An SEO contest is an activity awarding prizes that challenges search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to rank themselves among the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword(s).
The first recorded SEO Contest was Schnitzelmitkartoffelsalat by German webmasters, started on 2002 November 15 in the German-language usenet group de.comm.infosystems.www.authoring.misc. In the English-language world, the nigritude ultramarine competition by SearchGuild is widely acclaimed as the mother of all SEO contests. It was started on May 7, 2004 and was won two months later by Anil Dash. On September 1 of the same year, webmasters were challenged to rank number 1 on Google in three months' time for the search phrase seraphim proudleduck.
Rules and limitations can make it harder to benefit from the ranking algorithm, including quirks, of the targeted search engine. For example, the January 2006 Redscowl Bluesingsky contest issued by seologs.com was open for new domains only. That meant that the contestants couldn't benefit from the ranking advantage old web sites are thought to have over new ones. An example of that is the age advantage Anil Dash' blog page had over the well-received but brand new Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ - respectively ended 1st and 6th in the Nigritude Ultramarine challenge. It was expected that the Redscowl Bluesingsky game would be won by a domain of the style "redscowl-bluesingsky.tld" - bound to attract natural links and to benefit from the fact that the URL is made up entirely of the search words.