SEO tips = better search engine ranking

Forum Spanners anchor text advantage

About the nigritude ultramarine SEO competition (from p.11 of the message thread):

This competition is very interesting to watch. It shows the Internet how SEO can be done, and how ugly it can be. There is a lot of people competing for top ranking. I'm willing to ask for links from members - but I'm not willing to spend 12 hours a day spamming forums. Others are. Will the forum spammers win? Maybe.

And if the forum spammers win, it will not necessarily be a bad thing. For many search terms, the people who use automated scripts to sign up at thousands of forums do win top placement; and those who draw the line at more "respectable" methods don't.

Either way, when the winners are determined, it will be interesting to note the methods they used to gain top ranking. My guess is, the forum spammers will have at lest 3/4 of all the top ten spots. Spam or not, it is an effective way to gain rankings.

The reason it's effective is because of the anchor text that goes in links. That anchor text counts heavily toward your search engine rankings. For competitive keywords a regular search will show the same sites at the top as an allinanchor search.