it is an excellent opportunity to draw webmasters’ attention to our directory (thanks to Mike for hosting the contest!). Even if our directory does not remain on top at the end of contest, we will still be enjoying good exposure while we are seen in the Google’s 1st page until February, and that’s quite an effective marketing campaign that doesn’t need much investment. I will see if there’s any interesting development along the way.
