WOW, I should have checked out the comments on this site sooner. Okay here goes.
First a general message to everyone, I don't have any problem with the winners of the content or that they won. There was no way I was going to win and didn't expect to. I was just pointing out something that I saw so that the next challenge can be better. I don't have any problem with Busby or any contestant. In fact I want to thank Busby for putting on the completion and the everyone who entered. This provided an invaluable experience for all of us. And good luck with the upcoming competition.
Now pogung177,
I'm not a Newbie I've been providing SEO services since around 1998. Back when you changed your meta tags and that did something for your search rankings. Buying links is a back hat technique as it's against the quality guidelines set by Google (the search engine this competitions was for). It makes no difference as to who does it or not, even if Google does it it's self - it's still considered black hat. And by the way SEOmoz indicates it's a black hat technique just by the title of one of their blog posts (
Paid Links - Can't Be a White Hat With 'em, Can't Rank Without 'em). And again I don't have any hard feeling for you I was just pointing out who paid for links and who did not.
rayofshadow,
As for your comment
i think only you (netexpert and seosean) who think this is not fair.
I think it's up to Busby to decide what is fair and what is not, it's their contest not mine. Again I was just pointing out who paid for links and who did not.
About black hat and the competition rules,
The rules stated something to the effect "Only ethical SEO techniques may be engaged" (paraphrasing) and since buying links is a know no-no in Google's quality guidelines I would assume that this would then be an un-ethical technique and therefore would be breaking the rules. All I did was point out to Brycec that links where being bought in my original post. He then asked for proof and I provided it. It is up to him to do with that what he wants. And since he was asking for proof of this, I would also assume that it was breaking the rules or else he would have just mentioned that buying links was not against any rules. Anyways we should get this cleared up for the next competition. Best of luck to everyone.
