It seems to be about quantity not quality.
Submitted by ihouston on Fri, 2007-01-26 07:02.
While I am waiting to be indexed I decided to check out some of the competition and I must say it is clear what a number of the most popular tactics are for the leaders.
For starters it seems like repeating the key words "globalwarming awareness2007" frequently is one way approach to getting the top spot that is working. Some of the leaders have the phrase (globalwarming awareness2007) more than 100 times in their front page. The raw number does fluctuate a little as you look through them but I have noticed that the top sites have a "globalwarming awareness2007" density approaching but not quite 3%. I find the density bit interesting and I too can repeat globalwarming awareness2007 over and over again. And perhaps I will in a fashion a little less obvious than this paragraph. But I hardly see how this would a practical for a real site trying to win favorable SERPS for perhaps hundreds of key words.
The next thing I noticed was the linking. The number 1 site on google, which shall remain nameless (don't want to help the competition), has even started a link exchange program with a long list of link with the text "globalwarming awareness2007". The call to action for this program to help link spam to the top of the results is "Want to become a friend?" Not a very real world practical approach for a real world site but it does speak to the importance of links in google's algorithm. The Number 1 spots in Yahoo and MSN do not have this type of link scheme.
Now, both of these are things I've heard about many times before. I certainly wont cry foul if I don't win. Nor will I turn down the car if I do ;) But I hardly see how this contest is a measure of an SEO's ability to optomize a site while still keeping it presentable to the public. when the number one search engine has some very obvious exploits. In fact, I think it might be more appropriate to call the contest Search Engine Exploitation World Championship. How far can you push the envelope without breaking the rules enough to get banned by the engine.
Just for the record, I am not an SEO but rather a web analyst who spends a fair amount of time looking for the value impact of SEO efforts.