Rules

The rules of the SEO Horror Story Contest are pretty simple::
– Must be a direct SEO experience – no hearsay, no 2nd or 3rd hand stories
– No real or proper names of individuals or companies will be published
– You can an SEO company – we are primarily looking for stories from someone who had a Horror Story either trying to do Search Engine Optimization on their own, or had a bad experience with an SEO vendor but would also like to hear what horror stories that SEO companies have dealt with.
– Vizion Interactive moderates/edits the blog and previews/approves all blog entries
– Prize winners – determined by SEO celebrity judges

The SEO Horror Story contest begins Tuesday, September 29, 2009. All entries must be received by 12 Midnight, PST, on October 31st.

The prizes include the following:
– 2 passes to one of the Search Engine Strategies conferences. Choose from San Jose, New York, Chicago, London or Toronto. Offer expires one year from contest close.
Search Engine Strategies (SES) is the leading global conference & expo series that educates delegates on search engine marketing (SEM), including optimization (SEO) and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices. SES Search Marketing Events provide instruction from the industry’s top Search experts, including representatives from the Search Engines themselves.

– 6 month subscription to Trackur Corporate (worth $528)
Trackur offers sophisticated social media monitoring tools that take less than 60-seconds to set-up. Get started for free!

– 6 month subscription to SEOMoz Pro (worth $474)
As a PRO member, you’ll get full access to each of our guides (worth over $250 on their own). We share our tips, secrets and strategies with the same clarity, style and detail that you’ve come to expect from SEOmoz.

– 1 free year Raven Tools membership (worth $948)
Raven is the essential SEO Tool Set for Search Engine Optimization. Features include SEO Research & Analysis, Campaign Management, Automated SERP Tracking and One Click SEO Reports.

– 3 month subscription to AdGooroo SEM Insight (also includes tools, worth $1197)
Over 1200 companies use AdGooroo’s software to multiply search traffic and beat the competition. Their flagship product, SEM Insight, tracks all search advertising activity across six search engines and 18 countries, empowering sophisticated agencies and advertisers with competitors’ keywords, budgets, ad copy, landing pages, CTR, rankings, and more.

– 12 month “Standard Pack” subscription to Errorlytics (worth $179)
Errorlytics is an easy to use SaaS (software as a service) tool that centralizes reporting and handling of 404 “Page Not Found” errors for your websites. The end results are better user experiences and higher search engine rankings for your websites.

– Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2010 (worth $749)
Affiliate Summit Inc. was founded by affiliate marketing industry veterans, Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, and serves the affiliate marketing professional community. The mission of Affiliate Summit is to be the leading global source of learning and networking opportunities surrounding the affiliate marketing industry.

– Two SEMPO courses – Insider’s Guide to Search Marketing and Effective Search Marketing: Social Media (value $700)
SEMPO Institute is the education division of the Search Marketing international trade association, SEMPO. SEMPO Institute is donating 2 of it’s 6 online, on-demand and self-paced courses worth $700 as prizes. Insider’s Guide to Search Marketing is a survey course that assumes no prior knowledge. Among the 14 topics covered are Keywords, Linking, PPC, Social Media, and Analytics. Effective Search Marketing: Social Media covers strategy, tactics both Business to Consumer and Business to Business examples of Social Media with more than 50 tools referenced.

– 6 months “Pro” account at SEMRush.com (worth $249.95) and 2 months account at SEOPivot.com (worth $296.78) for a total value of $546.73.
SEOPivot.com serves to examine the potential of your site to get targeted traffic from search engine. SEOPivot.com examines TOP300 Google Organic Search (US version) for 500 thousand keywords which have certain commercial value. SEOPivot.com shows you URLs which Google considers as relevant to you targeted keywords.

SEMRush uses the 35 million most popular and expensive keywords to analyze Google search results and we do this regularly. SEMRush can show you keywords for any domain that ranks high enough to be in the top 20 search or Adwords results.

– UnFair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars goes to the first 20 SEO Horror Contest Entries.
The first 20 people to share their SEO Horror Story gets a copy of “The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars” for $1. That book also comes with a three month membership to SearchEngineNews.com and access to the Planet Ocean “Site Strength Indicator tool”.

– Runner Up Gets a 3 month Membership to Search Engine News.
The designated “runner up” of the SEO Horror Story Contest will get a 3 month membership to the SearchEngineNews.com Pro account which includes FREE email questions to our top in-house SEOS with a guaranteed 24hr turn around time.

– SEO Horror Contest Winner Gets a 2 month membership to SEO In Sites.
The designated winner of the SEO Horror Story Contest will get 2 months’ Free membership to seoINsites.com SEO training program and full access to a suite of SEO PowerTools. This also includes Free email questions to their top SEOs.

– The first 20 people to share their SEO Horror Story get a free copy of “The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars”. That book also comes with a three month membership to SearchEngineNews.com and access to the Planet Ocean “Site Strength Indicator tool”.